Boston-Radio-Interest Digest, Vol 9, Issue 37

[Scott Fybush]

Strassberg:

>Apparently, the WTAM site was located close to the Lake Erie shore. That 
>is, it was
>mainly either east of west of Cleveland. The pattern was designed to reduce
>radiation to the north--over the Lake and southern Ontario. The signal in
>that direction was not negligible, however. The signal to the east, west,
>and south was stronger, however.

The WTAM site to which Dan refers was in fact almost due south of 
Cleveland. The tower was also used for WNBK-TV (now WKYC, channel 3) and 
WTAM-FM 105.7, and continues to be used by channel 3 to this day.

There's only about 15 miles of land, maybe 20 at the most, between that 
site and the lake, so knocking the signal down somewhat in that direction 
would probably not have been noticeable, especially given the low noise 
levels and more sensitive receivers of that era.

>The arrangement sounds practical, so I am surprised that no other station
>has tried it. There are several stations that have used (and a couple that
>still use) vertical wires suspended from horizontal wires as DA elements. Of
>these, the best-known was WOR, when it operated from Carteret NJ. Another is
>KSUR 1260 in--I think--Beverly Hills CA. A third is the 1510 station
>currently licensed to a community near Oakland CA. If I'm not mistaken, the
>1260 and 1510 stations are both owned by Saul Levine.

That's correct. There's another station in the LA market that uses a 
vertical wire as an element in a DA. KRLA 870 Glendale, the former KIEV, 
has two towers on a hilltop in the Eagle Rock area, with a third "tower" 
formed from a vertical wire.

And down in San Diego, KCBQ 1170 operates fulltime, ND, from a wire hung 
from one of the guys of the KLSD 1360/KGB 101.5 tower. It's an interim 
setup to keep KCBQ on the air after it lost its site in Santee (now a 
Lowe's hardware store), until it can begin diplexing with KECR 910.

>The 1510 station is
>also unique in having the only rooftop DA in the US.

There's the 1020/1150 array in LA, which appears to be a rooftop DA but 
really isn't - it's a conventional DA that's had a warehouse built right 
around the towers. Each tower sits in a little well inside the building, 
and each one has a conventional base insulator and ground system at the 
bottom. The entire building, of course, is enclosed in wire mesh to keep as 
much of the RF out as possible!

>I suspect that the WOR
>Carteret array began life as a long-wire but was later converted to a DA.
>The first DA, at shartetimers WFLA/WSUN in Tampa-St Petersburg, went on the
>air in 1931. By 1936, WOR's antenna was being operated as a DA.

1932, actually, for the WFLA/WSUN array. WOR in Carteret was designed from 
the beginning as a two-tower array with a dropped third wire. It went on 
the air from there in 1935, and operated with no major alterations until 
the move to Lyndhurst in 1967.