[BC] Re: SUPER MODULATION & AM STANDARDS

[Gary Blau]

I'm sorry to hear about John's passing, he was a very civilized, kindly
gent.
  
Back in the early/mid 70's he was the DOE for the company which owned
WEAM 1390 Arlington, VA, to which you refer, as well as a couple other
Carolina stations.
They had a 10KW RCA throttled back to 5kw.  And it did indeed
supermodulate.  The 'secret switch' on the Gates limiter would open up
the positives all the way and the mod monitor would pin, and stay that
way.  Used to drive WPGC crazy back when AM was a big deal in DC
Top-40.  Very loud.      

Ed Buterbaugh was the CE until ~72 or so, I believe, before he went on
to CKLW.
Morgan Burrow was the CE in 75-77 when I did part time engineering
there, along with a bunch of other DC types like John Bissett & Tom
Shedlick.  Just about everybody worked there for a little while, it
seemed.

g

Lamar Owen wrote:
> 
> My original elmer years ago, John Randolph (who died in 1992) mentioned a
> station he worked at in DC that had a 10kW capable 5kW transmitter that
> modulated to 250% positive.  Since modulation percentage directly impacts AM
> coverage, this effectively sidesteps the 5kW power level protection limits.
> So it's not really an interference issue in the positive modulation
> direction; it's a sidestepping of coverage limits.  You raise the sidebands
> up and you get more distance to effective reception.  And you walk on your
> co-channels' sidebands, as well as you first adjacents' carriers.
> 
> Unfortunately I have forgotten many of the details; perhaps it was WEEM?  That
> doesn't sound exactly right.
> 
> I mentioned this on the RT list several years back and someone on the list
> remembered the incident, but I can't seem to find it in my RT archive.
> 
> This would have been in the 60's.
> --
> Lamar Owen
> Director of Information Technology
> Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
> 1 PARI Drive
> Rosman, NC  28772
> (828)862-5554
> www.pari.edu