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DXing translator content?

tomservo

tomservo

Has anyone had any luck DXing translator content?

I don't mean actual distant translators, I mean a local translator that's gone wonky picking up some different signals! Have you ID'd those stray signals? :eek:

The other night the conditions were a bit better than normal and our local religious translator (W276BI 103.1 Grenada, MS) was a mish-mash of stuff I couldn't identify. Or maybe their tuner got knocked around? I tuned to the parent station (WCMR 94.5 Bruce, MS) and it was weak but listenable.

It got me wondering if translator DXing is worthwhile, especially in areas where there are a lot of them on the air. It would a useful tip-off to good conditions. I got a few good snags that evening that I would have been oblivious to otherwise.

On an unrelated note, I tried to override the parent station with my XM's FM modulator, but it was a no-go. :p
 
It's Labor Day and I've got all the free time in the world, so my lil' translator issue is being examined again.

All morning it's been moving back and forth between three signals, so I hopped in the car and drove to the site, or as close as I could get (within eyesight of the one bay antenna on a cell tower.)

The first station was playing Christian contemporary music so I figured it was the "main" station, WCMR, Bruce, MS. Then they went to commercials, one of which mentioned area code 731. That was followed by an ID for "94 The Dove". Looked it up on Google (thanks Opera Mobile!) and it's probably a 94.5-93.9-93.7 tricast from west-central Tennessee.

The second was a morning show's best of, then I heard them say Kidd Kraddick. He's on 94.5 WYSF in Birmingham and I heard their top of hour ID shortly thereafter.

The third station mentioned Corinth, MS and then ID'd as Supertalk. Now here's where I get lost: The Supertalk station licensed to Corinth is on 94.3! :eek:

I drove out to a remote hilltop and tuned 94.3 - nothing. 94.5 was... WCMR from Bruce?

Now I've solved a mystery and opened another one. How is this translator stuck between a C2 (22kW @ 716' HAAT) from Lobelville, TN (177 air miles), a C0 (100kW @ 1014') from Birmingham (172 mi.) and a station one channel over? And on top of that, completely skipping over the close-by (40 mi.) station in Bruce? ???

I thought I had this whole FM thing figured out! ::)
 
98.1 W251AC will sometimes be overpowered by WTXT 98.1 in Tuscaloosa, 100.7 W264AI feeds from 98.1, so when it gets overpowered, 100.7 and the other translator that feeds from it will broadcast WTXT all over the Huntsville area. there was a big opening one time, where WTXT overpowered the local 98.1 translator for several days.
 
Zach said:
Aren't translators required to shut down or go silent when the parent station is lost?
Click to expand...
If no one's monitoring the translator 24/7, the engineer wouldn't know the translator lost the main signal. An easy way to monitor is to stream the translator's signal on the Internet to the main studio. A religious translator that translates a station playing metal during tropo wouldn't be good.

I remember WWXY 107.1 (now WLIR) used to simulcast 92.7 WLIR back in 2003. There was a strong tropo, and it simulcasted 92.7 WOBM most of the day (probably confused the heck out of the listeners). Someone in Connecticut heard 93.3 WMMR on 97.9 a while back. 97.9 is a translator for 93.3 WFAR, and there was tropo.
 
Nick said:
Zach said:
Aren't translators required to shut down or go silent when the parent station is lost?
Click to expand...
If no one's monitoring the translator 24/7, the engineer wouldn't know the translator lost the main signal.
Click to expand...

In another thread (on Engineering, I think) a station mentions installing a RDS decoder at the translator site, so that if the primary station (and its RDS) go away the translator is shut down.

There is a regulation requiring translators to shut down when the primary signal is lost but it sure looks to me like that reg is usually ignored. (or the translators are wired to shut down if there is no signal at all on the input frequency, but if the normal primary is overridden by another station the translator goes ahead & relays it...)
 
Several months back (before moving from the Lone Star State to the Buckeye State), my wife and I were making our way to church one Sunday morning and heard the weirdest thing on a translator station. Let me paint the picture.

KZQX-LP (104.9/Chalk Hill, TX) is an LPFM that is on a translator at 105.3 (K287AJ/Kilgore, TX), which gets its signal from another translator on 101.9 (K259AW/Longview, TX). We enjoyed the QX-FM format (nostalgia/big band) and would listen to the translators as we could. Well, this particular Sunday morning, I flipped over to the 105.3 translator and was quite surprised to hear rock coming from KBUS in Paris, TX., thanks to a morning opening. KBUS was strong enough that it was obliterating the 101.9 signal from ~15 miles up the road in Longview. Paris to Kilgore is about 100 miles "as the crow flies".

Never before or since have I heard something like that.
 
Most translator receivers have a "carrier sense" setting on them to try and set a signal threshold to determine if the input signal is missing, in which case the tuner mutes its composite output and closes a relay (that one can tie to the exciter's RF mute control).

The problem is that strong tropo can make an out of market signal strong enough to keep the carrier sense above threshold and keep the translator sending whatever is at the input.

I do like the RDS idea, although I wonder how well it works on the fringes since the RDS data usually drops out well before the main signal is gone.
 
Zach said:
Aren't translators required to shut down or go silent when the parent station is lost?
Click to expand...

Yes, they are Zach, but something is lost in the wording of the FCC rules. The applicable section (74.1234) states in part: "The transmitter shall also be equipped with suitable automatic circuits which will place it in a non-radiating condition in the absence of a signal on the input channel." Obviously that means the "parent" station but the rule doesn't specifically refer to it that way, and there's no mention of tropo or skip. Also, for what it's worth, the same rule applies to on-channel FM booster stations.
 
Ah... Clever wording.

C414B, I've concluded that the "chain-reception" you describe is how the translators around here are working. I was in Winona, about 30 miles south of here, and their new translator was blasting the same staticy mishmash of WYSF from Birmingham and the Supertalk station in Corinth. Now where it and the one near me pick up from is still a mystery. Several of these translators have just come on the air recently in my area, licensed to "Horizon Christian Fellowship". The FCC info says it's supposed to be relaying another non-comm religious outlet in Cleveland, MS on 98.3, but it's clear that they aren't picking it up. And it's clear that WCMR, the station they started out on, is no longer their target.

This morning the problems are gone; someone musta finally straightened things out. It's back to the WCMR Horizon station. Ugh. There goes my fun! :mad:
 
Zach said:
C414B, I've concluded that the "chain-reception" you describe is how the translators around here are working.
Click to expand...


From what I've gleaned, the translators must receive an off-air signal from the parent station if the parent is a commercial license. Is this the case with you and your scenario?
 
See some of my other posts in this section. DXing our 3 K-Love translators was fun for a week or so, when instead of the main station on 96.9 from Troy OH they relayed Kiss 96-9 from Lexington, KY. One of the translators picks up the 96.9 signal, relays it on 107.1 which one of the other translators in turn used to relay 96.7. One morning I not only had the signal from Lexington's 96.9, but a Columbus station on 107.1 being relayed on 96.7.
 
Here on Eastern Long Island we recently gotten a 93.3 translator. Don't know what station its for but i know its alternative. Well one night with some crazy tropo we were getting WAAF crystal clear. Lasted for about 3 days, it actually was nice for once to hear a decent rocker on the dial.
 
Sorry I'm late to the party! :) Actually, C414B, over-the-air reception rules are dependent only on the frequency of the translator itself. Any translator located at 92.1 or above MUST receive its feed from an over-the-air parent, whether the parent be commercial or noncommercial.
 
I sure wished someone of importance would file a PRM to the Commission to change the rules to where non-commercial translators, regardless of where they are in the band, can be feed by non-off-air methods if they are within a certain distance of a station. (something like 100 miles for a class A, 125 for a class B and 150 for a class C) I know why the FCC forces us to to the over-the-air thing. The are trying to limit the nation God-Channel chains from overtaking every translator available and feeding it from HQ in another state hudreds of miles away. If they let anyone do the non-off-air feed thing they open Pandora's box and create hell. If they just put some REASONABLE restrictions on how far you could translate a station using other feeding methods it would be of greater service for everyone, especially the listeners that currently have to put up with tropo-ducting.
 
Hearing a translator translate a distant station due to tropo or e-skip is rare. A translator on 96.5 on Long Island translating a low power religious 94.7 translated WMAS 94.7 from Springfield, MA all day.

Similarly, I have heard DX on a low power station's webstream that get their audio from a tuner rather than off the board.

Will the FCC take action against a translator that is relaying another station due to tropo?
 
Josh C. said:
I've never heard of that happening, Nick, and I doubt they would, seeing as there's really not much anyone could do to prevent it.
Click to expand...

Well, you could transmit some kind of non-standard subcarrier on the primary station, install a detector at the translator, and kill the translator transmitter if the subcarrier goes away. I have heard of stations doing this.

But yes, the FCC almost certainly isn't going to sanction a translator that relays the "wrong" station during a band opening.
 
Actually, I seem to recall there being a rule that a translator must shut off when it loses its parent signal... Either by some subaudible method as w9wi described or by using the RDS carrier as a guide, etc.

It certainly doesn't seem practical that the FCC could or would take action when these little band openings occur, though.
 
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