WITS/Red Sox

Dan Strassberg dan.strassberg@att.net
Fri Oct 6 14:49:15 EDT 2006


WKOX's power increase will kill the signal to the west to enable an increase
in the signal strength in Boston and its close-in suburbs. First, the
transmitter moves eight or so miles eastward. Second, to the west, the
daytime inverse-distance field at 1 km will decrease from a whopping 1368
mV/m--almost the theoretical maximum, thanks to the very tall top-loaded
towers, to ~747 mV/m--the equivalent of an ~70% reduction in power! The
reduction in the daytime inverse-distance field to the west will result from
the station's being directional to the east as well as from the reduced
efficiency of the shorter towers. Third, my suspicion is that the present Mt
Wayte Ave location has superior soil conductivity to the new Sawmill Brook
Parkway location. Also, if you compare WKOX's 50 kW day pattern RMS field
with the station's current nondirectional daytime RMS field, you discover
that the five-fold power increase (from 10 kW to 50 kW) becomes, in effect,
slightly less than a three-fold increase because of the less efficient
antenna system. Moreover, on a pure area-covered basis, if everything else
is equal (which, of course, it never is) a nondirectional station  will
ALWAYS cover more area than ANY directional station with the same location,
power, frequency, and antenna efficiency. This assumes that in the area
covered, the ground is not infinitely conductive. However, even salt water,
the best conductor of medium-wave signals found in nature, is not infinitely
conductive. In any event, if you find WKOX's current signal listenable for
only a short distance past Worcester (I find it pretty good all the way to
the Connecticut border on I-84), the new, "stronger" signal will become
unsatisfactory to you near the west side of Framingham.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@mail.com>
To: "Dan Strassberg" <dan.strassberg@att.net>; "Garrett Wollman"
<wollman@csail.mit.edu>; <bri@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Friday, October 06, 2006 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: WITS/Red Sox


>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Dan Strassberg"
>To: "Garrett Wollman" , bri@bostonradio.org
>Subject: Re: WITS/Red Sox
>Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 09:05:03 -0400

>Of course, WKOX's frequency is 20% lower
>and SawMill Brook Parkway is probably superior to Waverley Oaks Rd in terms
>of soil conductivity. And one can argue that WKOX's patterns are more
>favorable than WWZN's. But whereas there are some who are in love with the
>SawMill Brook Parkway site, based on my lousy reception of WUNR all of
these
>years, I can't understand why.

At this very minute I'm in the Pittsfield Public Liberry
after traversing the state listening to Stephanie Miller nearly
all the way.  A short distance after Worcester, I flipped from
AM 1200 which was just starting to fade, to AM 1600 near
Springfield.  It came in very clearly with seemingly no interference
from WUNR (or WWRL for that matter.)  This was close to mid-day.
I know that when I've gone the other was in the daytime, WPNI-AM
1430 tranmitting from my favorite Massachusetts place name Belchertown
can be heard under WXKS-AM.


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