Barrow, Alaska Radio and TV question

[B Lewis]

Hi All! I have long had a fascination with Alaska and listen to Alaska radio on-line, when I can. I am probably most fascinated with the remote villages. I think KBRW, for example, is a really great service to its communities and the surrounding villages. I am just curious. With Barrow being SO remote, is anything, other than the local KBRW, and Christian radio translators; able to be received there? I would imaging that on AM, many Canadian, Russian, and other Alaskan AM's can be picked up. What about FM? Is there anything on FM that Barrow listeners can receive, besides the locals? How does the Aurora affect reception there? Does any type of local TV exist in Barrow, or are there translators of, say, Fairbanks TV there?

Thanks!

 

[cd637299]

Hi All! I have long had a fascination with Alaska and listen to Alaska radio on-line, when I can. I am probably most fascinated with the remote villages. I think KBRW, for example, is a really great service to its communities and the surrounding villages. I am just curious. With Barrow being SO remote, is anything, other than the local KBRW, and Christian radio translators; able to be received there? I would imaging that on AM, many Canadian, Russian, and other Alaskan AM's can be picked up. What about FM? Is there anything on FM that Barrow listeners can receive, besides the locals? How does the Aurora affect reception there? Does any type of local TV exist in Barrow, or are there translators of, say, Fairbanks TV there?

Thanks!

I cannot answer for Barrow, but I have lived in Alaska, and generally the winters are best for DX. However, the two years I was stationed there, hearing faraway stations was hit-and-miss, even in darkness. Keep in mind, that in the summer, the days are extremely long there in Barrow, maybe 22 hours a day---so forget DX, I'd say.

Also, for FM, I never received anything unusual. From the Anchorage area, I even failed to hear AK's first 100 kW FM, 103.5 in Homer, about 200 miles away. No sporadic-E skip like in the 48.

I would be interested also as to what can be heard there, especially in winters "over the Pole." Anyone in Barrow lurking here? Join the board!

cd

 

[samw54]

Hi there B Lewis. I know this topic thread is pretty old now having been created last September. But I just came across your fascinating Barrow radio and TV topic thread today. Like you, I too have an intense interest in bush radio stations in Alaska, especially KBRW. For decades, I used to bug the station for airchecks, and I am still in a state of shock that I can hear this radio station now on the net.

I too have always been really interested to know what the AM band is like in Barrow during the long polar night. I have actually been trying to locate someone in Barrow that shared my interest in AM DX-ing since 1978, but there doesn't appear to be anyone with that interest at all in Barrow. But I do know this. Believe it or not, despite its remoteness and northerly location where the polar night lasts from November 18 to January 23, Barrow would not actually be a terribly great location to DX from. Back in February of 1982, I talked someone that worked at the Barrow weather office to record some of 680 KBRW for me from only a half mile away from the station's transmitter site. Believe it or not, the AM band was so noisey that you could hardly hear the signal. Now, part of the problem was that Isaac Tuqfield, a native announcer with the station was rather new then, and he wasn't that close to the microphone. He was reading lost and found announcements, and he tended to mumble somewhat back then. Actually he still does. But the power lines in Barrow made the AM band extremely noisey, as I say, noisey enough so that KBRW's 10 thousand watt signal could hardly be heard over the noise. A few people I've talked with in Barrow since then say that the town is even worse now in terms of AM interfeerence because of all the computers running. So a better place to DX from would be out on the tundra, say, thirty to fifty miles south of Barrow where the noise level would probably be a lot quieter.

I have to agree with you though, it would be fascinating to find out somehow which U.S. stations from the lower 48 made it into Barrow when propagation from the south was good. And because there are almost two months of total darkness in Barrow, if a person had a good communications receiver with a good notch filter and a nice long wire antenna or even a series of antennas pointed in different directions like they have at the DX site in Lemmenjoki Finland, if the propagation over the pole was decent which of course it isn't much of the time, throughout the day you'd hear radio stations coming in from Europe, although I believe that both Norway and Finland have eliminated most of their AM stations particularly in the northern sections of those countries, but then you would hear radio stations from each of the different time zones in North America with both U.S. and Canadian stations coming in, then later, stations from Japan, Korea, China, and finally Russia. But you'd probably pick this stuff up outside of the city of Barrow where the AM band is much quieter and not within Barrow itself.

The question of FM stations reaching Barrow is a fascinating one, and I have wondered about that too. But I don't think since Barrow isn't prone to thunderstorms that they would be prone to much spiratic E FM skip either. I don't believe that Barrow has any local TV at all, not even a community access channel. I know I could be wrong about that but I am quite sure that everyone in Barrow has cable TV, and that there are no actual over the air TV translators in Barrow. Fascinating questions you had there, and I hope I have been of at least some help.

Sam

 

[BMR]

I don't believe that Barrow has any local TV at all, not even a community access channel. I know I could be wrong about that but I am quite sure that everyone in Barrow has cable TV, and that there are no actual over the air TV translators in Barrow.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Rural_Communications_Service the TV translators in Alaska are shown as 'inactive'. Makes sense if everyone is on cable.

 

[bobdavcav]

Why would the am band be any noisier up there than down here? I'm sure lots of big cities, such as Seattle have more computers, and the am band is still listenable, except for a couple stations at night.

 

[VelvetR]

Why would the am band be any noisier up there than down here? I'm sure lots of big cities, such as Seattle have more computers, and the am band is still listenable, except for a couple stations at night.

Dealing with a couple of things:

1. The AM band is nearly as noisy as in lower-48 cities. Not as much traffic but more of it is from unshielded ignition systems on snowmachines and 4-wheelers which generate far more ignition noise than from cars/trucks. The reaction you're seeing from people up here is caused by the comparison to about 10-20 years ago when there was relatively little noise of that sort. In addition, listening areas are differently defined where communities are far apart. In the lower-48 a 10 kW AM expects listeners within what radius? I'm guessing 30, maybe 50 miles? In Alaska, once you're away from the few big cities, your service area has a radius of 200 or more miles. Not that your signal is any better; just that the people 150-200 miles out don't have any other choice so WANT to listen. Many will spend extra for high quality receivers and for add-on antennas to get any signal at all.

2. TV side.

Contrary to some reports, Alasaka Public Television is still feeding very low power analog facilities in many smaller cities and villages. It used to be called "RAT-net" (Rural Alaska Television) but now it's called "ARCs" Alaska Rural Communications network. Some of the transmitters have ERPs as low as 9 (nine) Watts. They feed a mixture of PBS and commercial programming; the schedule determined by some arcane process by state bureaucrats.

In addition there are numerous low-power religious bird-fed stations cropping up with ERP of up to about 1 to 1.5 kW.

So, yes. In places with no cable (most now have it) there is at least something to tune on your TV. Where it's the under-10 Watt variety, unless you're within about 1/8 of a mile from the antenna you're going to need an outdoor antenna to get anything usable.

Beats the old days when all you had was cable whose programming was "bicycled" around the state after being recorded on 1" tape in Seattle. I recall seeing 1972 election results presented as "breaking news" two weeks after the election.

 

[samw54]

Good points you made there VelvetR. You wrote:

"In Alaska, once you're away from the few big cities, your service area has a radius of 200 or more miles. Not
that your signal is any better; just that the people 150-200 miles out don't have any other choice so WANT to listen."

And this was always a real serious problem on the north slope. In winter, say from mid to late November to February, KBRW probably did a decent job covering the eight small communities scattered throughout the north slope like Wainright, Point Hope, Point Lay and Nuiqsut. But, by mid to late April, the entire north slope received so much daylight, that KBRW no longer has any kind of skywave signal at all because there's just too much daylight around, and from May 10th to August second, Barrow is in total daylight. So, in the late eighties, several north slope communities received satellite fed programming from KBRW and re-transmitted the station on low power FM stations. ON a series of tapes that I received of the station from Fran Tate in 1989, at the time there were two communities that were able to rebroadcast KBRW's signal on FM. They were heard on K268AB, Uniktuvik Pass at 101.5 Mhz, and on station K268AA in Point Hope also on 101.5 Mhz. Now, all north slope communities have a local FM feed of KBRW including Alpine, Anaktuvuk Pass, Atqasuk, Deadhorse, Kaktovik, Nuiqsut, Point Hope, Point Lay, Prudhoe Bay, Sagwon, Umiat and Wainwright.

Of course, although KBRW doesn't really care about the fact that this happens, during the long polar night in Barrow, their 10,000 watt signal goes right over the north pole, and sometimes puts very good reception into northern Scandinavia, the northern sections of Norway, Sweden and Finland. Sometimes they are heard reasonably well at night in the Shetland Islands as well. Of course, all the power lines for the city are above ground, and I'm sure that because of the extreme cold, the insulaters are in pretty rough shape as well which would just add to the general noise on the AM band. But you're certainly correct about the ignition noise from snow machines and four wheel drive vehicles as well. I must say that this has really become a fascinating topic thread indeed. And another very interesting piece of information has just come to light. I have just learned from the main
Wikipedia article about Barrow,
that Ilisagvik College in Barrow apparently has a radio station for students. The article is discussing the three subdivisions of Barrow and it states:

"The north section is the smallest and most isolated of the three sections. It is
connected to the central section only by
Stevenson Street
, a small, one-lane dirt road. The north section is centered around
Ilisagvik College
. This area also includes a small broadcasting station, which is run by the college
students." I have no idea of the call letters or frequency of this station but I'm going to have to do some more research on this. Well, all that came up from the FCC FM query is KBRW FM at 91.9 and the FM translator in Barrow that rebroadcasts KJNP from North Pole at 107.3 MHz. If anyone knows anything more about this radio station at Ilisagvik College, I would love to learn more about it.