Is there really an “optimal” location in the Bay Area for FM/TV to broadcast from?

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Here's another one this is KRCB-FM's transmitter near Santa Rosa to get the North Bay Audience. This is if the broadcasting city of License is specific to Santa Rosa and not Bay Area wide then this is optimum for them. Then again this requires a specific purpose here when it comes to placing their transmitter.

Monument Peak and Mount Allison is good when it's tied to transmitting FM and TV signals to San Jose.

At one point KNTV San Jose prior to being an affiliate of NBC had it's transmitter on Loma Prieta peak before they had to move to the San Bruno Mountains to direct their signals to San Francisco and Oakland. Yes Mt Sutro, Mount Beacon, Twin Peaks and San Bruno mountains are great if the aim it to be Bay Area wide. Any other place then it's going to be limited.

 

[Big D]

I’d take Grizzly Peak where 94.1 sits over Sutro or San Bruno. Especially if you have grandfathered power like KPFA.

 

[inari]

I’d take Grizzly Peak where 94.1 sits over Sutro or San Bruno. Especially if you have grandfathered power like KPFA.

Here's the L/R for KPFA:

https://www.rabbitears.info/contour.php?appid=76853cbd62f245c7bd3dc1b6063ebeb7&map=Y

With that power it looks like it does really well.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I’d take Grizzly Peak where 94.1 sits over Sutro or San Bruno. Especially if you have grandfathered power like KPFA.

One problem: Grandfathered facilities are the ERP at the transmitter site in use when they were locked in. You move, you lose the higher power and have to recalculate based on station class at the new site.

 

[radiofan2023]

Which stations have been on Mount Tam?

 

[Mark Roberts]

I’d take Grizzly Peak where 94.1 sits over Sutro or San Bruno. Especially if you have grandfathered power like KPFA.

KPFA is not on Grizzly Peak!

It's on Fish Ranch Peak. Yes, it's on Grizzly Peak Boulevard, rather misnamed as a boulevard because it's just a two-lane asphalt road, favored by cyclists because of the steep grades. I know, I've done it. Hundreds of times over living in the hills for a quarter-century. Between the KPFA site and the actual Grizzly Peak there's a decline in elevation then, at Fish Ranch Road, about a quarter mile of hill at about an 8-9% grade. It's a workout.

Here's a map, generated from Michi's fccdata.org - the bright red pointer is the KPFA site at Fish Ranch Peak:


Do you want to know who's really got a transmitter on Grizzly Peak?


What's on the second map: the transmitter site for K-Love's K205BM, broadcasting Radio Nueva Vida with a directional pattern aimed right at San Francisco.

The first map should also indicate why KPFB is necessary.

(edited to all alt-text for second map)

 

[davideduardo]

I know, I've done it. Hundreds of times over living in the hills for a quarter-century. Between the KPFA site and the actual Grizzly Peak there's a decline in elevation then, at Fish Ranch Road, about a quarter mile of hill at about an 8-9% grade. It's a workout.

OMG. Kudos to you, Mark. I am tired just visualizing that ride or run.

Once, long ago, I had to walk to my FM site, 3000 feet above Quito on a road that had 3 or 4 fold-backs and was about 4km in distance, carrying my trusted Simpson and some parts. The road had washed out in the "cordonazo", a seasonal once a year rainstorm and there was no other way there. That was back when there were no plastic water bottles and lightweight synthetic material belts and harnesses, either.

As a separate subject I should perhaps post this for engineers to describe getting to difficult transmitter sites. I've heard stories of Canadian transmitter sites that were inaccessible for entire months in winter; that apparently motivated robust marine and remote gear maker Nautel to add broadcast transmitters to their lines.

 

[Mark Roberts]

OMG. Kudos to you, Mark. I am tired just visualizing that ride or run.

Thanks...but there are guys, who are clearly in their 70s, who do this all the time and are better at it than I am. To get something like this experience in Denver, I'd have to go up Lookout Mountain from Golden, and that's a dangerous road where cars go too fast. There are lots of transmitters on Lookout, though!

The reward for those Grizzly climbs was like this (photo taken July 4, 2022). (Alt-text: a view of San Francisco Bay taken from Grizzly Peak in Oakland, showing the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Sutro Tower, with the Emeryville and Berkeley shoreline in the foreground)


(Alt-text: a view of San Francisco Bay taken from Grizzly Peak in Oakland, showing the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Sutro Tower, with the Emeryville and Berkeley shoreline in the foreground)

And this is the KPFA tower (with an unknown communications tower plus a microwave relay tower, both to the east (left)), taken from halfway down the downhill from Grizzly Peak, looking toward Fish Ranch Peak), taken on my last Oakland ride in August 2023:

 

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

Here are more places where the signals are outside the main areas of Mt Sutro, Twin Peaks, Grizzly peak, San Bruno Mountains, and Mount Beacon some of this is because the stations are mainly targeting a subset of the Bay Area like KKDV Concord/Walnut Creek whose transmitter is within the Diablo Valley area. Also KKIQ whose transmitter is more directed at Livermore and Pleasanton areas both owned by Alpha Media Inc.