[BC] The Future / Signal

[Tom Bosscher]

       I went to work for for WOOD-WOOD-FM in 1972. At that time, they 
had separate horizontal and vertical transmitters (RCA 20E's), separate 
feed lines, and a 16 bay RCA/Dielectric horizontal antenna and a 16 bay 
vertical antenna. If you lost a transmitter, you lost that polarization. 
For the four years that I worked there, we never took a call from anyone 
if we lost the H-pol, save one other broadcaster 75 miles who listened 
to us on an H-pol beam. But we sure got the calls when the V pol was 
down.  This is not scientific data, but it was interesting.

    tom bosscher



Mark Humphrey wrote:
> About 20 years ago, I did some polarization experiments at WRTI's
> translator in Reading, PA.  After turning the transmit antenna (a pair
> of 5-element Scala yagis skewed 90 degrees) from H-pol to V-pol, the
> signal strength in car receivers improved dramatically, "picket
> fencing" was reduced, and a substantial number of listeners commented
> on the "power increase", although we hadn't changed the TPO.  This
> convinced me that vertical beats horizontal (at least where most cars
> have fender-mounted vertical whips) but maybe our results would have
> been much different with the Euro-style angled antennas.
>
>