WITS/Red Sox

[markwa1ion@aol.com]

When I lived in Arlington (Menotomy Rocks Park area) and listened to 
Arnie Ginsberg on old WMEX-1510 back in the early to mid '60s, I was 
listening to a WMEX signal that was approximately equal to that of then 
WEZE-1260 (now WMKI).

WMEX was 5 kW from the old West Squantum St. / North Quincy 
transmitting site about a mile from the 1260 site that is still in use 
with all the same parameters as 40+ years ago.

V-Soft says WMKI-1260 runs 5.55 mV/m into Arlington (zip 02474).  I 
point this out because my recollection is that, especially during talk 
on WMEX, "scuffing" or slop from WKBW-1520 Buffalo was often evident on 
winter nights.  Indeed if I was listening to Joey Reynolds on "KB", it 
was taking less grief from WMEX than the other way round.

Now I'm living in the Pinehurst section (01866) of Billerica and the 
present day 50 kW Waltham WWZN-1510 signal is rated as 4.97 mV/m: not 
too different from what I must have had from WMEX/Quincy in Arlington 
circa 1965.  And when now-WWKB-1520 had an oldies format about a year 
or two back, WWZN took about the same amount of slopping that it did as 
WMEX when I listened during jr. high / high school years.  Most of the 
time listening is OK, but fussy listeners would tune somewhere else.

The point of all of this is that 5 mV/m is not an adequate signal for 
comfortable listening by the general public when the first adjacents 
are within 500 miles and running 50 kW into patterns sending maximum 
juice this way.

If WTWP-1500, WWZN-1510 (and let's throw WLAC in too), and WWKB-1520 
all ran IBOC a.k.a. HD at night, what a pig-pen that would be !

Mark Connelly - Billerica, MA

<<
Subject: Re: WITS/Red Sox (was: And from Cape Cod.....)

The story I heard is that a top Sox exec lived in Westwood and the night
signal there didn't please him. According to V-Soft, WWZN's night 
signal in
the 02090 ZIP code is 4.2 mV/m, which sounds high to me. I had thought 
that
1510 was inaudible there at night for anyone other than DXers. However, 
I
suppose that between WTWP and WWKB (literally), a 4.2 mV/m signal could 
be
essentially unlistenable. The strongest AM signal in Westwood is WEEI 
(170
mV/m at night; that's 10 times WBZ's signal and 40 times 1510's). WAMG 
does
very well there too; 45 mV/m days/21 mV/m nights. (WAMG's NIF--nighttime
interference-free--value is 12.5 mV/m, so a substantial part, and maybe 
all
of Westwood gets an NIF signal from 890). WRKO's numbers are 12 days/13
nights. Back in 1981, the contribution of first adjacents was not 
included
in the NIF-coverage calculation, so back then, 1510's night signal, 
which
doesn't get a lot of co-channel interference, might have looked a lot 
better
on paper in Westwood than it sounded.

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