DXing the Hippie

[PirateJohnny]

I did some traveling this weekend with my car's FM radio tuned into 94.5.

I got a signal down to I-24 and 840, and up to the 2nd exit where I got off of 840. A little scratchy unless I was on top of the small hills down there, but, for me, still listenable.

I drove up I-65 into Kentucky all the way to exit 6 where it finally got too scratchy for me.

I grew up DXing AM Top 40 stations in the early 70s before I knew what DXing was, so I can stand a little static... What radio was I using? The stock Ford radio in my 1995 Mustang. I remember Ford AM radios from the late 60s were great in pulling in distant signals, and sounded great doing it, too.

 

[jetfli]

Those Ford Philco radios were fantastic! Drive up on one of the tallest hills in most Southern towns and just enjoy the US airwaves... and the young lady you were with... as you pulled in WOWO, WLS (and John Records Landecker), WQXI and Coyote McCloud, etc., etc.

I'll have to say I've been extremely impressed with the engineering behind Hippie's signal. It stands up between and around the Brentwood hills and the Ashland City valleys, quite a feat with their humble power. And I LOVE that liner that refers to Hippie's meager 5000 watts as "your 5 million milliwatt blowtorch"!! That's mathematical and marketing genius!

 

[Tibbs4]

Jet, hell. Be careful saying good things about inept, non-corporate little radio stations like this Hippie channel. Next thing you know, some moron will be blasting brilliance on here like it's not important for this station to have fans that actually talk about it or know it's name. It's only important to know the advertisers. Or that this station, like Lightning 100, is irrelevant because of ratings or signal. You might end up getting it turned into a piece of radio art like 97.1 RQQQQ that promises to only play the same six liners between every song. That, sir, is real radio. Riveting radio circa 2012. Why even Mix and Jack are inferior by contrast because they, like WHPY, are pretty much local stations compared to the Kings collection. Can't you just promote that The Rock just played it's one billionth Eagles song since it's inception?

 

[firepoint525]

'RQQ's signal almost completely disappears along OHB between Hillsboro and Brentwood. Some might say that that's a good thing! ;D But it seems odd that a station with a Belle Meade COL would disappear that close to Belle Meade!

We picked up Hippie a bit sooner than we expected on our return trip from Pensacola, because we were expecting to listen to WKOM once we got back into Tennessee, but damn if they didn't spring some more of their NAStyCAR crap on us! I don't remember where we were when we first picked up Hippie, but I believe it was Maury County. I'm thinking that we lost them going southbound, also in Maury County.

 

[secondchoice]

The real shame is the WDBL Springfield had 94.3 sense the 1960's.* Went the FCC "loosened up" the FM band (1980's) they could have moved their 94.3 to Greenbriar or Ridgetop, even moved COL if needed, and used 94.5 or a directional antenna and with the "ridge" helping their tower they could have covered most of the Market with Class A power.

*There was rumor that 101.1 was originally to go the Springfield. WDBL "swapped" with WRUS Russelville KY to avoid the high electric bill. That is why the 101.1 move in worked so well.

 

[firepoint525]

The real shame is the WDBL Springfield had 94.3 sense the 1960's.* Went the FCC "loosened up" the FM band (1980's) they could have moved their 94.3 to Greenbriar or Ridgetop, even moved COL if needed, and used 94.5 or a directional antenna and with the "ridge" helping their tower they could have covered most of the Market with Class A power.

We were in Springfield a couple of months ago, and Hippie Radio came in clear as a bell. Eagle 94.3, right next door on the FM dial, current COL Oak Grove, KY, (Clarksville "move-in"?) also came in perfectly clear. They weren't interfering with each other at all, at least not on my car radio. 8)

 

[secondchoice]

Eagle 94.3, right next door on the FM dial, current COL Oak Grove, KY, (Clarksville "move-in"?)

WDBL sold 94.3 (IIRC three or four years ago) and it was moved back up to Clarksville. I "started" radio at WDBL AM 1590 FM 94.3 Springfield in 1972. I was really bad but they let me hang out and do some fill in. During those years they were country from a 5am FM sign till 6 or 7pm then JT had his soul show. He did very well competing locally with John R (WLAC). Lots of commercials for a night show. They simulcasted 94.3 with the AM which had PSA 500 watts @6AM till sunrise then and 1KW till sunset.

 

[w9wi]

The real shame is the WDBL Springfield had 94.3 sense the 1960's.* Went the FCC "loosened up" the FM band (1980's) they could have moved their 94.3 to Greenbriar or Ridgetop, even moved COL if needed, and used 94.5 or a directional antenna and with the "ridge" helping their tower they could have covered most of the Market with Class A power.

*There was rumor that 101.1 was originally to go the Springfield. WDBL "swapped" with WRUS Russelville KY to avoid the high electric bill. That is why the 101.1 move in worked so well.

Y'know, I had the same recollection about WDBL swapping channels with WRUS -- but the first allocation table I can find after the table was created in 1964 shows WDBL on 94.3. It does show WRUS on 92.1A, not 101.1.

Isn't 94.3 now part of Saga's Clarksville cluster?

 

[secondchoice]

The engineer Jay (I forgot his name last, but he had a full time gig with the phone company in Nashville) or the PD Walter George told me about the swap I and it was made before either stations went on the air. They said it was the 101.1 frequency and the minimum power was going to be 10KW* instead of 3kw, thus the bigger power bill. IIRC WDBL FM had a 1KW RCA transmitter that went into a 3 or 4 bay horizontal only antenna. I can understand the economics of a big power bill for the few FM radios around, similar to HD now. Who knows in twenty or thirty years HD and the sub channels might make FM the AM of today.

* IIRC WKDA FM was 10KW before they went 100KW in the very early 1970's.

 

[firepoint525]

Didn't Tuned-In (parent company of Lightning 100) also own 94.3 there for a while? I recall that they did, but I don't think that they ever really did anything with it.

 

[jwk1979]

Didn't Tuned-In (parent company of Lightning 100) also own 94.3 there for a while? I recall that they did, but I don't think that they ever really did anything with it.

I don't know about 94.3 FM, but they did own both of 94 The Fish signals, 93.7 FM out in Dickson and 94.1 in Smyrna. 94.1 started out as Thunder 94, playing a harder edge version on Lightning 100 before they started simucasting Lightning 100 on both 94.1 and 100.1. 93.7 was The Pheonix, playing more of an Americana format before both 93.7 and 94.1 was sold to Salem for the Fish.

 

[w9wi]

Yes, Tuned-In owned WDBL for awhile. FCC says they bought it in 1988. (I sure don't remember Tuned-In owning it when I came to town in 1990!) The transfer to Saga isn't in CDBS -- Saga is listed as the licensee when they applied to move it to Oak Grove in 2004 and I'd imagine Saga didn't hold it for very long before making that application.

Do I remember properly that 94.3 did carry the Thunder 94 programming for awhile?

I rather enjoyed Thunder 94.

_________________________________________________

secondchoice: I clearly remember seeing that 101.1 Springfield assignment *somewhere*, just can't find it now. I also remember seeing 101.9 assigned to Clarksville.

The WDBL-FM antenna is still in place on the 1590 AM tower west of town. They allowed the station to have a daylong reminiscence broadcast on their last day in Springfield, interesting listening.

To my recollection, there was never a 10kw power limit. In the initial FM rules, Class A stations were limited to 1kw/250' and Class B to 20kw/500'. (outside the Northeast, Class B applicants could request a waiver of the 20kw maximum; if it wouldn't interfere with anything, the FCC would grant it. Powers of 400kw or more were not unusual, although it's not clear how many such stations were actually built.) There was a MAJOR overhaul of the FM technical rules in 1964; this is when the current 100kw limit around here (and 50kw in the Northeast and California) was set.

I'm not sure what the *minimum* power limit was before the 1964 changes. It was less than 10kw, as powers between 3 and 4kw were not unusual for Class B stations.

But if WDBL felt they would never be able to compete as a Nashville station, they probably figured it made sense to trade the 101.1 frequency to Russellville for a Class A frequency that would be adequate to serve Robertson County. Being further "out in the woods", Russellville could make better use of a Class C channel.

Of course, if WDBL had kept the Class C channel, it probably would have been converted to a Nashville station even sooner than Russellville did.

 

[courier37027]

IIRC 94.3 at one time carried The Phoenix, and could be heard on 93.7, 94.1 and 94.3. Occasionally 94.3 would refer to themselves as "Local Phoenix".

 

[firepoint525]

IIRC 94.3 at one time carried The Phoenix, and could be heard on 93.7, 94.1 and 94.3. Occasionally 94.3 would refer to themselves as "Local Phoenix".

I lived in south Nashville (Harding Place, Harding Mall area) during the Phoenix's heyday, and at that time they (the Phoenix) were not on 94.1, only on 93.7, but the signal (on 93.7) came in just fine over there. 94.1 was simulcasting Lightning 100 at the time, and the 94.1 signal in south Nash was so-so, at best.

 

[LouPickney]

I remember Thunder 94 quite well -- it was a wonderful alternative rock station. Solid jocks, outstanding music, but sadly between signal limitations and how much it was billing (I'm guessing not a great deal) and the niche format, it died at some point after I went to college in 1995. It was great while it lasted, though. They had a good morning show with Adam Dread (I still remember the "talent on loan from a dog" liner lampooning Rush Limbaugh) and stellar voiceovers from the late Keith Eubanks out of Atlanta.

 

[TheDingo]

I've yet to hear anything of it down here in the Ardmore area, even with the directional antenna, WJOX coming up from Birmingham is still too strong with that mono signal (yet i can get WANT 98.9 down here even with it next to a local 100kw)

 

[anotherguyTN]

I was in Nashville on Saturday and listened to The Hippie going out until it faded out on I-40 around exit 163 just outside of Dickson. That's definitely a big difference from when it came in all the way to Jackson before the tower was moved.

 

[Rocky2539]

Based on my experience, some of the DX reports in this thread are very optimistic. With a stock Ford (2009) radio, Hippy is unlistenable is most of Rutherford County and Wilson County, some of Sumner County and very spotty in southern Davidson County from Green Hills to Brentwood. Remember that the Nashville Metro is 8 counties and it is very tough to compete when your signal is an issue for about 30-35% of the Metro population. (Unless you are an ethnic station with your tower is located in an area concentrated with your target audience, like 92Q.) The signal bar for a typical listener is a bit higher, perhaps, than for someone trying to make a point about a signal. Most folks want it to sound "good" without excessive dropouts, fuzzing or multipath. If the signal can't stand up to that, they're outta there.

This is also unfortunate for Hippy in that their closest format competitor, 97.1, has a better signal in most of the areas where 94.5 is weakest. Of course, 97.1 has other issues.

 

[firepoint525]

If you can't pick it up in Davidson County, get a better radio. It comes in just fine everywhere that I have previously said that it did (in this thread). And I have a 2001 Lumina with a factory radio.

I had signal issues with them a couple of weeks ago, and I thought that they were doing (more) transmitter work (again), but they said the next day that it was due to the extremely foggy conditions on the morning that I was having trouble picking them up.

 

[NashvilleNative]

If you can't pick it up in Davidson County, get a better radio. It comes in just fine everywhere that I have previously said that it did (in this thread). And I have a 2001 Lumina with a factory radio.

I have to disagree. They struggle near the fairgrounds pretty bad. Also on 40E on the downhill before OHB fades bad as well. This is in 3 different cars. All that have no problem pulling in 94.7, 95.1, and 102.5. My house in Old Hickory is technically in Davidson County, but they struggle there pretty bad as well. I haven't checked Madison, where 102.5 is obliterated by the hills of North Nashville to the West.