WMEX lives

[Eli Polonsky]

>
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 2 Jul 2018 00:12:59 -0400
> From: A Joseph Ross <joe@attorneyross.com>
> To: boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org
> Subject: Re: WMEX lives
>
> Are they still on?? I was in Waltham today, where I would have expected
> a good signal, and got what sounded like a distant station, which didn't
> sound like WATD either.
>

​WMEX 1510 came on with the WATD simulcast ​Saturday morning through the
day Sunday. Sometime Sunday evening it sounded like it lost the audio feed
from WATD and there was a blank carrier (with some spurious noise) on 1510
through Sunday night. I didn't check earlier today (Monday) but now as of 3
PM WMEX is simulcasting WATD again.

I would not expect a good, or necessarily even audible, signal in Waltham
from the current WMEX transmitter site. It is no longer transmitting from
the Waltham site that 1510 moved to in the early 1980's. WATD owner Ed
Perry did not include that site (or use of it) in his purchase of WMEX, and
those towers were taken down about a month ago.

Ed has WMEX transmitting from the 1260 WBIX site at the Milton/North Quincy
line (very near where the original 1510 WMEX transmitter was before its
move to Waltham) on a temporary low power transmitter just to get the
station on the air before the FCC would have deleted the license after June
30. The signal is very weak to non-existent due west and northwest of
Boston.

I don't know the current power but it may be just a hundred watts or so. A
10,000 watt daytime signal is planned from that site by this fall but still
down to 100 watts at night (all non-directional).

It is very weak where I live in Somerville. In my travels over the weekend
it was very weak in Cambridge, Allston/Brighton and Brookline, and I
couldn't hear much of it farther west or northwest that that, though it did
put a fair signal southwest, I heard it in Dedham, Westwood, Norwood.

It's spotty in downtown Boston proper, listenable in places. Of course,
it's strong in the southerly Boston neighborhoods including Dorchester,
South Boston, Mattapan, Hyde Park, W. Roxbury, etc... and the closer you
are to the water, the better it is. It's fair at Logan Airport, East Boston
and Charlestown, and can be heard on the lower North Shore such as Revere,
Lynn, etc... I saw someone else post that it came in well down the South
Shore through Braintree but was fading by Weymouth Landing.

EP