As the LBA Antenna Turns

McMaster Professor Natalia Nikolova and her husband Robert Zimmerman

McMaster Professor Natalia Nikolova and her husband Robert ZimmermanMcMaster research engineer Professor Natalia Nikolova, and her husband Robert Zimmerman, have verified the existence of a new type of radio wave called the Vector Potential Wave. This wave was first predicted in 1880 by British mathematician James Clerk Maxwell, but had never been directly detected until this summer here on McMaster campus in the Communications Research Lab>.

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On August 30th, NPR Labs posted an illustration depicting the coverage areas for public AM and FM radio stations nationwide. The data used to develop this map was last updated in June 2007. The downloadable map is available here. Be aware of slow download times due to the large file size (3.6MB).

Copper thefts from radio transmitters and towers have continued to rise, paralleling the increasing value of copper. Last Wednesday, one such theft became a threatening situation for “Lite 96.9″ WRSA-FM, Huntsville engineer John Macpherson and his teenage daughter. When the station went off the air around 4:45am that morning, Macpherson thought they were in for a routine fix. However, when they arrived at the tower site at Brindley Mountain, two burgulars allegedly were attempting to strip copper from the transmitter.

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