• 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

KGIL 1260 Going HD

Another mainstream, mass-appeal AM goes "HD." ;) Radio-locator advises they're DA-2 with 4 towers. Can't help but wonder how HD is gonna work on AM with classical music, if KGIL's directional system is typical.

"Stay tuned!" If you can stand the hiss! And the defaults-to-analog! And the artifacting! :D
 
Whoa, Nelly! Those eastern KGIL nighttime nulls are majorly deep ones! 1260 is extremely suppressed due east towards San Bernardino and to the east-northeast. Gotta wonder if KGIL's gonna be another "digital daytimer."
 
That's horrible, but being a classical fan, even I would listen through the hiss and static (see, content is still king)!

Unfortunately the KGIL signal is no match for what SoCal used to have when KBACH was on 540. They had a killer signal for hundreds of miles up the coast.

Too bad they wouldn't consider going stereo with C-QUAM. KXTR (classical 1650) still uses it.
 
What about second-adjacent hash from 1260? I hope KFRN 1280 Long Beach
complains loudly to the FCC if 1260 starts I-CRAPping all over its (KFRN 1280)
center frequency.

This assumes Family Radio has so far stuck with analog on 1280, seeing as how
there is 1260, 1280 and 1300 all in the El Lay metro.
 
Another case of more money than sense. I pity the poor consultant that has to put this crap on the air, except there's gonna be some dead presidents changing hands for it.
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
What about second-adjacent hash from 1260? I hope KFRN 1280 Long Beach
complains loudly to the FCC if 1260 starts I-CRAPping all over its (KFRN 1280)
center frequency.

This assumes Family Radio has so far stuck with analog on 1280, seeing as how
there is 1260, 1280 and 1300 all in the El Lay metro.
Click to expand...

I actually know the engineer over at KFRN and last I talked to him (which was five months ago) he told me they had no plans for HD. I should call him and get his take on KGIL going HD.

The amusing thing about KGIL is the LA spin Levine tries to put on the station, such as giving it a Beverly Hills address. The tower site is actually in the San Fernando Valley which makes it difficult to get reliable reception in the LA basin due to the terrain. The Long Beach/Seal Beach area where I am is especially noisy for KGIL.

From what I've been reading, HD-AM is particularly problematic for multi-tower arrays. So I'm not sure how KGIL will fare with its 4-tower system. I doubt those few who own HD Radio receivers in the LA basin will get a good digital signal from 1260 given that their analog signal is already spotty at best.

C5
 
But while we are all complaining about the AM HD, the important part is that the Classical signal will be on KKGO HD-2 where those of us with HD radios will welcome another classical signal on FM.
 
Yep. Both of you. Or, how about this: put classical music on the wonderfully hi-fi 32 kbps HD-2 and forget the AM version entirely?

If 1280's owners complain to the FCC about adjacent-channel hash from KGIL, hope they don't expect an actual response from the Enforcement Bureau. The Commission has studiously avoided any official action on HD interference complaints.

The way they "resolve" complaints is informally, off the record, with mounds of "plausible deniability," advise the adverse parties that it would be in their best interests to resolve the issue privately. In most cases this consists of the HD-interferor giving the victim station the finger. In only one case of which I am aware - WFIL vs. WHP - did the interfering station reduce its digital injection level voluntarily.
 
I can't imagine how badly classical music is going to sound on AM with iBlock with it's artificial synthesized highs, i can't take it for more than about one minute.
 
Carmine5 said:
The amusing thing about KGIL is the LA spin Levine tries to put on the station, such as giving it a Beverly Hills address. The tower site is actually in the San Fernando Valley which makes it difficult to get reliable reception in the LA basin due to the terrain.
Click to expand...

The station is licensed to Beverly Hills, and puts the required field intensity over the COL.

710's transmitter is in the SFV, too. It's an LA license.
 
Savage said:
Whoa, Nelly! Those eastern KGIL nighttime nulls are majorly deep ones! 1260 is extremely suppressed due east towards San Bernardino and to the east-northeast. Gotta wonder if KGIL's gonna be another "digital daytimer."
Click to expand...

The KGIL nulls fall over the mountains... actually, it could not be designed better as it does not spill signal on those unpopulated areas. San Bernardino is not in the LA market any more than Buffalo is in your market, so it makes no difference if they cover it or not.
 
The only HD-2 I've heard was Entercom's blues channel on a very high quality receiver. (I know, I know, HD-2 and high quality. Bear with me.) It is very conservatively processed and the high end grit made my teeth hurt. I can't imagine the auditory damage violins would cause with that mess. Good lord! What would a piccalo or trumpet do to that? Obama should declare that $hit torture too.
 
David, you miss the point about KGIL's nulls. I agree it doesn't make any difference whether 1260 covers San Bernardino. Without being pedantic, here's what I meant.

The issue that kills HD in many AM installations is "pattern bandwidth" which is typically not very good in directional arrays with very deep nulls. If the pattern bandwidth isn't linear and sidebands aren't absolutely equal, the analog self-interference rises to unacceptable levels. As you drive from one lobe through a null to another lobe, the relative amplitudes of the sidebands rise and fall. In analog listening this manifests itself in brief moments of "Donald Duck" type audio that sounds like SSB for a moment, as the sideband amplitude exceeds the carrier's as detected in your receiver. Most listeners never notice it but experienced engineers recognize this as "driving through a null."

In analog listening, the nonlinearity isn't a problem. In HD it becomes a critical issue. It's the reason why only an estimated one-third AT BEST of AM-HD stations use the digital at night. Most arrays employ far deeper nulls to provide the requisite protection in night pattern, which more often than not scotches the use of HD. A very few stations have spent the requisite hundreds of thousands of dollars to redesign night arrays and submit new full antenna proofs, but most have simply elected to turn HD off at night rather than blow the dough on fully implementing a system most broadcasters think is unlikely to be around in five years.

Looking at KGIL's night coverage contour, I would predict problems with HD because of the depth of those nulls.
 
Savage said:
Looking at KGIL's night coverage contour, I would predict problems with HD because of the depth of those nulls.
Click to expand...

The array was rebuilt and broadbanded when the station increased power relatively recently. The deepest nulls are mostly in unpopulated areas. I'm quite familar with DA's, having even designed and built one myself, so I did not need the lesson in DA basics, although I think what you said could be a good explanation for many who do not understand the issue. Saul Levine is a promoter, and one of the only family owned operators... I have to wish him good luck on this one, although trying to make any AM work today is a challenge.
 
Savage said:
The issue that kills HD in many AM installations is "pattern bandwidth" which is typically not very good in directional arrays with very deep nulls. If the pattern bandwidth isn't linear and sidebands aren't absolutely equal, the analog self-interference rises to unacceptable levels. As you drive from one lobe through a null to another lobe, the relative amplitudes of the sidebands rise and fall. In analog listening this manifests itself in brief moments of "Donald Duck" type audio that sounds like SSB for a moment, as the sideband amplitude exceeds the carrier's as detected in your receiver. Most listeners never notice it but experienced engineers recognize this as "driving through a null."
Click to expand...

An example in the Philadelphia area is the WWDB 860 array, northwest of the city in East Norriton Township. Drive along Rt 202 from King of Prussia towards West Chester (or the PA Turnpike toward Downingtown) and you will pass through two of the nulls which sound very bad. I've taken spectrum analyzer measurements on the west side of the site and the digital sidebands exceed the NRSC limits (referenced to analog carrier) by several dB.

If WEEU in Reading hadn't moved from 850 to 830, there would probably be some complaints about daytime interference from WWDB-HD in the Pottstown area.
 
And the typical HD-at-night problems aren't restricted to the nulls. The analog self-interference problem isn't confined to the deepest part of the nulls. It exists in varying degrees everywhere in the pattern, since nonlinearity is nonlinearity wherever you're listening. As delivered skywave interference rises and falls the self-interference worsens. HD at night is often a toxic brew of noise on the originating station, irrespective of which mode you're listening in.

In addition the HD digital is frequently more-or-less unusable at night anyway because the skywave interference prevents receivers from getting enough digital data to decode, so the receivers just default to analog. And frequently in annoying fashion too.

Upshot: it remains astonishing this idiotic "innovation" was ever approved for medium-wave broadcasting. It's just a mess every way you look at it.
 
Oh, and David: guess you missed that place where I typed I wasn't trying to be pedantic. I was trying to be civil. And I guess it was a good thing I explained my earlier post, because in the midst of resume-citing about your designing AM DA systems, you continue to miss the technical point.

Broadbanding an AM directional array doesn't necessarily have anything to do with PATTERN bandwidth. It might - but then again it might not.

In some if not many cases, extremely deep nulls require critical phasor networks which make it impractical to implement HD.

We'll see if ultimately KGIL uses HD at night. In the end, it really doesn't matter either way, IMHO.
 
Savage said:
We'll see if ultimately KGIL uses HD at night. In the end, it really doesn't matter either way, IMHO.
Click to expand...

I agree. Trying to do anything to save AM today is futile.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom