WLS transmitter question.

[Brian Stevens]

Maybe it is just me, but I am wondering if WLS has decreased their day time power.  I use to be able to hear them a lot more clearly in the Milwaukee area, but now not so much.  Does anyone know what is up?  Thanks.

[classic_rocker]

If you live in brew town,then you have no business liStening to WLS. If you are from Chi town go back home....... p.s. What do Michael Jackson and the Chicago Cubs have in common?? They both wear gloves on one hand for no apparent reason   GO BREWERS!!!!!!!

[chuckydoll]

If you're not picking it up in Milwaukee it's for one of two reasons:

• You've got an AM receiver that's not designed to pull in distant signals. This is especially true on car radios now.
• The neighborhood around the 890 transmitter in Tinley Park (SSW of Chicago) has become more built up. ABC apparently slacked off on maintenance well before WLS was sold to Citadel.

[Link]

I wonder if the IBOC has caused this.  The narrowing of the bandwidth I think may help in distance reception, however I notice the analog audio is not as loud on the IBOC stations. Its almost like the IBOC exciters don't allow for as heavy modulation. Just what my ears tell me.

[cyberdad]

I'm just back from ten days in the deep South.  I noticed that WLS usually was the weakest of the "1-A" Chicago nighttime signals.  Historically, it used to generally be the strongest.  Theoretically, at least, you can't blame IBOC. Even WSCR, which regularly was being hammered by the Cubans, was stronger than WLS....true in AL, FL, and MS.

[brian77]

I too live in the Milwaukee area and enjoy the Roe Conn show. I have had tremendous problems trying to pick up WLS north of the airport. On certain days, the signal is fine. I wonder if the issue is with 860 AM. I receive all other Chicago AM stations fine. Go Cubs!

[Philip J. Smith]

Well WNOV does run IBOC/HD Radio now.  Most narrow-band receivers don't have problems with IBOC from a station 30 kHz away, but some of the more wideband radios (typically those that sound better with more treble) could pick up some of the IBOC hash from 860 when tuned to the relatively weak signal on 890.

I was driving through Milwaukee on Memorial Day and had to struggle through all sorts of noise while trying to listen to the excellent Big 89 Rewind.  I don't believe any of the noise was from IBOC on my narrowband Blaupunkt -- The signal indeed seemed weaker than what I recall from years ago.

[w9wi]

Well WNOV does run IBOC/HD Radio now.  Most narrow-band receivers don't have problems with IBOC from a station 30 kHz away, but some of the more wideband radios (typically those that sound better with more treble) could pick up some of the IBOC hash from 860 when tuned to the relatively weak signal on 890.

WNOV is running IBOC???  That's about the last station I'd expect to do that...

Agreed: in my experience 3rd adjacents - 30KHz separation - are very unlikely to suffer from IBOC interference.  Too bad you can't say the same for 2nd adjacents!

Growing up in Waukesha Co. in the 1960s/1970s, WLS was always the wimpiest of the big Chicago signals.  I always figured to a large degree it was because it was something like 25 miles further away. 

Wasn't WMVP-1000 diplexing on the WLS tower for awhile while they worked on the AM-1000 array?  Did they finish that work?  (is it possible WMVP is still using the WLS antenna?)  ISTR WLS had to reduce power during that operation to avoid exceeding the limits of some of the antenna system components.

[ddybas]

The addition of an IBOC signal to a station tends to reduce the level of the analog audio a bit. Add to that the increasing amount of background noise being generated by all the new techie gizmo's, computers, etc and certainly all distant AM band signals will sound fuzzy compared to what they were in the 1960's.

Dr Dave

[RememberWHEN]

I was listening shortly before 7PM Tuesday 7/3 on the Indiana Toll Road near Gary, Indiana. Car radio is an Infinity (Alpine) AM Stereo in a Chrysler "premium" sound package system and has a very nice response on the AM side. WLS analog audio was decidedly SOFT which sort of surprised me. Back home (South Bend) it is typically LOUD and competitive with the other 50KWs. Don't know of WLS was doing something different that evening or not. Assuming their CE monitors this board, it would be nice to get a response from Warren Shulz on his take on the IBOC "technology" and if it mirrors Tom Rays views.