990

[Doug Drown]

When 990 first went on the air back in the '60s as WLKW, I lived in the Gardner-Fitchburg area and tried like the dickens to get the signal on my homongous old circa-1939 Zenith floor console radio. That baby would pick up ANYTHING --- I could get WABC, WNBC, WOR, WCBS, and WNEW all day long, as clearly as though their towers were almost next door.  But, try as I did, I never could pick up WLKW at all, despite its being only about 65 miles away --- 50,000 watts or no 50,000 watts.  Seems I recall it being touted as Providence's most powerful station.  All things are relative. . . 







From: markwa1ion@aol.com
Date: 2007/05/30 Wed PM 03:22:13 CDT
To: boston-radio-interest@rolinin.bostonradio.org
Subject: 990

I think that WALE being listed as 50 kW days but putting out a signal 
inferior to all the Providence 5 kW's qualifies as "using inexplicably 
large amounts of power".

990 is weaker than 630, 790, & 920 in observations I have made from 
just about any conceivable bearing from Providence: Newport to the 
south, Montauk (NY) to southwest, Putnam (CT) to west, Worcester (MA) 
to northwest, Billerica (MA) to north, Rockport (MA) to northeast, West 
Yarmouth (MA) to east, and Horseneck Beach (MA) to southeast.  The only 
bearings where it even gets close to the strength of the others 
(running a tenth the power!) would be east and southeast.

A total shambles of a signal for 50 kW.  In Newport I think WINS-1010 
is actually stronger at something like 150 miles.

They could be shooting the signal straight up.  Skip around sunset 
before power-down can be hefty on outer Cape Cod at about 75 miles to 
the east.  Quite a bit stronger than the groundwave.  I can believe, as 
Dan says, that their transmitter site is a real mess.

Mark Connelly, WA1ION - Billerica, MA

<<
Is 990 in Providence still dark? Didn't it go dark a few months back, 
after
Davidson "discovered" that the transmitter was using inexplicably large
amounts of power? One of the strangest explanations ever for taking a
station dark! I've heard that the transmitter site is a real mess, but 
with
six towers, it must occupy a fairly large parcel of real estate. That
suggests that if anyone is stealing ac power, they must have devised a
fairly sophisiticated (and expensive) scheme for doing it. The ac lines
through which the power would have to be removed would need to be 
buried to
keep them from attracting attention from, say, the station owner. 
Unless the
transmitter building is at an edge of the property that abuts a public 
road,
the underground cable runs would have to be fairly long. Constructing 
them
would presumably have represented an engineering project of rather
significant scope. Does anyone have any info on this mystery?

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