Soxless Boss

[Dan Strassberg]

You ARE wrong. Per FCC regulations, what you say is true of directional FMs
in the US but not true of directional AMs. For example, WWJ Detroit's signal
to the north at night is almost 8000 mV/m @ 1 km. The RMS field is about
2400 mV/m @ 1km--decent for 50 kW, which is what WWJ runs. But WWJ's
equivalent power at the signal maximum is (80/24)^2*50,000 or the equivalent
of something in the neighborhood of 555 kW. The pattern is, of course, a
teardrop, so the arc over which the signal exceeds the equivalent of 500 kW
is pretty small. Directional US AMs rarely mention the peak power at the
pattern maximum, say, on the station's letterhead. I suppose the FCC may
actually have a rule about not advertising this value because doing so would
be misleading, but as I said in another posting, the peak power is the only
power that directional US FMs mention. Of course, if the FCC were consistent
in this matter it would be inconsistent with its rule of not being
consistent ;>)

--
Dan Strassberg, dan.strassberg@att.net
eFax 707-215-6367

----- Original Message -----
From: "Larry Weil" <kc1ih@mac.com>
To: <boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Saturday, May 06, 2006 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: Soxless Boss


> At 03:39 PM 5/6/2006, Garrett Wollman wrote:
>
> ><<On Sat, 06 May 2006 15:37:22 -0400, Larry Weil <kc1ih@mac.com> said:
> >
> > > Why would there need to be a null to the east?
> >
> >Because nobody lives there.  Why waste half your power over the ocean?
>
> But I always thought that directional AM's have no forward gain, that
> the only purpose of being directional is to protect the signals of
> other stations on the same or adjacent frequencies.  Am I wrong?
>
>
> Larry Weil
> Lake Wobegone, NH
>