• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

KEXP Swaps out antennas

Yeah except for those pesky hills in the way from Capital Hill. No antenna will overcome terrain. A waste of money if you ask me.
 
WHY do broadcasters STILL insist on broadcasting off of Capitol Hill? It is the WORST damn place to put a transmitter and antennae because once you're out of Seattle proper, the signal goes STRAIGHT TO HELL. By the time you get into Lynnwood, the multipath gets UNBEARABLE (and don't EVEN get me started on what they sound like in EVERETT.) OR what broadcast TV looks like off Capitol Hill at those distances.....
 
I know what you're saying, Bong. Cougar would be better. But KEXP is actually owned by the University of Washington (but you'd never know), and that tower was originally owned by the University, thus the connection. KEXP (KCMU) was run by students on the UW campus many years ago and part of the ASWU. So they likey have a sweetheart deal with TV 9, operator of the tower.
 
I was painfuly aware of that. But Steve, does the UW ITSELF understand by NOW how BAD it is to run KCTS-TV/KUOW-FM/KEXP-FM off that hill?

They have the smarts (being a University, I HOPE), they should know by now that Capitol Hill doesn't work very well no matter how much power you put into it. They should go Tiger Mountain like everybody else these days. Capitol Hill would make a great translator site for a signal outside of Seattle, but not for a MAJOR local station, forget it...

Cheers!
 
Bongwater said:
I was painfuly aware of that. But Steve, does the UW ITSELF understand by NOW how BAD it is to run KCTS-TV/KUOW-FM/KEXP-FM off that hill?
Click to expand...

Still better than the stick atop the dorm where it ran initally!! As I recall it was 10 watts from that venue ... and even though it had 11+ floors going for it, the building foundation was sunk way down in a hill so tower barely cleared the campus!!

For 90.3/90.5 it's Baby steps every 25 years, I guess....
 
I've always scratched my head whenever I hear about FM's trying to broadcast from this site....Kelly is right on regarding the problem and this is why the idea of "cheap rent" for KUOW and KEXP is such a problem for the listeners of these two stations with regards to clear reception. FM Steve brought out the obnoxious politics of the situation, but I say that if KNHC can get off an elementary school rooftop after all these years, so can these "university stations".....all they have to do is think about the bigger picture and not just about tower rent. It will seriously help KUOW's HD channels too....if they ever move the main off of that hill.
 
radioplayer said:
I've always scratched my head whenever I hear about FM's trying to broadcast from this site....
Click to expand...

Broadening out this question a bit -- why haven't the Seattle TV stations ever moved off of Queen Anne and Capitol Hills? While I now live in Texas, I grew up in the southwest suburbs of Tacoma, and I've never understood why none of the other TV stations in the area followed KCPQ-TV to Gold Mountain.
 
That's easy...The original TV stations in the market were all on Queen Anne Hill, where everyone's antennas are aimed to this day. Gold Mountain also has far more terrain issues to key population areas than Queen Anne, who is centrally located in the market.

A mobile environment like radio, needs the height and look-angle to the moving receivers. For TV, Queen Anne and Capital Hill are still the best for TV. Most homes that can't get a direct shot to Queen Anne and Capital hill can get cable or satellite.
 
Try watching KCPQ over in Bellevue sometime. I did once, from a hotel room, and it pretty much answered the "why not move to Gold Mountain" question to my satisfaction.

I'm thinking that Seattle would be a heck of a good test market for the distributed-transmission systems that they're experimenting with elsewhere in the country (WTVE-DT around Philadelphia, several of the Puerto Rico stations) - rather than trying to hit the entire market from one site, which can't be done cleanly from ANY one site in Seattle-Tacoma, use multiple lower-powered transmitters at a number of sites, all on the same channel, to provide wide area service. You can't do that with analog, but it appears to work with ATSC digital (and could also work with digital-only FM HD someday...)
 
Gold Mountain had/has one VERY big advantage. The signals off Gold Mountain may not come in too well on the East side, but KHIT (on Gold Mountain from 1984-87) could be heard as clear as a local in places like Vancouver, BC, Bellingham clear down to the South End. All along I-5, reception was almost rock solid, even in terrain challenged areas like downtown Everett when NO Cougar Mountain/Capitol/Queen Anne Hill signal could penetrate. I had NO problem getting KHIT in Seattle. But when they went Capitol Hill, the signal was hopeless everywhere else but Seattle and the Eastside. And it still wasn't enough to save them, it's successors, KNUA, KKNW and even early KRWM looked doomed before they moved to Tiger (or Cougar - where is it now?)

And another thing about Tiger Mountain. When it was just one station up there (KBSG), their signal was PHENOMENAL. But now with every FM station putting up a stick there, the signal quality of ALL Tiger Mountain stations (including KBSG) seems to have degraded to some point or another. Maybe too much of a good thing....
 
That's great Larry for your isolated example, but again.. TV is best from Capital and Queen Anne Hill for "fixed" reception.

There is a reason the last FM station has left Gold Mt. for places like Cougar and West Tiger. Gold has poor line-of-site coverage to the east side of I-5 including Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, Kent, Auburn, Maple Valley, Enumclaw, etc. Other than that, its a great site! (not!) Also signal parity with your competition is more important for TV reception than with radio.
 
Kelly said:
That's great Larry for your isolated example, but again.. TV is best from Capital and Queen Anne Hill for "fixed" reception.

There is a reason the last FM station has left Gold Mt. for places like Cougar and West Tiger. Gold has poor line-of-site coverage to the east side of I-5 including Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, Kent, Auburn, Maple Valley, Enumclaw, etc. Other than that, its a great site! (not!) Also signal parity with your competition is more important for TV reception than with radio.
Click to expand...

Thanks for yours, but you weren't riding shotgun in my '75 VW Dasher back in the day (1984-early 1986) with a Pioneer Supertuner on those trips to Bellingham. You might be surprised. Except for that spot just over the Whatcom County line past Skagit County on I-5 near Lake Samish where EVERY STATION (even Bellingham AM stations, just a few miles away) come in BAD, KHIT was rock solid and crystal CLEAR everywhere else on I-5, straight into Seattle and further south. Gold Mountain's only real obstacle was the Eastside where it did come in spotty in places, but most everywhere else, it worked. Might have been the Pioneer Supertuner, but that may also be the problem. What was your radio?

Not trying to pick a fight or anything, but I simply can't understand for any other reason beyond income demographics and minor terrestrial (which could have been fixed with an Eastside translator) why Gold Mountain didn't work back then. Today, KRWM comes in spotty in Mount Vernon and Bellingham and in suburban Bellingham hills especially, can get wiped out by CHWF out of Naniamo sometimes. 106.9 is also a popular pirate frequency in Bellingham proper....

Cheers!
 
Bongwater said:
Kelly said:
That's great Larry for your isolated example, but again.. TV is best from Capital and Queen Anne Hill for "fixed" reception.   

There is a reason the last FM station has left Gold Mt. for places like Cougar and West Tiger.  Gold has poor line-of-site coverage to the east side of I-5 including Bellevue, Issaquah, Kirkland, Redmond, Kent, Auburn, Maple Valley, Enumclaw, etc.  Other than that, its a great site! (not!)  Also signal parity with your competition is more important for TV reception than with radio.   
Click to expand...

Thanks for yours, but you weren't riding shotgun in my '75 VW Dasher back in the day (1984-early 1986) with a Pioneer Supertuner on those trips to Bellingham. You might be surprised. Except for that spot just over the Whatcom County line past Skagit County on I-5 near Lake Samish where EVERY STATION (even Bellingham AM stations, just a few miles away) come in BAD, KHIT was rock solid and crystal CLEAR everywhere else on I-5, straight into Seattle and further south. Gold Mountain's only real obstacle was the Eastside where it did come in spotty in places, but most everywhere else, it worked. Might have been the Pioneer Supertuner, but that may also be the problem. What was your radio?

Not trying to pick a fight or anything, but I simply can't understand for any other reason beyond income demographics and minor terrestrial (which could have been fixed with an Eastside translator) why Gold Mountain didn't work back then. Today, KRWM comes in spotty in Mount Vernon and Bellingham and in suburban Bellingham hills especially, can get wiped out by CHWF out of Naniamo sometimes. 106.9 is also a popular pirate frequency in Bellingham proper....

Cheers!
Click to expand...

Gold Mountain is pretty much out of the question today, regardless.  Emergency, telephone, and other radio services not related to broadcasting have pretty much filled up the mountain AFAIK, judging by what I saw on my last hike up Green Mountain a couple months ago, which is immediately north of Gold Mountain.  The west end of the mountain is starting to live up to it's name also as far as the color, from all the logging activity that has taken place up there.

KWDK-TV when they first started up, AFAIK was broadcasting off the side of KTBW-TV's tower (which figures....both religious stations) on Gold Mountain, before moving to the newer antenna on Tiger Mountain.  Their signal improved for east side residents when they moved to there.  Today, only KCPQ and KTBW, and the Puget Sound's weather radio station, broadcast from there.

I know some people in Bremerton who remembered 106.9 when they we're actually broadcasting from their COL (That's why KRWM ID's as Bremerton-Seattle-Tacoma), which was back when I "was a small lad", and 106.9 was the most powerful station on the Kitsap Peninsula, and sometimes the only one they can pick up if they lived west of the mountain.  KHIT (Now KRWM) started out as KBRO-FM in Bremerton many years ago.  After 106.9 moved, they left their auxillary facility up there for a few years before they even took that down, which I don't know why they ever did that, as Gold Mountain would make a great auxillary broadcast location for anyone.  Before KBRO-FM moved to Gold Mountain, they we're broadcasting from the center of Downtown Bremerton (simulcasting with 1490 AM for most of the day), which probably was the worst place to broadcast in the market, unless you we're in Kitsap County.  Those we're back in the days when radio was really local though and anywhere outside of there didn't matter.

The problem with Gold Mountain though, are the small hills that act as shadows from Gold Mountain, which is also the same problem stations on South Mountain will run into (KDDS, and eventually KNBQ and KFMY).  Unless they have translators or boosters to fill in the holes behind those hills, they won't have any luck getting into those areas.

On a side note but related to Gold Mountain.... check out these views from the top of KCPQ's tower on Gold Mountain...
http://www.thombailey.com/gold.html
This person is one of those people who climbs towers to change the tower lights, for a living.  He's been on other towers around the area, but the views he got from the top of KCPQ's tower up there IMO, are the best....  Someone even told me long ago that on a very clear day, you can spot Mt. St. Helens from the top of KCPQ's tower.
 
Thank you SOOO much for your insight. You're cool.

I knew KBRO-FM/KWWA ran off a transmitter in a Bremerton area park (as the basic scraps of the original, non-airchecked, memory I have left of KWWA.) It may be just as distorted as their signal was in Lynnwood, at the memory of the KWWA sign off used to, but I still remembered still ran at 30,000 watts. I was just figuring out this thing called radio. at that time. (I was 13-15 in the day back in those dayx. I will be 39 tomorrow. Wow, what a trip.)

CHEERS!,

Larry!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom