105.3 on-channel booster

[BLewis]

Greetings from North Carolina. I noticed on radio-locator that Live 105.3 has four on-channel boosters. One is in San Fran, with the others in Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, and Antioch. The translators have anywhere from 33 to 610 watts. My station is looking at the possibility of an on-channel booster or two to fill some weak spots around our city of license, after a tower move to put a city-grade signal into a more poulated area. Can anyone there tell me if 105.3 has interference problems. What do you hear when you are passing between these signals or when they overlap?

Thanks, in advance, for any information you can provide!!

Brian Lewis
WZRU FM 90.1 & 90.5
Roanoke Rapids/Rocky Mount, NC

 

[ChiefCheese]

> Greetings from North Carolina. I noticed on radio-locator
> that Live 105.3 has four on-channel boosters. One is in San
> Fran, with the others in Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, and
> Antioch. The translators have anywhere from 33 to 610
> watts. My station is looking at the possibility of an
> on-channel booster or two to fill some weak spots around our
> city of license, after a tower move to put a city-grade
> signal into a more poulated area. Can anyone there tell me
> if 105.3 has interference problems. What do you hear when
> you are passing between these signals or when they overlap?
>
>
> Thanks, in advance, for any information you can provide!!
>
> Brian Lewis
> WZRU FM 90.1 & 90.5
> Roanoke Rapids/Rocky Mount, NC
>
The Live 105 boosters all work pretty well-but they all fill-in areas where there is substantial terrain shielding from the main transmitter site of Mt. San Bruno.
If you can take advantage of terrain shielding then your booster(s) will probably work pretty well too.

 

[KMRichards]

> Greetings from North Carolina. I noticed on radio-locator
> that Live 105.3 has four on-channel boosters. One is in San
> Fran, with the others in Walnut Creek, Pleasanton, and
> Antioch. The translators have anywhere from 33 to 610
> watts. My station is looking at the possibility of an
> on-channel booster or two to fill some weak spots around our
> city of license, after a tower move to put a city-grade
> signal into a more poulated area. Can anyone there tell me
> if 105.3 has interference problems. What do you hear when
> you are passing between these signals or when they overlap?

Having worked at stations with on-channel boosters, I can tell you some of the potential pitfalls you need to work around when planning and installing one of these.

First, make sure that most of the coverage area the low-power booster will have is in an area completely shadowed by terrain from your main transmitter. Locating the booster on the side of the mountain that shadows you, and using a directional antenna, is pretty much a necessity.

Second, unless you can run a cable down from the top of said mountain from a receiving antenna that will provide plenty of signal down that long cable run, find another way to feed the booster. One station I worked for used the local cable company's FM service as the input feed, but with CAFM service going the way of the buggy whip, that may not be feasible in very many places anymore. You might consider using a dedicated ISDN line from the studios.

If designed properly, by the time someone is passing from the booster's signal area to the main signal, the booster will be so weak compared to the main that there should be no interference. You may find you need to tweak the booster's power output to keep it limited to the shadowed area (we spent months getting one booster to cover just the right area, and ended up with a complex array of four directional antennas, each with a different amount of ERP, to do it).

I would suggest contacting whoever is in charge of engineering for stations you see in the databases which have boosters and ask their advice as well.
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[bw]

KMRichards makes good points, as does ChiefCheese. Here's my .02:

1. Don't go into this thinking it will solve coverage problems. It creates different ones. Unless you sync the transmitters up, delay audio, etc, it will not be seamless.
2. Do homework on coverage. Review Longley Rice studies, and factor in the actual main transmit antenna characteristics on the tower.
3. More isn't better. While 650 watts on a booster sounds big, it may cause so many problems. You may end up with 30 to provide good coverage with minimal interference.
4. Plan on additional manpower from the engineering side. Between adjustments, and other follow up, boosters can become a resource hog.

I am not trying to sound negative, but rather realistic. Boosters are a tool. Maybe it works for you, maybe not. In one market I work, I made the recommendation to file for a translator in the 2003 window to eliminate the need for the booster. The client did it, and they have a cp. In this case, it will make things much better....
Good luck!

 

[tpt]

Agree with all above. We've had a booster on for about 7 years now.

Original one used a long buried cable between receiver and transmitter. Tepco unit, receiver beat off air signal down to IF, then transmitter beat IF signal back up to channel and boosted. Worked well, but eventually the cable went bad.

After a hiatus while we simulcast on a local Class A we owned, rebuilt booster using microwave path (which also allowed us to split off A with new programming--needed bigger tower at studio to do this--$$$.) Now we feed the booster via composite STL off our Omnia (which has two channels composite out--handy) into an MS-15 exciter.

Works as well as earlier system, once we tamed down the MS-15(a little frequency drift, you could hear it beat...easy fix).

However, the key word is terrain. The city we are covering is at 600 ft AMSL in a valley, the booster at 1200 feet above this narrow valley with line of site to the town. And the areas of everlap are unpopulated hills.

The overlap sounds like bad multipath, btw.

e-mail me for further info: [email protected]

 

[bossmsx]

Boosters in the HD World.

I have to bring up a non-sequitur here, but it begs questioning.

SF is indeed "FM Booster Country".

Alot of the stations in the Bay Area that show up as having boosters, also show up on www.hd-radio.com as having turned on the IBOC.

Can someone fill me in on how we're dealing with *that* angle?? Do all boosters have Digital exciters, or are some strictly analog, or, if all boosters transmit a digital signal, how are we dealing with issues so as to avoid delay when the radio goes from picking up one signal to the next (or even bouncing back and forth) on the same freq., since a digital signal (and its' companion analog signal) are delayed as it is?