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KEFM-LP analog ch6
- Thread starter jhimbo
- Start date
Sounds like it could be a pirate station. If someone is broadcasting audio/video on analog standard EIA channel 6, the audio will be 4.5Mhz away from Ch.6 video: 87.75Mhz. Try tuning the audio close to that on a radio. -OR- it could be leakage from a nearby cable system. Something frowned upon by the FCC.
Where are you at??
It's a low-power Chico Station
It's a low-power Chico Station
Not 100% sure, but I think Steve does his vault of vinyl on a low power chico station
Well, it's licensed to Chico, but they have a CP to move the transmitter to Sutter Buttes with 3 KW:
http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=127996
From what I remember this "Venture Technologies Group" makes a business of leasing channel-6 analog stations to radio broadcasters. There's a K-love on 87.7 in the Bay Area from Loma Prieta with way more power than a regular class-B would have at that site. In this case, KEFM will have more power than the co-located 99.9 FM.
Interesting.
Dave B.
http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/tvq?list=0&facid=127996
From what I remember this "Venture Technologies Group" makes a business of leasing channel-6 analog stations to radio broadcasters. There's a K-love on 87.7 in the Bay Area from Loma Prieta with way more power than a regular class-B would have at that site. In this case, KEFM will have more power than the co-located 99.9 FM.
Interesting.
Dave B.
DaveBayArea said:
I believe they have a COL change to Sacramento somewhere in the process. The 3 kw should only be video with 300 watts audio if I'm correct.
Michael Rivers Kramer said:
I remember reading somewhere (perhaps on this board) that the visual-to-aural carrier ratio for LPTV's is not specifically stated anywhere in the rules, and the franken-FM's were pushing the envelope on that. I do know that the audio carrier of the Chan. 6 in the Bay Area is stronger than the visual carrier on my spectrum analyzer, so I just assumed they were doing something like that. Not sure tho.
Dave B.
DaveBayArea said:
Yep: while keeping in mind that I"m not a lawyer, by my reading of the rules the maximum aural power for an analog LPTV is the same as the maximum visual power -- 3kw on channel 6.
The rule for full-power analog stations was no more than 22% of visual. So for a 3kw-visual analog full-power station, the maximum aural power would have been 660 watts. However, most full power analog stations used something much closer to 10%; 300 watts would have been a typical figure.
Steven Roy said:
Traditionally the full-power TV audio is 10 db down from the video. But of course that used to provide full-quieting audio when the picture was still full of video noise. So cable companies traditionally dropped the audio level because it improved the picture, as you say. It's far more in-line with the actual requirements of legacy NTSC.
In the case of KEFM the goal is analog audio coverage and nothing more. It will be interesting to see what the programming is, and who they lease it to. Right now they're either off the air or shadowed from my location in Pioneer. The only thing I'm getting on 87.7 is K-love from Loma Prieta.
Dave B.
Steven Roy said:
For OTA analog TV it was rare (but not completely unheardof) for the audio carrier to be more than 10dB below the visual. Again, it was legal to use as much as 22% of visual power. (roughly 4dB below visual) While most stations seemed to use 10% (10dB down), 15% and 20% were also fairly common. OTA analog stations didn't have to worry about blasting the next channel's video, as the FCC always assigned at least one empty channel between any pair of stations in the same area.
Channels 4, 6, and 13 didn't really have a "next channel" to blast; there are large spectrum gaps before the next channel. The adjacent-channel services' receivers were MUCH more selective than TV sets, so you could have a fair amount of aural carrier without causing any problems.
Of course, cable almost always *does* have an upper adjacent channel -- so the selectivity problem is greater -- but you can guarantee more signal on every channel than OTA can, so you can run the aural lower without being too worried about noisy sound.
Yep, KEFM really doesn't care whether anyone is watching the video. The FCC requires them to *have* video but nobody really cares what it is.
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