WEEI-FM 93.7

[Scott Fybush]

On 9/12/2011 11:35 AM, Dan.Strassberg wrote:
> Scott, you seem to be forgetting that, at night, Framingham and Natick
> are smack in the middle of WEEI's null. I don't know the NIF values for
> either WEEI of WRKO, but I suspect that WEEI's is higher than WRKO's. I
> would be surprised if any of Natick were inside of WEEI's NIF contour.
> WEEI suffers from bad phasing along that path as well, making listening
> unpleasant. Also, WEEI has never been aggressive about getting WYLF to
> operate according to the terms of its license. I'm assuming that WYLF
> continues to operate illegally, despite at least one warning (and maybe
> a fine) from the FCC. If WYLF running at its full daytime power is
> factored in, I'm just about positive that WEEI's real NIF is higher than
> WRKO's.

WYLF is one of my nearly-locals. They've been behaving themselves of late.

Yes, Framingham and Natick are in a WEEI null - but it's a fairly mild 
null. Using Framingham's 01702 zip, V-Soft.com reports that WEEI puts 
4.07 mV/m there at night. That's a far cry from WEEI's daytime 20 mv/m 
there, of course, but it's much, much better than WRKO's 1.99 mV/m, 
especially now that CKVL is gone from 850, while WRKO must continue to 
fight WPTF and CFTR and everything else making noise on 680.

I suspect also that the ground conductivity between Needham and 
Framingham is somewhat higher than the FCC's maps suggest; in real-world 
listening at night at our Moderator's abode near the Framingham/Natick 
line in the years since CKVL went away, I've found WEEI to be solidly 
listenable while WRKO is at best unpleasant and at worst nonexistent.

> BTW, although neither WEEI nor WRKO puts an interference-free nighttime
> signal into Marlborough, FWIW, WRKO delivers the stronger nighttime
> signal there. That is because WRKO directs a slightly stronger
> inverse-distance field toward Marlborough than WEEI does and the
> attenuation vs distance is less at 680 than it is at 850. Between
> Needham and the east side of Marlborough, however, WEEI's nighttime
> signal is indeed stronger than WRKO's.

By the time you get out to Marlborough, neither WEEI nor WRKO is 
anything close to useful at night. V-soft reports 1.01 mV/m for 680 at 
night in zip 01752, against 0.78 mV/m for 850. I'd hazard a pretty good 
guess that other real-world factors render that difference 
indistinguishable...and make neither signal especially usable. 
Entercom's best AM at night in Marlborough is WVEI, but at 1.23 mV/m, 
it's probably not especially listenable, either.

s