WCCM

[Dan Strassberg]

WCEC 1110 has no PSRA except in April. Their PSSA is for as little as 15
minutes (May, June) and as much as an hour (November, December, January).
The rest of the months are either 30 or 45 minutes. The April PSRA power is
10W. The PSSA powers vary between 10 and 19W, with the largest number of
months getting 18W. Of course, the powers (but probably not the times) are
subject to revision this fall. No doubt the PSSA times represent Charlotte
sunset. As a Class D AM inside of the dominant Class A's normally protected
0.5 mV/m 50% skywave contour, WCEC should not be eligible for a PSRA except
in the part of April after DST comes in (that is, the entire month now but
not quite all of it in recent years).

I may be confused, but it looks as if March PSRAs, the daypart and month
when stations like WCEC need the most help with PSRAs, have not been
affected by the DST change, which means that WCEC, WILD, and a few others
will have real late sign-ons in March. The probably reason is that extending
early sign-ons for at least some of these stations required international
cooperation and the ever-on-the-ball FCC didn't start work on the project
early enough to even begin such negotiations until after they first
published (and then rescinded) the new rules last fall.

It would not surprise me to learn that WCEC has been using a "do-it-yourself
PSRA." Costa's stations are known for such "creative engineering." If asked
about it, they would probably claim to have received verbal (that is,
non-written) authorization from somebody at the FCC. When pressed, that's
what some other daytimers have said about non-standard sign-on and sign-off
times.

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

----- Original Message -----
From: <haverhill01835@comcast.net>
To: "Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@mail.com>; "Don A"
<donald_astelle@yahoo.com>; "Joe Corcoran" <jwcorcoran@earthlink.net>; "BRI"
<boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: WCCM


> If Scott needs a pic, I actually have one (somewhere) of the marsh, I
mean, weeds, I mean - towers in Salem.  I also have one of the 800 towers
and shack in Andover with the new HD X-mitter.  (I'm also digging up an ID
or two for Mr. Fybush, but I digress)
>
> >From my understanding - it's 1/2 hour pre sunrise and post sunset local
time to protect WBT.  When I was doing mornings on WCCM, it was always odd
to walk into the building at 0430 (even earlier on snow days) and hear a WBT
ID coming out of the WCEC studios (whose monitors were up WAY TOO LOUD for
that hour of the morning.)
>
> ML
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: "Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@mail.com>
> > >----- Original Message -----
> > >From: "Don A"
> > >To: haverhill01835@comcast.net, "Joe Corcoran" , BRI
> > >Subject: Re: WCCM
> > >Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:46:07 -0400
> > > 1110 is a very tough catch for me in Haverhill (read: darned near
> > > impossible), and is even worse in the 'burbs of Groveland,
> > > Georgetown, etc. Even north of the border into Plaistow, 1110 is
> > > a tough catch. It can also be considered marginal at best in
> > > parts of Methuen, Lawrence and other parts of the Valley during
> > > my "airchecks" since I found out about the change. <<
> >
> > >I know 1110AM comes in pretty well in Manchester (and not that
> > awful in Concord either!)
> > >How does it do in Nashua?
> > Is it a stable signal
> > >-d
> >
> > I remember when Scott Fybush was co-hosting "Let's Talk About Radio"
> > one time, and he mentioned that he had never viewed the 1110 towers
> > near the Salem/Pelham, NH line.  According to the FCC website, the 4
towers
> > are about 58-degrees in height, translating to 133 feet if I remember
correctly.
> > (There's little chance he'll venture there for a Tower Calendar shoot,
> > although July's picture is of a comparativly short unpainted array.)
> > At some time in the distant past, vandals damaged one of more of the
towers and
> > AM
> > 1110 (I think it was WVNH at the time), went off-the-air for a
protracted
> > period of time.  The signal is generally quite strong from sunrise to
sunset
> > where I live, but they seem to reduce power for a period of time in a
> > post-sunset authorization and it's hardly receivable then at all.
Evidently
> > they don't have a pre-sunrise authorization due to WBT in Charlotte.
> >
> >
> > --
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>