Post
by Ben Zonia » Tue Sep 22, 2020 5:36 pm
CMU needs a facility to fill in the terrain holes in Traverse City. Not create more overlap with their other signals. They already have too much overlap, especially WWCM 96.9 Standish. The WLDR 101.9 100 kW signal would be going way overboard.
CMU claimed that WCMZ-TV Channel 28 wasn't needed and auctioned off the channel. It provided a much better signal to 500,000+ people, where there is only marginal service from other PBS signals, including their Bad Axe station where the transmitter is 30-40 miles away on UHF, which is prima facie marginal in the best of UHF cases. You have to use Longley Rice prediction at a minimum, not the 60+ year old FCC propagation model used before computers were widely available. The F(50,90) contours are an inadequate statistical recycling of the old model, really not a new propagation prediction method. This is particularly inadequate for not only UHF, but digital TV signals. TVFool prediction at a location in Central Genesee County, with a 30 foot tower, the predicted WCMZ-TV signal is over 36 dB stronger than WDCQ-TV. That means that WDCQ would have to have 800,000,000 watts (800 million watts) ERP to have the same signal strength as WCMZ-TV did at that location, which is a typical location, not one picked to create a H*** differential.
"I had a job for a while as an announcer at WWV but I finally quit, because I couldn't stand the hours."
-Author Unknown