WAKY got a Christmas present early... They are now scrolling artist & title (at least on 100.1). And when they go to spots, the display sits at WAKY and they show the temperature!
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
WAKY turns on it's RDS
- Thread starter radiotrumpet78
- Start date
Has anyone noticed that WAKY is also on the translator at 92.3 now? Never hear any ID or anything about it on the other WAKY stations.It's not a very strong signal but it can be heard.
https://fccdata.org/?facid=144748
https://fccdata.org/?facid=144748
Based on the map in the link, I'm not sure what this adds to their existing signals?
Meanwhile, WEKU 88.9 Richmond/Lexington continues to live in the 1980s and refuses to purchase RDS equipment. They're probably the only full power Public Radio-formatted station in Kentucky without RDS. Similarly, some of the L.M. stations in Lexington are STILL without RDS. I think they're very slowly rolling it out to all their stations. Currently, only 3 of them have it...and it only displays their branding and calls.
The Alpha Media stations in Louisville are mostly without. I think 99.7 and 96.5 have had their branding on there (and nothing else) for about a decade, but 101.3 and 105.1 have never had anything. I'm not sure what the deal is with 102.3. I never remember them having RDS at all, but somebody was commenting on their RDS saying "The Max" after they switched to Jack FM. I then suddenly noticed that the RDS light was popping up on 102.3 on my car radio but there was nothing on there. Now the RDS light is gone again.
We've had a similar experience with the LM stations I mentioned in Lex. RDS has come and gone on a few of their stations over the years, but is currently active *knocks on wood* on 3 out of their 5 FMs. The only one out of those 5 that's never had it is WBTF 107.9 (Hip-Hop/R&B station). I'm curious as to what is going on over there.
Any SCA service will decrease a station's overall coverage; lower powered stations suffer most, of course....It's why (in most markets) only larger stations had/have SCAs for Muzak (usually 67 or 41 kHz) or a SAP....
RDS operates on a 57 kHz subcarrier.....the now-obsolete FMX noise-reduction ran on 92 kHz.
The 19 kHz stereo pilot also can impart "noise" on a fringe FM signal; it's why a lot of talk stations don't even bother using it!!
SCA operation puts limits on the peak modulation levels, as even occasional high peaks can cause an ugly artifact in the SCA audio. It does not, however, limit coverage. FM does not modulate the carrier as modulation is a function of modulating the frequency.
On AM, higher modulation improves signal to noise ratios in weaker signal areas, making coverage appear to be better. There is, however, a point of diminishing returns as too much compression, needed to achieve modulation density, makes listening pretty lousy.
FM stations liked high modulation because, in the days of manual tuning, they could "pop out" of the dial and attract listeners. A myth today.
Muzak, as far as I know, does not rent SCA channels. They deliver many different types of music via IP and satellite. With HD radio, most stations have eliminated SCA operation. The most common use of the SCA among stations was to return data to the remote control point for monitoring and metering.
Some stations use RDS in a form that listeners don't even notice: the original objective of RDS was to identify to RDS radios a station that is part of a network, and then hand off to another network station if the receiver moved out of the coverage of one transmitter. Since in Europe, large national FM networks are common, this was a needed and useful service. I know of some US FM simulcasts and trimulcasts (often Class As in the same metro) that use RDS just for that purpose. There is no significant signal impairment.
Last edited:
I've long thought this hand off capability is what is missing from IBOC HD. It should be able to hand off between any combination of FM/HD/HD2/HD3 and AM. The stations would need to define in the encoder who the simulcast partners are. Add a somewhat persistent memory to the receiver to store this info and then the analog signals could could continue to hand off if the HD is temporarily lost.
This seems like something that could help AM / FM Translator pairs better leverage both signals to maximize coverage area since the two signals do not always have exact coverage area. When the FM gets week it can hand off to the AM or vice versa. Take the HD audio out of the mix if needed and just require the PAD data be broadcast. I believe on AM this eliminates the need for the sidebands which may help some stations implement it. Of course many AMs are simulcast on a co-owned HD2 or 3 so that is another prime use case.
This seems like something that could help AM / FM Translator pairs better leverage both signals to maximize coverage area since the two signals do not always have exact coverage area. When the FM gets week it can hand off to the AM or vice versa. Take the HD audio out of the mix if needed and just require the PAD data be broadcast. I believe on AM this eliminates the need for the sidebands which may help some stations implement it. Of course many AMs are simulcast on a co-owned HD2 or 3 so that is another prime use case.
- Status