Coverage - 99.5 vs. 102.5 which is "better"?

[Eli Polonsky]

-- Aaron Read <readaaron@friedbagels.com> wrote:

> 91.5 and 91.7 are terrible frequencies to be on around here
> anyways...way too crowded. Even though WBRS gets dopeslapped
> by WWFX to the west, they've got a nice clear spectrum on
> 100.1 to the east...so you can ever hear them in Boston with
> a good radio. 

100.1 is better than what became of 91.7 for WBRS for sure,
but since WWFX increased power in the late 1990's I find that
anywhere east of about Allston or Watertown where WBRS signal
weakens, that the WWFX signal just about matches theirs.

I get WBRS solid through Newton, Watertown, Brighton, Allston,
but in Boston (and it's inner urban neighborhoods), Cambridge,
and Somerville right out to the water I get a picket fencing
effect in the car of both WBRS and WWFX alternating. At my
apartment in Somerville I get WBRS or WWFX with equal strength
depending on my antenna orientation. I can null out one to get
the other (odd considering that they're both west of me).

WBRS WAS better on 91.7 many decades ago. I remember when they
started out in 1968 with no other significant signals on that
or adjacent frequencies. U Mass Lowell, then Lowell Tech, may
have had WLTI 91.5 at much lower power than the present WUML,
but that didn't get within Route 128. WMFO, WMLN, WUMB and
WMWM did not yet exist. 91.9 was the ten-watt WHSR Winchester
High School Radio, which became a WUMB casualty a decade and
a half later. WBRS could be heard clearly and steadily all
over greater Boston, then it gradually began getting hemmed
in. Class D WRBB came on at Northeastern at 91.7 (now 104.9)
in 1970, blocking WBRS out of downtown. WMFO came on around
that time as well, WMLN a few years later, WLTI increased,
then WUMB came on in 1982. WBRS was toast on 91.7 after that.

EP