Technical History of WHAV online at Radio Mag

[A Joseph Ross]

  On 8/20/2010 4:32 PM, lglavin@mail.com wrote:

>
>   My recollection is that when WHAV-FM returned to the air after its hiatus,
>   it ran TWENTY thousand watts non-directional, at 350 feet HAAT.  It was later
>   that the station boosted its ERP to FIFTY thousand watts with a directional
>   antenna on Silver HILL, not Silver HALL of course.  It was an obvious
>   directional antenna because every bay looked like a home rooftop TV antenna
>   with two horizontal-only elements and two vertical-only elements.  It appears
>   that the requirement of directionality was to protect WPRO-FM 92.3 in Providence,
>   and a relatively new 92.5 in Waterbury, CT (maybe WATR-FM?). Then, just like
>   that, WHAV-FM just replaced those directional bays and went NDA 50 K at 350'.

I didn't know that WHAV-FM had been on the air in the late 1940s and 
early 1950s.  I remember discovering it on the air circa 1960, where I 
had found no station before and simply assumed that it was a new station.

They blame simulcasting restrictions in part for the station's going 
dark in 1953.  What simulcasting restrictions could there have been at 
that time?  I thought total simulcasting was the rule in those days.  It 
certainly was when I got my first FM radio in 1958.  WHAV-FM was unusual 
in those days, having separate programs for most of the broadcast day.  
I think it simulcasted a program with AM late at night and all day 
Sunday, and maybe for some newscasts, but that was all.  The only other 
station that had separate programs in those days was WBZ-FM.

-- 
A. Joseph Ross, J.D.                     617.367.0468
92 State Street, Suite 700          Fax: 617.507.7856
Boston, MA 02109-2004     http://www.attorneyross.com