Robert J Carpenter wrote:

Very, very much not an urban setting, but West Virginia Public Radio
was exclusively horizontally polarized at most, if not all, their
dozen mountain top transmitters. The chief emgineer contended it
worked better in the mountainous terrain. Their situation might have
assumed a fixed transmitter power out, thus the circular would result
in half the ERP (per polarization).

I think this was the case at the time when most listeners were at home
with horizontal folded dipoles.

I note that they have recently obtained construction permits to
convert to circular. Perhaps they are buying new transmitters - which
will have much higher efficiency. This way the power bill and wires
up the mountain need not change (much) to get the higher transmitter
output needed to maintain the same horixontal ERP when going to
circular.

The big deal is that in the past 15 years or so, radio listenership has
moved very much into the car (even for NPR which tends to have more home
listeners than most stations) which has made vertical components that
much more important.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."