Hello, Jerry?

[markwa1ion@aol.com]

Interesting thread about the long-time signal problems of Boston's 1510.

In the early '60s, not very far west of Boston, WNLC-CT (and to a 
lesser extent) CJRS-QC did raise havoc with then-5kW WMEX on early skip 
just before sunset pattern switch time.

Even so, when I was on a train ride back from NYC in December of 1963, 
I had WMEX beating the stuffing out of WNLC just a few miles outside 
New London.

That tells me that directional arrays really aren't very directional at 
all at the kind of skip take-off angles ... close to straight up ... 
that would be characteristic of under 100 miles.

What's listed on pattern maps are generally the peaks and nulls at 
ground level.  What's happening 45 to 60 degrees off the horizon could 
be quite a different story.  A 30 dB null on a particular bearing along 
the ground might only be about 10 dB in the same direction on a steep 
take-off slope.

I think the changeover to 50 kW day at the Quincy site was in 1970, or 
1971 at the latest.  Nights stayed 5 kW until the move to Waltham in 
the early '80s.

By the way, both as 5 kW from Quincy and later as 50 kW from Waltham, 
1510 smacked a great signal into Newfoundland and even to Ireland and 
the UK some nights.

I had no trouble hearing the 5 kW version on a Radio Shack portable 
 from the Westport, Ireland area on a 1977 trip.  A couple of years ago, 
I used a web-controlled receiver located in Ilfracombe, southwestern 
England, to pick up a nice WWZN signal.  The recording of that is at 
"http://home.comcast.net/~dx_lab/dx_audio/dx_wwzn-1510_20051021_0045z_fro
m_uk.mp3" in case you're interested.  Links to audio clips of other 
long-haul receptions, including WBZ heard from Australia may be found 
at "http://home.comcast.net/~markwa1ion/dx_audio.htm".

Arnie Ginsburg read letters from GI's stationed in W. Germany who 
listened quite frequently there.  Once he got a note from sailors on an 
aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.  Of course they were running 
something like a Collins R-390A and a serious amount of wire off a tall 
mast atop a large chunk of metal surrounded by salt water ... no 
"weenie" 5-tube bedside clock radios there.

I think Arnie once quipped something like "Germany's no trouble but try 
getting us in Worcester."

WWZN-1510 does OK here at night near the 3A/62 junction and just 3 
miles north of the Burlington Mall (and WRKO), but by the time you get 
up Route 3 to Lowell and Tyngsborough, the station is pretty much out 
of gas.  Having adjacent monster signals from WTWP-1500 DC (ex-WTOP) 
and WWKB-1520 NY (ex-WKBW) has always made it rough at night on 1510.

Besides loving '60s-era WMEX, I regularly listened to the station in 
the '80s when it had big-bands / standards (WMRE) - including Bill 
Marlowe for a while and Little Walter's oldies some nights - but I have 
little use for it now.

Mark Connelly, WA1ION - Billerica, MA

<<
Exactly. And if you went south on Mass Ave across Harvard Bridge, the
signal wasn't clean until you were well into the South End.
Interestingly, back in those days, the formula for computing the NIF
contour did not take into account first-adjacent interference, so on
paper, though not in fact, WMEX was quite interference free. Around
1958, CJRS came on. It was supposed to protect WMEX but, where I was,
it was almost always quite audible underneath. Then came WNLC, which
didn't protect WMEX AT ALL during the day. It was 10 kW-D directional
TOWARD WMEX by day and only 77 miles from the WMEX transmitter in
Squantum! During what are now called critical hours, WNLC destroyed
WMEX in places like Hingham and Weymouth, but WNLC's six-tower 5 kW
night rig protected WMEX pretty well after dark. However, with or
without interference from WNLC, WMEX's signal was so bad in so many
places that it's amazing what kind of numbers the top-40 station was
able to pull. Until the day power was increased to 50 kW around 1972
(I think), the good signal was confined to areas along the coastline
and no more than a few miles inland from the South Shore to Cape Ann.
Yeah, the 5 kW day signal reached further inland by day than by night
because WKBW and WTOP were not much in evidence until dark, but I
guess the format was so unusual that kids would listen despite the
interference.

Then, when the transmitter was moved to Waltham in 1981, North Shore
listeners started to complain because the new 50-kW signal coming
across 15 or more miles of rocky New England real estate wasn't nearly
the equivalent of even 5 kW (let alone 50) coming over salt water from
Quincy. When it moved to Waltham (it was WITS by then), the station
should have gone to split sites--keeping the day site in Quincy but
moving the night site to Waltham. Keeping the day site in Quincy would
not have cost much, since the station owned the land.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367
>>
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