I Just Got Back From Ferry Street in Salisbury, MA

["Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@lycos.com>]

If you haven't been to fybush.com for the past few days, you should be aware
that he has a link to a page of WNBP-AM 1450's website, a station licensed to
Newburyport, Mass.  They're installing a new tower jusr yards from their current
one, and they've put pictures on one page of the website.  So today, Tuesday 10/9
I drove over there to czeck it out.  WNBP's tower is on Ferry Road in Salisbury,
Mass, and is pretty easy to find...take rts 1 or 110 north of the city until rt 1A veers to the northeast; Ferry Road then takes another 
right directly opposite the Salisbury Assisted Living Center (a lot of WNBP
listeners live there) and the 'NBP tower is on your left about a mile-and-a-half
from the intersection.  The tower appears at this point to be completed because
it's exactly as tall as the existing one and I doubt the 1450 in Concord, NH
or the 1440 in Westbrook, ME would allow WNBP to install a more efficient 
stick.  It seems to be a lot of trouble for not much gain.  Due to NIMBY issues and finances, they probably couldn't get a site a little south and 
west of Salisbury that wouldn't waste so much signal over the water.  With such a site, they'd get more coverage into Amesbury, Merrimac and Newbury.  Scott didn't mention WHY the station is doing this.  I'm guessing
that the salt-air perhaps has corroded the tower and the ground-wires; which raises questions about other long-lived towers in Eastern ]
Mass.  There are many towers that have been in-place unchanged or rebuilt 
since the 1940's: 680; 740; 850; 950; 1090; 1150; 1230; 1260; 1300, maybe a
few others (WBZ seems to have rebuilt its towers as evidenced by the 
number of days using their auxiliary).  At some point, don't these 
structures lose so much capacity to radiate signal that they SHOULD be
replaced?  Every single FM station in Eastern Mass except WPAA has gone through one or more iterations of antenna replacement and redesign
(some forced)...but decades-old AM antennas and ground systems are still in use.

Laurence Glavin
Methuen, MA


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