HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: Ct Yankee on January 27, 2019, 1034 UTC
-
While listening to "JJ after Dark" at 1010 utc this morning on WFAN 660 am New York, the signal disappeared from this 50,000 watt Class A station. A few minutes later, a very faint "JJ" could be heard but as if broadcast through a tunnel with waves crashing in.
I was hoping to DX other AM stations while the signal was so poor but the noise and faint WFAN signal are dominate. I'm thinking others along the East Coast may not even receive the faint broadcast I have for over 20 minutes now.
To verify it was not the radio I had the same faint transmission throughout the house. I don't think it is WFAN's antenna as sister station WCBS was broadcasting without problems from the same location.
1115utc Over an hour and problem continues.
1200utc Sometime in past 45 minutes normal broadcast returned, I shut off at 1115utc.
-
This was very early in the morning making me think WFAN may have been in a maintenance window. Some things you just can't do with the RF on, maybe they were changing out a switch or something. All the big stations have multiple backups with remote controlled switching so it is unlikely that a failure cause this, unless it was something downstream. As you mentioned they are diplexed with WCBS, and anything wrong antenna or matching network would likely affect the other station.
+-RH
-
The am sta I worked at would drop to 6 watts when changing the multitude of 4-400As, but that was back when dirt was new.
-
The am sta I worked at would drop to 6 watts when changing the multitude of 4-400As, but that was back when dirt was new.
I'm guessing that they were running on their 'night' transmitter while working on the 'day' transmitter, as those tube rigs wouldn't do any lower than about 25% nameplate power.
+-RH
-
I emailed them to find out what the signal degradation concerned, no word back from them yet.
-
The am sta I worked at would drop to 6 watts when changing the multitude of 4-400As, but that was back when dirt was new.
I'm guessing that they were running on their 'night' transmitter while working on the 'day' transmitter, as those tube rigs wouldn't do any lower than about 25% nameplate power.
+-RH
Correct. They'd make us switch from day to nite at 630pm each day, no matter if the sun was still going to be up till 930pm or the sun had set an hour earlier. Now I think they run 200w nite. Still have one of the 4-400s, intended on turning it into a desk lamp but 10 amps of current needed to make the heater glow is a bit more lectric than I want to pay.