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AM 1520 KKXA is up and "on the air"

Andrew - I hope you don't take my reception report comments as a critique - just letting you know what we're hearing "out here in radioland," if it's helpful. I suspected the signal hadn't been at full power yet. But I've always found it interesting to follow how AM radio waves travel, since they have so many more parameters at work than most FM transmitters deal with. And a good directional array with some decent power coming from a marshland transmitter site can cover up a multitude of sins, so to speak.

It was interesting to hear your steady signal drop out completely right as I turned south on the county line and entered King County. I've set a preset for 1520, and will check it from time to time and post if there's any noteworthy characteristics to what I'm hearing on the southwest side of your signal array during your test transmissions.

You've probably noted my prior concerns over the very powerful signal on 1520 coming in from Oregon (even during the daytime), so it is interesting to hear how your new signal is able to cover it up (mostly) down on this end of Snohomish County - even when you're transmitting a signal that's not fully dressed up for prime time yet. I worked years ago for suburban stations that actually served their suburbs (i'm not jonesin' for an airshift, either) and miss the service that such stations could provide in large metro areas where the big guys are too big to pay attention to local news, etc. Not that there were a lot of good suburban full service stations "back in the day," but there are enough people in the North suburbs to count as a small market on it own - we just don't have any local radio, apart from religious and ethnic stations, and your all-sports outlet - oh, and KSER.
 
Andy, I almost got an IBOC decode on KKXA a couple of weeks ago in Seattle's U District. I'm disappointed, though, that IBOC is even being considered, because IMHO it's a big producer of interference that has few, if any, listeners.
Worse yet, the fidelity of the main AM signal suffers, and that's what most folks are listening to.
It would be much better to hear the best possible fidelity on KKXA with no IBOC hiss to clutter it up.
Still, KKXA had a pretty decent signal during the Fleetwood Mac test.
I wish you the best of luck, and look forward to hearing KKXA when it officially arrives.
 
I monitored the station again last night in my car (Sat Aug 6 - cloudy night). Steady reception in Shonomish Co, with a couple of big, but quick, fades outs where "La Grande" came in a few blocks either side of Aurora Avenue on the county line. It's more like FM interference, where the other station takes over for a few seconds, and then KKXA is back. But the back and forth interference is pretty severe as you drive south into Seattle, and pretty much both stations are lost in the signal fight in North Seattle after dark.

Hope you're getting what we used to call an "AM Optimod" or some other device that will brighten up the signal a bit, to help it punch thru all the noise (without sounding so heavily compressed as KIXI or KOMO, please). Sounds a little flat so far, and the IBOC does mess with 1540's signal a lot.

The catchphase that you're "the last new AM station you'll ever hear" is really clever. I like how it makes your signal seem more special than it might otherwise appear, given the lack of interesting programming elsewhere on the upper half of the AM dial.

Good luck with the station.
 
Lots to reply to here. I doubt we'll make the county line at night when we get the directional antenna tuned up. KKXA will cover more people at night than the old KRKO transmitter site at night, and really, that was simplistically the goal. If KXKA covers more than Larimer Road, and still covers Everett, we're in pretty good shape at night. We've made some progress on the directional antenna, and we haven't even started with the HD work. In fact, the sidebands are way out, and our HD gear is completely messed up right now. We could be a month away on both. I realize some will be disappointed that we're doing HD, but there are HD settings that allow for 10 kHz of bandwidth if you remove the PAD data, which we may do on 1520. We removed PAD on 1380 and it hasn't made much difference. We tested a ton of radios. Though, on both stations, we're going to do a final, full assault on the audio processing because it's weak on both, by quite a bit...and our source material on 1520 was pretty rough. We have two Orban Optimod 9400s and two Omni 5 eXi units. We're going to figure out which ones do what we want the best and either leave the Orbans on KRKO and the Omnias on 1520 or we're going to pick a loser and assign the loser processor to the backup transmitters. Oh, and in deference to iBiquity, everywhere I typed "HD," I mean to say, "HD Radio Technology." :) I'm not offended by negative reception reports, and really, there isn't much someone could say on here to offend me. I heard it all during a decade of hearings.
 
All receptions reports are welcomed, by the way, particularly as we get to ramping up the power and finalizing the directional antenna. You can do it on Facebook at KXA, as many are doing, or you can email me direct at a n d r e w d o t s k o t d a l a t k r k o d o t c o m.
 
I think it's kind of odd. 50,000 watts from a tower in a nice river plain should get the signal out a hell of a lot farther than it's actually doing, even at low power.

But then again, you can barely hear KBRC in Lynnwood. And their towers are smack in the PERFECT floodplain if I ever saw one.....
 
Bongwater said:
I think it's kind of odd. 50,000 watts from a tower in a nice river plain should get the signal out a hell of a lot farther than it's actually doing, even at low power.

But then again, you can barely hear KBRC in Lynnwood. And their towers are smack in the PERFECT floodplain if I ever saw one.....
Click to expand...

Didn't Andy say that KKXA is not yet running full power? Also, has the FCC yet granted the app for 50 kW ND during non-critical daylight hours? I thought that no of grant of that change had yet been made. It's customary for the FCC to allow AMs 1/4 of their CP power during alignment of DAs and proofs of performance. I don't know whether KKXA has applied for Method of Moments during the parts of the day when it's directional, which would reduce the amount of time required to do proofs. However, if the problems Andy described in a post a screen or two back have not yet been solved, I would not think KKXA would yet be running at full power. Could be running as little as 5 kW ND-D and 12.5 kW DA CH and N.
 
We're going to run directional at 50kW for the next couple of days, more on-the-air than off (hopefully) as we burn in the antenna system. If you want to report on what you hear, great. Thanks!
 
Much improved signal in Aldergrove, B.C. at the moment Andrew. The snippits of "radio songs" are coming in loud & clear on my C Crane Radio-EP (with no external antenna). We'll see how things are in the evening once Oregon City makes its daily appearance.
 
Thanks, Dan. Looks like we'll be down until tomorrow...I jinxed it. We blew the circuit breaker and we're down until we can figure that out. Hopefully back tomorrow morning sometime.
 
Andrew Skotdal said:
Thanks, Dan. Looks like we'll be down until tomorrow...I jinxed it. We blew the circuit breaker and we're down until we can figure that out. Hopefully back tomorrow morning sometime.
Click to expand...

Picking up KKXA now for the first time in Bellingham (11:45 AM) Are you running at full power?
 
We were running KXA at 50,000 watts directional until noon. It will be back and forth between 20,000 watts omni-directional (which we're doing now) and 50,000 watts directional. I think we've succeeded in keeping the transmitter on the air now and we're probably going to spend the next seven days chasing down the high voltage issues causing the transmitter to hiccup. If you hear brief bouts of static (one second gasps), it's a high voltage arc flying inside one of our tuning boxes.
 
I live in Monroe and 1520 is splattering on 1590 from Seattle, a station I listen to for Hugh Hewitt etc. Wouldn't this be an FCC violation interfering 70KC away? And the audio sounds like pretty bad. Sounds like it's on a 4KC cheap phone line. It's also interfering with 1460 from Kirkland.
 
I was driving right by the towers and they were not throwing out anything bad to the side (well- except for IBOC hash.) I am wondering if there is a problem with your radio if you are hearing this interference in Monroe.

The again, interference on 1460 would have to fall under an "act of God." Right?
 
I have a GE Super Radio set on narrow band. 1460 has a great signal in Monroe and 1590 not as good. The hash is worse on 1590 and appears only when 1520 is on.
 
I made measurements in the Frylands yesterday (we've mostly been working on the directional antenna). We aren't going to cover Monroe at night (but we didn't plan to, either). We have less than five millivolts of signal by the time we get to Monroe. As luck would have it, though, our consulting engineers have been making spurious emissions measurements...and there may be a problem with your radio or your interference source is something other than us. So far, we're clean. The HD carriers sit at 1500 and 1540, so it's not HD splatter, but the HD is currently down.
 
I find it funny that people immediately jump to blaming the station on issues they are hearing on a 15 year-old portable radio. That and using the "It's HD Hash" excuse when the HD isn't even turned on! It might be time for both KRLA and IndigoCoyote to get new radios! :D

Out of curiosity Andy, did you guys make a processing change to KRKO? There seems to be more low end (especially in the AquaSox broadcasts) and the HD signal is now significantly quieter. All within the last two weeks.
 
Regarding the 'low end', I'm not sure whether you called in and mentioned it to Jennifer or whether your observation is independent because I just heard that comment for the first time today. The only thing that changed in the past couple of weeks was work we did outside that should have no impact on the audio chain. That being said, the audio chain is in our 'top three' items that are critical path issues now for KRKO and KKXA. I'm hoping we'll get to tear into it on Monday because it's thin, with little low end, and it's hasn't been loud for a long time. Let me know if you notice any difference after next week, assuming we don't get stuck somewhere.
 
I can hear hash/static at 2:55 PM Friday clear up to 1640 and beyond that is in the exact beat with what's on 1520. This is on every radio I have-portable or plug in.
 
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