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WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

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Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#41

Post by gullywhumper »

vonzeppelin wrote: post #2

Home of the Reds. Been listening to it my whole life.

The last couple seasons were difficult for me to listen to Marty calling games because I thought he came across as very negative and embittered, but then his final season (this last season) was so much fun as he seemed to be enjoying it again even though it wasn't a good season for the team. I listened to games a lot more throughout the last season and then listened to parts or all of his last 20 or so games and it was so much fun. Really glad we still have the Cowboy. Baseball is such a great sport for the radio if you have good announcers.

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#43

Post by jacquesm »

bitexploder wrote: post #5

> People living near the transmitter site often got better reception than they wanted; some lights would not turn off until WLW engineers helped rewire houses. Gutters rattled loose from buildings. A neon hotel sign near the transmitter never went dark. Farmers reported hearing WLW through their barbed-wire fences. That is pretty amazing. I wonder if there were any health impacts from that level of ambient power just…

I've lit up full size neon tubes at ~150 meters with about a kilowatt into a highly directional antenna. Not the most efficient way of transferring power but quite a neat effect and wireless to boot.

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#44

Post by wl »

wl wrote: post #9
jawilson2 wrote: post #3

I'm from Cincinnati, and growing up my dad and grandfather would tell us how you could pick up WLW across the country on a good day. In the 90s we took a vacation to the Rockies, and were able to pick up WLW a few times, even though the power had been reduced by then. I can get it regularly and clearly in Chicago as well. That's the cool thing about AM radio; since it is transmitted at a lower frequency, it can trave…

AM broadcast travels a long way not because it tends to reflect off the atmosphere (skywave propagation), but because it tends to hug the earth (groundwave propagation).

Too late to edit: I was confused... groundwave during the day, skywave at night.

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#45

Post by jacquesm »

fignews wrote: post #20
simmons wrote: post #7

The station’s once groundbreaking transmitter is long retired but preserved, on-site, beside its modern counterpart. I wonder if they ever offer tours. It would be neat to see some of this history the next time I'm passing through the Cincinnati area. On a related note, it looks like there's a "National Voice of America Museum of Broadcasting" just down the street from the WLW site.

Here is a tour on YouTube https://youtu.be/CbHjcwIoTiY

100 KW tubes, those are monsters. Watercooling?

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#46

Post by jacquesm »

mmhsieh wrote: post #34
digitalsushi wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'd need to blast a radio signal at about 100 million watts for it to hit the closest star with the same strength that Voyager is sending to us right now. Something like 4 light years away. If we consider how quickly signal strength decays, it's pretty easy to picture just how quiet we are. Our loudest tv stations are like 5% of that. We think we're blasting a firehose off into space but we're spitting from a straw.

good points, but signal strength decay in the semivacuum of space really has to do more with the geometry of your emitter path vis a vis a fixed target (earth). so we get attenuation from the voyager but you can bet your sweet patootie that voyager is broadcasting our business to a gajillion other star systems even with a weak signal. in which case deflections from the intergalactic ambient hydrogen is the only hope…

Do stars function as lenses for the AM band as well?

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#47

Post by jacquesm »

donarb wrote: post #35
Udo wrote: post #13

> enough power to supply a town of one hundred thousand coursed through an 831-foot tower That would mean 5W per inhabitant. In 2020, this would barely be enough to charge a phone, and in 1934 that would have been a light bulb per 20 citizens.

The power input to the transmitter is much larger than the power coming out of it. All those tubes generates a lot of heat.

From experience with much smaller tube based end stages about 25% efficient.

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#48

Post by consp »

reaperducer wrote: post #22
bitexploder wrote: post #5

> People living near the transmitter site often got better reception than they wanted; some lights would not turn off until WLW engineers helped rewire houses. Gutters rattled loose from buildings. A neon hotel sign near the transmitter never went dark. Farmers reported hearing WLW through their barbed-wire fences. That is pretty amazing. I wonder if there were any health impacts from that level of ambient power just…

That is pretty amazing. I wonder if there were any health impacts from that level of ambient power just buzzing through the air. Still, quite a feat of engineering to think about. It's very common, and becoming more common. WLW was a special case because it put out so much power it affected homes a fair distance away. But even stations as low as 1,000 watts have to deal with this today. I worked at close to a dozen d…

> The General Manager's attitude was along the lines of, "Why would you move next door to a radio station? Didn't you notice the 300-foot-tall red-and-white tower with all the blinking lights out front?" Of course, that's a wholly unsatisfying answer to a new homeowner.

Money, the land is usually cheap. Also one of the problems with the leukemia studies and the lack of proper controls as it more often than not inhabited by low income residents and more often than not riddles with (chemical) waste. Which are both difficult to compensate for.

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#49

Post by andrew_n »

viggity wrote: post #15

For point of reference, the max power allowed in the US is 50kW

I don’t believe this is correct; when I look up the details of transmitters, they’re often 100kW+, e.g., https://fccdata.org/?lang=en&facid=62331 for an arbitrary example in Montana

Re: WLW: America's 500,000 watt radio station (2015)

#50

Post by mmhsieh »

jacquesm wrote: post #46
mmhsieh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

good points, but signal strength decay in the semivacuum of space really has to do more with the geometry of your emitter path vis a vis a fixed target (earth). so we get attenuation from the voyager but you can bet your sweet patootie that voyager is broadcasting our business to a gajillion other star systems even with a weak signal. in which case deflections from the intergalactic ambient hydrogen is the only hope…

Do stars function as lenses for the AM band as well?

sure, they are just radio photons. i don't see why not!
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