FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai says it is time to rewrite rules for AM

[Kevin Vahey]

Bob

I would have included 850 but as of Friday they become birdfeed from ESPN.



On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Dan.Strassberg <dan.strassberg@att.net>wrote:

> Anyone remember a guy named (IIRC) Lee Hollingsworth (long-since departed)?
> Back in the late '40s and '50s he owned what was then WKBS 1520 in Oyster
> Bay Long Island. I think it's now WKIT Mineola with somewhat more than the
> 250W-D WKBS had but it is still a daytimer on 1520. The huge daytime
> skywave
> from what was then WKBW (now WWKB) used to cream the Oyster Bay station's
> signal just about everywhere and Hollingsworth thought he had a solution--a
> huge power increase, at least during the 1-1/2 hours after sunrise and
> before sunset. To avoid interfering with WKBW's groundwave, he proposed a
> sky-wave-cancelling antenna which he wanted to construct by running wires
> horizontally from the WKBS tower outward to the guy wires. His idea was
> that, when driven with signals of the proper phase with respect to the main
> carrier, these horizontal wires would act as a skywave-cancelling antenna
> that would send its signal straight upward. I don't know whether
> Hollingsworth ever installed the horizontal wires and drove them with a
> properly phase-shifted version of WKBS's modulated main carrier, but the
> FCC
> was never impressed with the idea and I very much doubt whether the scheme
> would have worked if it had ever been built. I hold little hope for skywave
> cancellation of this type and I doubt whether the FCC commissioner who is
> proposing it understands the practical limitations of what he is
> suggesting.
>
> Skywave cancellation has, however, been used with very limited success in
> the design of a few AM DAs. The idea there is to use towers of different
> heights that, therefore, have different vertical radiation patterns. If the
> ionosphere would only hold still from one minute to the next (let alone
> from
> one night to the next), it might actually be possible to tailor the
> vertical
> pattern to produce a stable minimum in the direction of a station needing
> protection. As I said, however, the ionosphere has never been cooperative
> and the results have, AFAIK, never proven to be worth the effort.
>
> -----
> Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
> eFax 1-707-215-6367
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <Jibguy@aol.com>
> To: <joe@attorneyross.com>
> Cc: <boston-radio-interest@lists.**BostonRadio.org<boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org>
> >
> Sent: Tuesday, October 02, 2012 1:00 AM
>
> Subject: Re: FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai says it is time to rewrite rules for
> AM
>
>
>
>> In a message dated 10/2/2012 12:57:51 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
>> joe@attorneyross.com writes:
>>
>> So what  was the advantage of the antennas that we discussed on LTAR?
>>
>>
>>
>> The fact that they were not tall.   --about 75' at most.... which  can
>> easily slip under any towns zoning laws, thereby preventing nimbys from
>> having
>> a say.
>>
>> ---jibguy
>>
>
>