Reality And Dreams On A Fluffy Cumulus Cloud

[CK-722]

Back in the late 1970s, I had a vivid dream that (now Cumulus' WTKA) WPAG Ann Arbor had increased power from 5000 to 50000 watts, and I was listening to it booming into Flint. Well, as REM sang, "that was just a dream".

Now, I wake up, I think, and K-Love has acquired Cumulus' WPLJ 95.5 New York, and it will be "gaining religion", and it will be a Sister Station to WAKL 88.9 Flint.

Am I a member of the MLive "Wide Awake Club", or am I asleep?

[CK-722]

Well, I did calculate what the signal would be for 50 kW into a three tower in line endfire array from the old WPAG site near Briarwood Mall. Using M-3, the 5 mV/m contour reached the SW corner of Flint, so my dream of it blasting in was SOMEWHAT accurate, a city grade AM signal 50-55 miles away. Better than the WWJ predicted signal.

[Deleted User 14935]

Could you imagine if 560 was a 50KW Clear Channel. From Monroe Wow! We could only dream, I dreamed I was in Hollywood Movie, And I was a star in the Movie, I better be careful I don’t want to spill the wine.

[CK-722]

Seems like I measured WQTE...WHND...WRDT up near Flint when I had an FI meter. It was 0.8 mV/m. 50000 watts would be 8 mV/m at the same location. It seems like they actually input 441 watts to the antenna, if I remember correctly, to bring the efficiency down slightly. So that would be with 44,100 watts. The 441 watts brings down the efficiency to minimum for Class D at the time, 282 mv/m @ 1 km for 1 kW. The Theoretical DA efficiency is 199.56 with 500 watts, or 282 mV/m with 1 kW. so the 441 watts makes sense.

On Radio Locator, with 441 watts to the DA, the 2.5 mV/m goes up to 26 Mile and Hayes, so with 44100 watts it would be 25 mV/m, based on M-3. Seems like I measured 2.2 mV/m about 5 miles SE of there, back when I had the FI meters.

[Musicrewired]

The old WPAG site was on the south side of I-94 near the Ann Arbor-Saline Rd exit. It wasn't far from where the Meijer was built. That is near Briarwood, but the Ann Arborians would probably split hairs on that.

I'm imagining WPAG at 50k, and some of the formats they had might have not sounded so average if they'd had more listeners back then.

[CK-722]

When the three WPAG towers were still there, there was hardly anything out there between Briarwood and the towers. Now it's all built up, like the areas around many malls are built up today. For a short time in the late 1970s, I rented a room on Newport Rd. At Night, when I went out to my car, I could see the lights on the three WPAG towers by looking down Newport Rd. to the South. I miss all those sites that have been torn down. That was close to when I had the dream.