WBUR Cape Cod now broadcasting on 89.1 FM, WBUH Brewster

[Scott Fybush]

On 5/28/2014 11:23 PM, Jeff Lehmann wrote:
> A friend of mine was thinking that it possibly has to do with the
> amount of hazardous signal (or whatever the proper term is) reaching
> the ground around the tower due to the low height. The theory was
> that a horizontal only signal wouldn't send as much signal to the
> ground below the extremely low antenna as a circular pattern would.
>
> Not sure if this is the real reason or not, but wanted to throw it
> out there.

That might make some sense. I'd need to go back to the WBUH mod CP app 
to see what the radiation pattern of the antenna looks like. Typically, 
one controls downward radiation more through the use of multiple bays 
than through antenna polarization.

Two corrections on my end: there's actually 11.1 km of breathing room 
between WBUH and WERS. The overlap that governs is not the 54 to 54 dBu 
contours (which overlap over water near Marshfield) but the 54 to 60 dBu 
contours, which don't overlap at all.

And the more critical spacing is to WUMD in North Dartmouth. The 54 to 
60 dBu contours govern here, too, and WBUH's 54 comes within 0.3 km of 
WUMD's 60 near Wareham. For WBUH to boost power/height at all, it would 
have to install a DA that would maintain that protection, and that would 
be pointless, since it would end up increasing WBUH's reach only over 
water. (And there's WBUA 92.7 filling in the signal gap in that part of 
the lower Cape, anyway.)

s