That's why KGO's xmitter is in the southern part of the Bay Area, because their main lobe is directed to the Northwest.
-
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
KCBS was Off Air for about 15 Minutes Last Tuesday Afternoon
- Thread starter cc333
- Start date
If you look at Michi's night pattern (which does not contemplate ground conductivity) you see the pattern is almost perfectly symmetrical to the NNW and SSE.
According to FCC.org there is at least a 500 mv difference between the NW and NE lobes.
The "Northeast" lobe (actually ENE) is a side lobe, pushing the equivalent of 5KW and protecting WGY in Schenectady/Albany, NY. (There's a symmetrical lobe on the other side, to the WSW.)
As David said, the main lobes are NNW and SSE. (BTW, I heard that number directly from KGO's former director of engineering, back when they were still a real radio station.)
My error, I meant the difference between the NW and the SE lobes.
Not quite. Yes, the nighttime pattern is mostly aimed SSE. The daytime pattern does send some power to the north. It's not symmetrical (as I erroneously implied earlier) but Mendocino County is getting some coverage. Can't hear it in Eureka, though.
Remember, KCBS is a DA-2...unlike KGO which does have the same pattern (DA-1) day and night.
I picked it up quite well, though with occasional fading, the night I was in Winnemucca, Nevada about 51 weeks ago. No chance of getting it in Denver; KVOR in Colorado Springs is noisy but consistent day and night.
I once got KCBS top of the hour ID when I was in Iowa City
KGO started out in Oakland on East 14th Street...now International Boulevard and a troubled neighborhood...and moved to the east end of the Dumbarton bridge in 1947. So the transmitter, at least, has always been on the east side of the bay. Dumbarton is quite far south, relatively speaking, but if you really wanted to be on the south end of the bay, there's Milpitas or Alviso.
I’ve noticed that dilapidated building off 84/Dumbarton Bridge — what exactly is that?
(Also, I know it’s been said a lot, but it’s such a shame that KGO has been relinquished to such a tragically mediocre and unlocalized format. RIP.)
That's KGO's transmitter building, with their 3 towers behind it in the Bay. It may be dilapidated now, but it sure wasn't when I got to see it, which was the last days of Disney/ABC ownership, around 2008. Nicely-maintained art-deco building then, they were just finishing installing a solar array to power the transmitters and equipment.
Yeah, I'm not sure I'd agree with "dilapidated"---this is from June of this year:
Looks fine to me---and for the Bay Area, remarkably graffiti-free.
Okay, so I think I knew you lived in Ukiah at one point, but "our EBS receiver" tells me you worked up there. What station? When?
I could listen to KCBS in metro Phoenix at night until that city's 740 AM (KIDR) got authorization for 292 watts nighttime power (they'd been a daytimer up to that point.
Even after that, though, if I went 15 miles east, west or north of downtown Phoenix, KCBS would start to come in over KIDR (then KMEO).
I drove past it last week and it certainly did not look that good. I’ll go over and grab some pictures when I get some free time because the rate of decay is pretty crazy.
I'll retract one thing I wrote above. When I said it was an art deco building, I was misremembering that. I had been thinking of KNBR's transmitter building and the one next door to it, out by the Bay in Redwood Shores. That other station, IIRC, had been KPO, a shortwave station once owned by General Electric.
I was near Radio Road one day (this may have been in the Nineties) and drove up to it and knocked on the door. Someone was kind enough to show me around. It had been broadcasting to South America, a Christian missionary organization or some such. Their transmitters had been subsequently relocated to Ecuador or one of the nearby South America nations, and I have no idea if the building's been repurposed for some other use these days. (It does look dilapidated, to use Radiopaw's term.) But according to Google Earth, it's still there. Check out these satellite images.
Google Earth
Google Earth
(It's the one on the left. The one on the right is KNBR.)
I'll be very interested to see them. Apart from vandalism or storm damage, I can't think of anything that would cause a significant change in just 60-90 days (depending on when in June that Google Street View shot was taken).
The only significant shortwave operation in Ecuador was HCJB, and they closed their international operations when their multi-transmitter site was taken by the new Quito airport over a decade ago. They have a local tropical band service, but nobody else is on international SW there any longer. Same for Colombia and Perú... so anything they moved to is now long gone.
As I said, David, this was quite a few years ago, and I'm going from memory. But Google Earth still shows the building standing, looking more worn down but otherwise the way I remember it. I used to have a friend whose condo complex was directly across the street, which is how I discovered that it even existed, but that was close to 30 years ago. It's not a location one would wander into unless they were intending to. It's right off the Bay, and next door is a water purification plant.
Does anyone know if those solar panels actually supply all the power needed to run the transmitter and other equipment during the day???
Doubtful. All an array that size would power is maybe a rack that contains the remote control. That way when the backup generator doesn't start, the site can report there's no power.
I believe in California there used to be business tax credits for businesses that implemented solar power. Something that size probably meets the bare minimum to qualify.