I looked at WPTX at Radio-Locator, and their antenna is located on a peninsula, with lots of water on three sides. Their signal hits the water, then shoots off to other shores, and it seems like half their red circle, 2.5 millivolt local coverage is on the water. I think the daytime pattern looks like a Dog's head, with a smile.. :)
It looks like they get out an average of 20 miles for their 10 kilowatts, and I don't know how populated their coverage area is, but I'll bet they wish they were closer to DC and Baltimore. It must also be lonely at the top, 1690. WE hear them, but I wonder how many listeners go the top of their AM and find it.
If no other stations are on the Expanded Band (should it still be called that these days?) in the area, people might see it as a dead zone before getting to 1690. Not being down about them, just that for a commercial station it must be a hard life.
I think the upper band would be difficult in Pittsburgh, there's no commercial radio within range during the day, it's a dead zone with a few TIS stations, and a couple of Part-15 stations with very short ranges that I wouldn't be able to get here, I just know about them.
Skip starts early and often, and at night most of what I hear is foreign language programming on the upper band, and I hear one community type station from Michigan maybe on early skip, but it's covered up at night.
They might have been talk format before, Radio-Locator's info page shows it called Talk 1690. Glad that they're doing music now.
Boom
