passing of Joe Kruger

[Dan.Strassberg]

You are likely, then, to remember how WHIL (I guess it must have been
WIBL at some point--that part, I hadn't heard about) started out as a
250W daytimer on 1540 and, within a few days, ran smack into WMEX;
there's a pretty clear salt-water path between Squantum and Wellington
Circle. WMEX claimed that there was prohibited overlap between the two
stations' 25 mV/m contours. WHIL said no but admitted to having
checked only one radial. Well, it became clear quite quickly that WMEX
was right, although it is unclear how nobody at WMEX had noticed the
problem when the 1540 application was first filed. It is also unclear
why anyone would want to build a daytimer on 1540 in Boston when 50 kW
WPTR with a killer daytime skywave was co-channel and only about 170
airline miles away. Anyhow, WHIL threw up its hands and appealed to
the FCC to "find us another frequency." Can you imagine that working
today? It never was the FCC's job, but the commission did find 1430.
Class II-D stations were allowed to run 250W-D. Class IIs weren't
permitted on the the 1430 regional channel, however, so the newly
minted WHIL 1430 was required to increase to 500W-D so it could become
a full-fledged Class III-D. And WHIL was allowed to sign on year-round
at 4:00AM EST at a time when Class II-D stations were not permitted to
operate pre-sunrise. The result was that WHIL instantly became a much
better and more valuable facility. Later on, it increased power first
to 1 kW-D and later to 5 kW-D, before adding night service with 1
kW-DA (in the late '70s, I believe).

WHIL's exit from 1540 also made room for WNTN on 1550 in the late
'60s. And somewhere along the line, a 1 kW daytimer appeared on 1540
in Newport RI (WADK). I doubt that WADK could have been built if WHIL
had remained on 1540--but I'm not sure of that.

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "chris2526" <chris2526@comcast.net>
To: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2008 1:56 AM
Subject: passing of Joe Kruger


> Wrong-wrong-wrong Joe Ross, 107.9 did not start out as WHIL-FM, it
> signed on as WISK-FM and then at a later date was changed to
> WHIL-FM.
>
> As I was CE there for many years I had the original WISK-FM 107.9
> license and as I kid I heard the station on the air as WISK-FM!
> It may not have been WISK-FM very long but thats the way it was..
> If I dig rreally deep I may even find something with WISK-FM on it
>
> Chris Hall