I hadn't listened for the 11 pm-6 am tone on 1090 KMXA Aurora, CO for some time. Friday night, I checked shortly after 11 pm and the tone was there. The next night, last night, it wasn't there and KMXA was off the air. KMXA is back on the air this morning as usual.
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The KMXA tone may be gone
- Thread starter Mark Roberts
- Start date
An STA filed December 18 tells at least some of the story (I'm assuming that a justification submitted for an STA filing is in the public domain):
Approval of the KMXA STA is pending. At 4:30 pm today (December 24), which is local sunset, there was about a 20 dB drop in signal strength and the station's audio became distorted (usually its audio is pretty good).
The parenthetical reference is to KAAY in Little Rock, Arkansas, which has filed to downgrade to class D status. It doesn't account for XEPRS in Rosarito, Baja California Norte, however, which is also a class A station (per the KAAY downgrade filing).
Approval of the KMXA STA is pending. At 4:30 pm today (December 24), which is local sunset, there was about a 20 dB drop in signal strength and the station's audio became distorted (usually its audio is pretty good).
Didn't seem in any hurry to file the STA.
Nor did they likely need to. It appears that they tried parts replacements (thus the "experimental period" testing with tones) and it did not work out. So now they want authority to operate at reduced power while a different solution is explored.
The tones started at 11 PM.
Month(s) of tones are not needed to "test" equipment.
They were on day power/pattern well before midnight with regular programming. Big signal into Boise as soon as the sun set.
Month(s) of tones are not needed to "test" equipment.
They were on day power/pattern well before midnight with regular programming. Big signal into Boise as soon as the sun set.
If the issue involved the directional system and there was just one person doing the testing, I can see it taking lots of time...
Set something, drive out to one or more monitoring points to check, drive back to the transmitter site. Repeat till fixed.
I had work done on my 4-tower parallelogram by Bob DuTreil years ago. The system was way out of compliance due to years of bad engineering locally. It took Bob and my CE over a month to do the adjustments. And it would have taken longer, but we had decided to take the station off the air for 90 days to rebuild so the adjustments could be done "all day long". And, for some hard measurements we used a rented helicopter.
Taking monitor points at night are nearly impossible what with skywave from the station being measured and other co-channel and adjacent channel station.
They were running day power/pattern at night. No STA filed as required. Really easy to file for one. I'd say lazy or not caring.
They were running day power/pattern at night. No STA filed as required. Really easy to file for one. I'd say lazy or not caring.
It can be approximated, particularly at that power level and using the closest points.
If they were testing in the experimental period (obviously it begins at 12 Midnight, not 11 PM) they do not need an STA to do adjustments. That is what the experimental period is for. Back in the 50's and 60's... even into the 70's... many daytimers ran full power at night once a month to do a frequency check with one of the companies like Commercial Radio Monitoring which might have been 1000 miles away.
Let me state again
They were monitored and logged by many DXers, and noted by myself, with a very strong signal not consistent with their normal night-time power/pattern after sunset Denver into the overnight.
That is NOT the "experimental" period.
The tone just happened to start at 11 PM.
If someone had complained the Denver FCC would have been all over them with a NOV.
They were monitored and logged by many DXers, and noted by myself, with a very strong signal not consistent with their normal night-time power/pattern after sunset Denver into the overnight.
That is NOT the "experimental" period.
The tone just happened to start at 11 PM.
If someone had complained the Denver FCC would have been all over them with a NOV.
The KMXA signal stayed on day power after their sunset and through into the midnight hours. But this is not the FCC of yesteryear, they no longer have that iron fist on AMs operating day power well into the night.
Last night, KTNS 1060 Oakhurst CA heard for a new log, definitely on 5000-watt day power. It was Christmas night and I doubt anybody was anywhere near the buildings or towers, but still.
Last night, KTNS 1060 Oakhurst CA heard for a new log, definitely on 5000-watt day power. It was Christmas night and I doubt anybody was anywhere near the buildings or towers, but still.
Have we considered that part of the issue was an inability to switch antenna and power and the work on that detected further antenna / DA system issues? In many of these cases today we are hit by the lack of high power AM specialists, directional antenna specialists and knowledgeable AM engineers in general?
I hear of cases of techs who are great on anything connected to Cat 5, but when they have to deal with RF and antennas and the like they are inexperienced and often cause more problems than solutions.
It sometimes takes repeated attempts here to get a message across, even if written in the plainest manner possible.
I did complain. Maybe someone official made contact with them; maybe not. The FCC's automated response basically tells someone filing a complaint not to expect to hear back. So I have no way of knowing.
Here's the current situation:
1) Daytime - normal operation on day pattern.,
2) At local sunset - drops about 20 dB in signal strength (at my east Denver location) and audio becomes distorted. May be running 125 watts on daytime pattern rather than 500 watts on nighttime pattern.
3) At 11 pm - goes off the air.
4) Between 11 pm and 6 am - off the air.
5) At 6 am - goes back on the air at nighttime levels.
Most likely, at local sunrise, goes back to daytime operation. (I haven't recorded it at that time.)
There's no more tone.
It's the first week of February, and that STA application is still pending. Meantime, station operation appears to be unchanged and the audio distortion for the nighttime operation continues to be bad.
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