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WYSL Jumps at an Opportunity

The AM station in upstate New York is taking advantage of some new elbow room

WYSL “Voice of Liberty” is a Class B AM station on 1040 kHz, owned by Radio Livingston LP and headed by Robert Savage. Licensed to Avon, N.Y., immediately south of Rochester, the station also serves the western Finger Lakes area and has two FM translators. It promises listeners that it is “locally owned and fiercely independent in an era of predictable, reactionary corporate radio.”

Home page of WYSL.

In the fall of 2022 Savage realized that the 20 kW DA-D four-tower facility that the station had built in 2006 for daytime operation was protecting three stations that no longer existed. “These had been either co-channel or adjacent-channel facilities on 1040 and 1050,” he said.

“Since we had a Nautel AMPFET-25 transmitter with a designed maximum power of just under 30 kW running leisurely at 20 kW, and the WYSL antenna components were capable of higher power, we saw this as an opportunity.”

Accordingly, the company engaged in planning with Chief Engineer Mark Humphrey, longtime consultant Bill Sitzman and the RF engineers at Kintronic Labs for an upgrade that would largely use existing facilities. 

WYSL coverage map

Sitzman did the allocation work and wrote the application. Humphrey ran a radial from a co-channel station and did the method of moments antenna proof of performance. The Kintronics phasing system was modified and presents a low VSWR common point to the Nautel transmitter. Cris Alexander of Au Contraire Software, who wrote the ACSModel software used for the method of moments analysis, provided assistance on the project.

“This process produced a redesign of the array utilizing a supplemental phase-extension network and cabinet for existing Tower #4, as well as component swaps in ATUs at two other towers,” Savage said. “The pattern-switching equipment and Gorman-Redlich antenna monitor were retained without modification.”

A new three-phase surge suppressor and AC line voltage/current monitor were subsequently installed to increase reliability of the Nautel AMPFET transmitter. (Courtesy Mark Humphrey)

The resulting DA-3 system was filed with the FCC for a CP in January 2023, and the permit was issued in May. 

“Kintronic completed the Tower 4 phasor cabinet in a remarkable six weeks, and it was installed at WYSL in late July,” Savage said.

By year’s end the method-of-moments antenna adjustments produced a license application ready for FCC analysis, with the result that a grant was issued in February 2024.

“The new 27 kW coverage has been gratifying, with much better general coverage to the east and west as well as improved signal strength in the two main lobes Remarkably, even with a critical-hours reduction in power from the 2006 level of 13.2 kW to a new level of 10 kW, the redesigned pattern provides better general coverage.”

There was no change in nighttime operation, as WYSL retained its 500-watt DA-N authority and operation from 2006. The station utilizes all four towers on all three patterns.  

For daytime and critical hours operation, it runs the Nautel AMPFET-25, and at night it runs a Nautel J-1000 at 500 watts. 

“Our standby transmitter is the excellent BE AM 2.5 we purchased in 1996,” he added. “The nostalgic RCA BTA 1-R we signed on with in 1986 for 500-watt NDA operation on 1030 kHz had been donated to the nearby Antique Wireless Association Museum in 2007; it was operable when retired.”

An earlier WYSL was a prominent AM station in western New York state; today that station is WWWS. 

This iteration of WYSL began life as a 500-watt daytimer on 1030 kHz in the 1980s. It moved up one channel in 1997, when it began 24-hour broadcasting and it has had several power increases since then. Today it is also heard on two FM translators.

Read more stories about interesting facility projects in the ebook “Awesome RF Buildouts.”

[Check Out More of Radio World’s Facility Showcases]

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