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South Georgia WPAA St. Marys not signing off at sunset

G

GeoffR

Yesterday WPAA-AM St. Marys was on until 6:00pm rather than signing off at 5:30 sunset (daytime license). A mistake, or nobody cares? (or nobody on duty at the NIA operation in Kingsland?) I assume it is being run from there since their 94.3 translator seems to now be on the WKBX tower along with the 99.5 translator. Seems to be another no-revenue no-employee operation. No reason to listen unless you like a jukebox of old country music...

The one sweeper heard in almost an hour's time (rest of the hour was just segued Country music, no commercials) was for co-owned 104.3 WAJQ Alma GA, North of Waycross. Top of the hour ID was for WAJQ and WPAA. The audio feed could be coming from either Alma or Kingsland..
 
It's very possible WPAA has post sunset authority. Post sunset authority is in 30 minute increments, so thats entirely possible.. though usually 2 hours long. However, you throw WPAA and NIA under the boss with alot of assumptions and no information. Id wager it comes from Alma.. the studio and a vehicle are still there, as seen on google earth

Why not email Neal ardman? His email address is pretty publicly available.
 
I'm only a mile away from the AM transmitter. I noticed that after sunset, it typically fades over the course of a few hours until there's no signal whatsoever! I drove to work early one morning when I passed by the transmitter, I could hear nothing but static.

The AM transmitter is next to a church who used to own the station before Neal Ardman bought it. When the church owned it, they had some problems (perhaps with overheating) and had to run it on reduced power. Perhaps Neal fixed that by slowly incrementing the wattage over time instead of just flipping it on/off.

I never recall hearing this station on the air at all after 10 PM or so.
 
jhirzel88 said:
I'm only a mile away from the AM transmitter. I noticed that after sunset, it typically fades over the course of a few hours until there's no signal whatsoever! I drove to work early one morning when I passed by the transmitter, I could hear nothing but static.

The AM transmitter is next to a church who used to own the station before Neal Ardman bought it. When the church owned it, they had some problems (perhaps with overheating) and had to run it on reduced power. Perhaps Neal fixed that by slowly incrementing the wattage over time instead of just flipping it on/off.

I never recall hearing this station on the air at all after 10 PM or so.
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the signal fading over a few hours is the post sunset authority as it gradually goes down in power every half hour
 
jhirzel88 said:
I'm only a mile away from the AM transmitter. I noticed that after sunset, it typically fades over the course of a few hours until there's no signal whatsoever! I drove to work early one morning when I passed by the transmitter, I could hear nothing but static.

The AM transmitter is next to a church who used to own the station before Neal Ardman bought it. When the church owned it, they had some problems (perhaps with overheating) and had to run it on reduced power. Perhaps Neal fixed that by slowly incrementing the wattage over time instead of just flipping it on/off.

I never recall hearing this station on the air at all after 10 PM or so.
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Can you hear it at all this week? I get no signal at all (used to be pretty strong) during the day when it's supposed to be on. Are they off the air or running on just a few watts?

The 94.3 translator is still on the air. It looks like the translator used to be on the AM tower but has been moved to the K-Bay tower in Kingsland. I assume that the operations of WPAA were moved to the K-Bay building too so they wouldn't have to pay rent in St. Marys too.
 
GeoffR said:
Can you hear it at all this week? I get no signal at all (used to be pretty strong) during the day when it's supposed to be on. Are they off the air or running on just a few watts?

The 94.3 translator is still on the air. It looks like the translator used to be on the AM tower but has been moved to the K-Bay tower in Kingsland. I assume that the operations of WPAA were moved to the K-Bay building too so they wouldn't have to pay rent in St. Marys too.
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The translator was relocated about a month before the sale went through to Neal Ardman. The rent has nothing to do with the 94.3 move. He moved it because the tower height (~50 ft) was too low to provide any adequate range. Tropo interference also did it in as well, so much so that even a mile away, WNFB had higher signal strength one day around sunset. As soon as he powered the new tower, reception improved by 10 miles! In the north side of Jacksonville, I could pick up both stations and still manage to null out the other one for clear mono-grade signal strength.

WPAA is now being simulcast on 106.3 HD-3 which is a clear indicator that Neal's probably ditching the AM completely! But if you want my opinion, he should keep the AM active because you just never know what opportunities exist for it. He has 2 AM stations in Alma and Waycross running Fox Sports Radio as well as 99.5 on FM. If he decides to build a new AM tower behind the K-Bay building, he should put Fox Sports Radio on WPAA and implement HD on the AM side like he did with WTMP. I know this is Saint Marys, not Tampa, but still, I feel that having a digital signal would help revive AM! That sounds crazy, I know! It was successful in Tampa maybe because there's a better chance that 1,000 people out of the hundreds of thousands that live there have HD radio in their cars. But in the Kingsland area, that percentage is way smaller because not as many people are driving new cars.
 
jhirzel88 said:
The translator was relocated about a month before the sale went through to Neal Ardman. The rent has nothing to do with the 94.3 move. He moved it because the tower height (~50 ft) was too low to provide any adequate range. Tropo interference also did it in as well, so much so that even a mile away, WNFB had higher signal strength one day around sunset. As soon as he powered the new tower, reception improved by 10 miles! In the north side of Jacksonville, I could pick up both stations and still manage to null out the other one for clear mono-grade signal strength.

WPAA is now being simulcast on 106.3 HD-3 which is a clear indicator that Neal's probably ditching the AM completely! But if you want my opinion, he should keep the AM active because you just never know what opportunities exist for it. He has 2 AM stations in Alma and Waycross running Fox Sports Radio as well as 99.5 on FM. If he decides to build a new AM tower behind the K-Bay building, he should put Fox Sports Radio on WPAA and implement HD on the AM side like he did with WTMP. I know this is Saint Marys, not Tampa, but still, I feel that having a digital signal would help revive AM! That sounds crazy, I know! It was successful in Tampa maybe because there's a better chance that 1,000 people out of the hundreds of thousands that live there have HD radio in their cars. But in the Kingsland area, that percentage is way smaller because not as many people are driving new cars.
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That makes it sound (the WPAA programming being on K-Bay's HD-3 channel) like the AM has been turned off.

I am not getting anything on the 99.5 translator frequency in Yulee (it used to have a good signal to the South). Are you sure it isn't turned off too? K-Bay doesn't own that one. 99.5 is owned by the owner of WAYX in Waycross...but programmed by K-Bay and WAS (Not sure if it still is) on the K-Bay tower.
 
WPAA-AM was back on yesterday. Good signal in Nassau County. So don't know what the problem was for a number of days when they were off the air (or on very low power, like a few watts). Tried getting the 99.5 translator in the car and they were there (if they are running Fox Sports Radio) but having real problems with Cox's translator in Jacksonville since that translator is at 900 feet and the Kingsland translator at under 300 feet. The 94.3 WPAA translator was about 1-2 seconds ahead of WPAA so it is not being fed by the AM signal..
 
GeoffR said:
WPAA-AM was back on yesterday. Good signal in Nassau County. So don't know what the problem was for a number of days when they were off the air (or on very low power, like a few watts). Tried getting the 99.5 translator in the car and they were there (if they are running Fox Sports Radio) but having real problems with Cox's translator in Jacksonville since that translator is at 900 feet and the Kingsland translator at under 300 feet. The 94.3 WPAA translator was about 1-2 seconds ahead of WPAA so it is not being fed by the AM signal..
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fm translators for am stations dont literally have to be fed by an off air pick up of the am signal. many are fed over the internet via barix or comrex audio devices, accounting for the delay
 
There are different setups for audio, but some stations have used a FM receiver to supply audio to the the AM translator. Unfortunately a lot of AM signals are just there to keep the translator "legal". Most people will not notice the "delay" between the different bands.
 
Unfortunately, most AM stations these days, are just reasons/excuses for FM translators. I will say this though. I have seen FM translators operating at full force, without their AM parent station on the air at all, which is totally illegal.
 
SomeRadioGuy said:
fm translators for am stations dont literally have to be fed by an off air pick up of the am signal. many are fed over the internet via barix or comrex audio devices, accounting for the delay
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My point was that the AM was not feeding the translator, because the AM signal was BEHIND the audio of the translator. Meaning that the translator was getting its audio from somewhere other than the AM air signal..jherzel88 thought that 94.3 was being fed by WKBX-HD3 on 106.3.
 
GeoffR said:
My point was that the AM was not feeding the translator, because the AM signal was BEHIND the audio of the translator. Meaning that the translator was getting its audio from somewhere other than the AM air signal..jherzel88 thought that 94.3 was being fed by WKBX-HD3 on 106.3.
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if theyreboth being fed by the internet then neither will be exactly the same because id bet the sending isp is not the same as the recieving one
 


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