Re: [IRCA] New Station / SF 680 ,810

[Scott Fybush <scott@xxxxxxxxxx>]

bill kral wrote:
> On a trip by plane to the Oshkosh Airshow in 2005 I did a scan on the
> SF stations in a small town stopover in eastern Montana and got KNBR
> with mixed results but no KGO which maybe verified my assumption that
> KGO is pushing mostly north- south as they claim ( mentioned on the
> air by Bill Wartenberg that they go all the way from Baja to Alaska )
> and very little to the east and that would be logical since the
> biggest population of listeners is less than 200 miles from the
> coast.

No "probably" about it - as a former "class I-B" clear channel station, 
KGO shares 810 with another former I-B, WGY Schenectady, and each 
station has to protect the other one's signal at night. That's usually 
done with directional nighttime antennas at both I-B signal (think 
Buffalo and Oklahoma City on 1520, or Sacramento and Cincinnati on 1530, 
or Chicago/Seattle on 1000), but the KGO/WGY situation was a little 
different. Both stations were owned by GE, which wanted WGY as its 
flagship. WGY is non-directional day and night, and KGO ran with just 
7500 watts until the 1940s, when it moved to its present transmitter 
site and went directional with 50,000 watts day and night.

Because of the directional notches between the big 50,000-watt clears on 
I-B channels, it's typical for other (also directional) signals to get 
dropped in co-channel in between the I-B signals. In the case of 810, 
there was enough room between WGY and KGO for a 50,000-watt (day, at 
least) signal to go on the air in Kansas City, originally KCMO and now 
WHB. Much more recently, the former 800 station in Brighton, Colorado 
(near Denver) has moved to 810 and gone fulltime.

680 is non-directional and always has been; it was (at least in practice 
if not on paper) a I-A clear channel that didn't have to protect anyone 
else on its channel; much later on, the FCC authorized other high-power 
680 signals in San Antonio, St. Joseph MO, Raleigh and Boston, all of 
which have to be directional protect KNBR.

It is *highly* unusual for a former class I station to be operating at 
variance from its licensed directional pattern. It would be very obvious 
if it were happening - the stations on 810 in Denver and Kansas City, 
for instance, would notice very quickly if KGO lost its null in their 
direction.

(KGO did operate non-directionally, at reduced power, for some time 
after the 1989 earthquake damaged two of its three towers. I suspect it 
may have been logged in the east back then...anyone have loggings from 
the winter of 1989-90?)

s
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