WUNR-AM 1600 Signal Strength

[Dan.Strassberg]

Designing a directional array for just one station usually involves
many compromises. You can't find available land where you'd like it,
so you have to accept a site where you can get it; the site may not
allow placement of the towers where they would be be optimum, and on,
and on, and on. Now compound those problems with the having to site
not one or even two stations but three at a single location and to
choose tower locations within the site that work for all three. There
have to be compromises left and right!

Nevertheless, WUNR focuses primarily on two communities: Hispanics and
Hatians. African-Americans are a third constituency. All of those
groups are concentrated in Mattapan, Dorchester, and Roxbury. Sure,
they are found elsewhere in Greater Boston, but you can do only so
much with 20 kW on 1600, especially given the constraints of a fixed
site location and property that just barely accommodates all of the
towers. (The ground systems of some of the towers are truncated at the
property lines.)

Despite the fortune spent on the site, economics must also have
figured in the design. I have to assume that WUNR refused to spend the
extra money for separate day and night patterns. The station might
have been able to do slightly better by day with a separate daytime
pattern.

Anyhow, you mentioned that the signal improvement in Lynn would be
minimal. Not so! In Lynn, using WLYN as a proxy for the entire city,
the new signal--if it ever makes it onto the air--with be the
equivalent of more than a three-fold power increase compared with the
old signal. Especially if you consider the new system's decreased
antenna efficiency (the result of the shorter towers), three-fold is a
significant increase and it will definitely be noticeable to listeners
in City of Sin.

And BTW, WUNR's peak signal, somewhere in Dorchester, will be
equivalent to 100 kW into a nondirectional antenna of the same
efficiency as WUNR's new 200' towers. The inverse-distance field at 1
km will be ~85% of the corresponding figure for WBZ. Nothing to sneeze
at!

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

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Laurence Glavin" <lglavin@mail.com>
To: <boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 3:39 PM
Subject: WUNR-AM 1600 Signal Strength


Almost a year ago, I surmised that WKOX-AM 1200 had nade the switch to
its authorized
50,000-watt signal because it appeared that the signal strength at my
location 30
miles north of Boston had increased markedly.  This turned out not to
be the case...
it's possible that Clear Channel began to believe that the CP to build
out the new facilities
in the Oak Park neighborhood of Newton, MA would never happen, and
they therefore
rebuilt or replaced their venerable 10 KW transmitter in Framingham.
I had ignored
WKOX ever since they dropped the "Boston's Progressive Talk" format,
and anyway before
that happened I tended to listen to WXKS-AM 1430 which was stronger.
Fast forward nearly
a year, and now it appears that WUNR-AM 1600's signal is WEAKER than
it has been while
it broadcast with 5 KW DA-1.  Until Thursday, it had about the same
strength as WSMN-AM 1590 im
Nashua, NH...at this moment, it registers about 75% of that station's
reading on my radio
that displays relative signal strength.  According to the FCC
website's facilities page,
WUNR's 5 KW two-tower signal is supposed to send 1212 mV/m at zero
degrees azimuth
(in my general direction) but only 949 with the 5-tower 20,000-watt
signal operating.
It's interesting that along a more northeasterly heading, WUNR's field
intensity doesn't
jump much until about 20 degrees, reaching its maximum at 80 degrees.
It appears that
they want to max out toward some Boston neighborhoods.  Places like
Revere, Chelsea
and Lynn may get no increase at all...IF they are in fact running 20
KW with 5 towers.


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