Herald: ESPN Boston hopes to boost listeners, night signal

[Dan Strassberg]

The CP shows minor tweaks to the day pattern to slightly reduce interference
to 900 in Nashua. With or without the tweaks, there is fairly major daytime
overlap between the Dedham and Nashua signals. Some years ago, what was then
WOTW moved a few miles north and also slightly reduced its day power (IIRC
from 1 kw to 910W). The power reduction presumably compensated for a slight
increase in antenna efficiency, but I know of no way to check that out
because the records of the previous operation are long gone from CDBS. I
suppose that the then owners of what was very likely still WBMA might have
paid WOTW to get out of the way. If so, I'd say it was a token move that
might have made the FCC happy but had no particular effect on the overlap.

Funny stuff went on when WBMA was built. I have no way to prove it, but it
sure looks as if some bogus readings were taken of 890's nighttime signal
strength along the 90-degree (due East) radial. Without those readings, the
station would either have had to get a waiver of the CoL nighttime coverage
requirements or it would have had to change its CoL. At one point, an
application was filed to change the CoL from Dedham to Wellesley, but after
the augmentations were filed, the application for Wellesley was abruptly
withdrawn. At 90 degrees, the augmented night signal is equivalent to exatly
twice the power in the standard (unaugmented) pattern. 90 degrees is dead
ahead in the main lobe--right AT the radiation maximum. I've never seen an
augmentation of that magnitude in any other station's pattern except near a
radiation minimum. 890 has no augmentations near its minimum toward WLS.
Interestingly, the unaugmented 6-kW night pattern sends the same signal
strength due east as the augmented 3.4 kW pattern supposedly does. The new
pattern is also fatter than the existing one and has a pair of minor lobes
pretty much due north and due south. I think that if WAMG ever gets the work
done, ita night signal will improve noticeably everywhere except in an arc
of about 60 degrees centered on the 270-degree radial--due west of the
transmitter.

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

----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Nelson" <raccoonradio@mail.com>
To: "BostonRadio Mailing List"
<boston-radio-interest@rolinin.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 03, 2007 2:29 PM
Subject: Herald: ESPN Boston hopes to boost listeners, night signal


>
> Daytime coverage would prob be the same:
> http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WAMG&service=AM&status=L&hours=D
>