AM Aux sites / towers

[Glen Clark]

On Mar 16, 2008, at 10:05 PM, Dan.Strassberg wrote:

> Garrett,
> in a private communication, said that the limitation on WCBS's (and
> WFAN's) aux power is imposed by the power-handling capacity of the
> short auxiliary tower that serves both stations.

Dan:

Sometimes this comes from a strange direction. It may have to do with  
the
tower impedance of the short tower.

When I was at WLS in Chicago, the main tower had a drive point with a  
real
part approximately 200 ohms. 50 kW was about 17 amps. But the aux tower
was much shorter. The real part of the impedance for the aux tower  
was about
11 ohms, which came out to about 67 amps.

Presuming an equivalent series resistance for the ground system of 2
ohms, that's 9 kW of heat in the ground system. It's not impossible  
to deal
with if the ground system is done right. But all the bonds have to be  
done
just right and they have to be maintained energetically.

With best regards,

- Glen