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KRBE question
- Thread starter rageradio
- Start date
The only way they heard Sam Malone in Beaumont was on KRBE. To my knowledge he was never syndicated to any Beaumont area stations. Perhaps they meant Beaumont, California instead.
You really trust Wikipedia??? unless its referenced/footnoted, I dont trust anything from there 
His own web site mentions NOTHING of Beaumont OR Kansas City..so I doubt he was syndicated while at KRBE...
His own web site mentions NOTHING of Beaumont OR Kansas City..so I doubt he was syndicated while at KRBE...
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
In that timeframe, KRBE's signal was peeling paint over Beaumont. Anything closer than 130 miles from Houston was all KRBE, no problem, no fading, like a local. I don't know what happened to their signal, probably a lot of it is HD. But they didn't need a local outlet in Beaumont. KRBE WAS the local outlet. Prior to whatever happened, KRBE was receivable Eastward until a station in Houma took over way past Lafayette. North, they had listeners in the South part of Dallas, Easily heard on a car radio. In Austin, they were like a rim shot local. Only issues were in deep valleys, everywhere else it boomed in.
To my knowledge, NONE of KRBE's shows were syndicated. Wikipedia is absolutely NOT a trust worthy source. The data can be changed by anyone unfortunately.
I honestly don't think KRBE's signal has changed. Is there any technicians on this board that can verify that? KRBE's signal always drops out before you enter Beaumont going east bound on IH 10. During tropo, yes it can be heard as far east as Baton Rouge or even Mississippi. During normal conditions, the signal is listenable up to 80 miles or so.
Today, the FM dial is over crowded with translators LPFM's, etc which plays a major role in why KRBE can no longer be heard in certain areas.
I honestly don't think KRBE's signal has changed. Is there any technicians on this board that can verify that? KRBE's signal always drops out before you enter Beaumont going east bound on IH 10. During tropo, yes it can be heard as far east as Baton Rouge or even Mississippi. During normal conditions, the signal is listenable up to 80 miles or so.
Today, the FM dial is over crowded with translators LPFM's, etc which plays a major role in why KRBE can no longer be heard in certain areas.
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The Houston signals off Sr Road seemed to have lost range analog wise since the rebuild for HD....some think it could be due to receivers having issues with the noise off HDs subcarriers....used to be able to hear the analogs between Huntsville and Madisonville.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
The fools who tested the HD system used spectrum analyzers to check signal strength. That showed no problems. They forgot that radios are not spectrum analyzers, and they have this inconvenient thing called AGC. The result? Greatly reduced analog range - and this translates directly into building penetration where it DOES matter. Ask people in Huntsville about Houston FM - the average person thinks they scaled back on power to save money, sacrificing Huntsville listeners. They are PO'ed!
Actually, FM radios do not use AGC by design....the limiters in the IF stage remove any amplitude component and this keep the signal constant level there (a limiter is an amplifier stage driven to saturation)...AM radios do use AGC to maintain constant audio level in the recovered signal...but FM does not need AGC...the problem is the IF filters in a FM radio allow the digital carriers to pass through to the analog demod....this is seen as NOISE and thus degrades the reception in the analog IF.
"...average person thinks they scaled back on power to save money"
That's exactly what I thought. I've seen (on Wikipedia.. :/) the ERP of some stations look like they've decreased. I assumed the very same that they are lowering their power just enough to keep good coverage and to save money as well.
That's exactly what I thought. I've seen (on Wikipedia.. :/) the ERP of some stations look like they've decreased. I assumed the very same that they are lowering their power just enough to keep good coverage and to save money as well.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
Nope - its HD. That is the problem. I am not surprised Humble has problems with FM reception, being diagonally across the metro area from the towers.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
It probably has more to do with subtle elevation changes. Trees might have a slight effect if there are enough of them, but the dropouts start whenever I go down into valleys at the fringes. Not hard to predict at all. I find myself anticipating the blackout as I drive downhill. Its going to drop to dead silence (I listen to HD-2's primarily).
The HD baboons would probably chime in - 10dB power increase will solve everything. Uh - no. Driving into valleys causes a lot more than 10 dB drop. Probably several decades is more like it. Invariably, when HD drops, the analog reception is also severely compromised, blending to mono or even having static on it. I've frankly been impressed by getting 70 miles or so out of HD. I expected much less given observations in other cities. But then, I have a REAL antenna on my car, not a shark fin or other such nonsense. And a REAL DX radio - Pioneer Supertuner 3D. The one that brings in 103.5 almost like a local out in the West part of town. Try that with a stock radio, shark fin or nub antenna, or wire in the windshield, or whatever other pathetic attempt the auto makers have made to get an antenna without having an antenna. They would do better with fractals than with those stupid shark fins.
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Unregistered
Guest
The antenna changed at Senior Road as part of HD conversion as well. The original antenna was a Dielectric panel. The new one is an ERI.
Several of the chiefs of the Senior Road stations have complained about signal issues with the ERI antenna. It seems to have more nulls than the original antenna.
The problems definitely aren't HD related though. I've personally turned the HD transmitter on and off for one of the Senior Road signals in a problem area checking to see if it impacted performance. Not at all.
Several of the chiefs of the Senior Road stations have complained about signal issues with the ERI antenna. It seems to have more nulls than the original antenna.
The problems definitely aren't HD related though. I've personally turned the HD transmitter on and off for one of the Senior Road signals in a problem area checking to see if it impacted performance. Not at all.
Stations would have to drop power by at least 3db to be noticeable...Antenna changes with beam tilt can mean that in the Horiz plane, they only do 97KW ERP to the horizon....but 100KW ERP in the beam tilted signal...which means they have better coverage in their primary contours....
One thing to remember, FMs (and AMs for that matter) are NOT meant to serve areas 100miles away.....a Class C at 2000 ft has a predicted 57.25 miles 1mV protected contour...the city grade (70dbu) is predicted to be 42.28 miles...which means Houston stations on Sr Road would cover close to Conroe with city grade (the distance is just over 50 miles to Conroe)...dropping the ERP to 50KW at 2000 ft makes the 60dbu protected contour only 5 miles less....
The only stations that were meant to cover more than their COL and the immediate area were the Class I-As clears....but now even Class A AMs only have protection out to 750 miles radius....the need for clears is no longer there..
we radio geeks miss the 60-70s and clear channel stations like WLS, etc covering all over the US and playing music..SiriusXM was supposed to put terrestrial radio's death....but that hasn't happened.....people are actually dropping SXM and going back to listening to real radio...(I quit SXM because of the horrible audio and they closed their music rotation down to where you start hearing the same songs at the same time every day....) radio will live...but it will evolve...for better or worse....
The original was a Harris CBR (whose antenna division got bought by Dielectric)....I have heard of other ERI broadbands having issues as well...(wasnt there one in OKC a few years back that had serious trouble after install?)
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
I have a different experience. I drive Houston / Dallas a lot. There was a time about 8 years ago when KGLK had HD on, then HD off - it went back and forth a few times. HD off, they make it to Centerville. Any time of the day, any week of the year. HD on, they drop before Huntsville. About a 60 mile difference. Because it happened a few times, I was able to determine how repeatable it is. It is repeatable. I don't have some weird setup - Pioneer aftermarket car radio, 31 in ch whip. That big of a change is dramatic, and will affect building penetration in Houston.
As far as KRBE - I notice the difference between now and before. 130 mile local quality signal vs. 80 or 90 today. No more reception to the South part of Dallas because a local 104.1 came on up there. But KRBE is receivable far South of where that would be an issue. Austin reception like a rim shot? No more, I think there are some local 104.1's out that way now. But that incredible signal from earlier is gone - it used to be a point of pride for KRBE engineers. I bet building penetration was great!
There are some HD holdouts in Dallas, they make deep inroads into the North part of Houston. Spotty reception all over town. Dallas FM's with HD - nothing. It takes a skip event.
Bottom line - multiple stations, multiple scenarios, HD and possibly the antenna switchover you talk about are both the only variable, and the changes are not good! If you don't care about range, you darn sure should worry about building penetration which is going scale right along with range. I am not an HD hater - I listen to the HD-2's because they offer formats not available otherwise. But I am an engineer, and know the scientific method. HD is BAD NEWS for FM coverage. That is ANALOG FM coverage AND building penetration. Since you are an engineer, you know about the gain / bandwidth product. You widen the bandwidth, you lower the gain proportionally. That is the basic flaw of the HD system, it is physics, and no amount of wishful thinking will negate a basic principle of physics. This didn't have to happen. If the designers of the system had just planned to supplant and replace services like SCA, RDS, etc. - the entire HD sidebands could have been placed within the existing FM channel - and these problems would not have serviced. One of the good ideas of HD was to make auxiliary services available on HD-2 and up - so SCA, RDS, and everything else would have been better off taking advantage of HD radio, and the cost of receivers for users of those systems probably less than special receivers they use now. But - no - they just mindlessly assumed there would be no consequences from placing sidebands outside the channel on adjacent frequencies, which opened up Pandora's box of IF jamming, reduced coverage, and drops due to adjacent channels coming in on skip. But - of course - only DX'ers complain about such things, and they can be insulted and marginalized - right?! Nope - consumers have reduced coverage, Huntsville and Beaumont lose Houston stations and are left with pitiful local offerings, HD drops in cars, doesn't penetrate buildings, HD-2 drops on the high side of the FM band when a radio tuned to a station 10.4 to 11 MHz below drives by, HD-2 drops to dead silence which is annoying as it is, and so forth. "Great" system here. BAD engineering - sold with high pressure sales tactics (I've heard about it). Sold to a corrupt and inept FCC which rubber stamped approval without enough testing, rolled out at a time when car radios were being connected to inadequate antennas in the name of aesthetics. What word of mouth there is about the system is bad because its not reliable. All people understand is that digital sounds no different than analog because the highly touted table radios have 4 inch speakers and there is no way you can tell a difference on a speaker that small, the potential of HD-2 unrealized because it takes an antenna to receive HD - most consumers leave the dipole off or it is crumpled on the floor with power cords, the AM loop discarded with the box (the home theater people installation people did that to me) - so much for AM HD, and AM in general. HD TV made the picture better. HD radio doesn't sound different to people accustomed to 16 bit iPod quality audio - a big step down from a good analog signal chain - 96 dB signal to noise as opposed to 120 to 130. So there is no difference to a consumer listening on earbuds or through a 4 inch speaker, making HD radio a solution to a problem that didn't exist - a product consumers don't want. The uninformed consumer doesn't even know they need a new radio. And those that do won't put one in the dash because they lose their integrated GPS, backup camera, etc for a 1 or 2 DIN aftermarket radio in an ugly plastic adapter. I could go on and on - but this whole HD effort was ill conceived, badly researched, badly engineered, ill timed, and pretty much doomed out of the gate. Which sucks for me, because I will lose the HD-2's I enjoy when it dies a protracted death due to consumer and eventually engineering apathy.
The underlying issue is that the Houston stations can not monetize the listening outside the metro survey area. Having some listeners... even being Top 5... in Beaumont adds no revenue.
Agreed....there are no sales to Beaumont listeners from Houston stations..same thing for those in Huntsville....outside the contour of the stations...
As for the statement "You widen the bandwidth, you lower the gain proportionally", that is an incorrect statement....wideband CBR style FM antennas have similar gains to other antennas...they will have a different pattern due to design....the Dielectric vs ERI is a good example of that...Also the Sanger 104.1 north of Dallas (which was never a Cedar Hill signal nor a major signal in DFW anyway; was a C2 or C3 iirc) is gone...Cumulus turned it off and returned the license to the FCC a while back...
As for the statement "You widen the bandwidth, you lower the gain proportionally", that is an incorrect statement....wideband CBR style FM antennas have similar gains to other antennas...they will have a different pattern due to design....the Dielectric vs ERI is a good example of that...Also the Sanger 104.1 north of Dallas (which was never a Cedar Hill signal nor a major signal in DFW anyway; was a C2 or C3 iirc) is gone...Cumulus turned it off and returned the license to the FCC a while back...
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
You guys miss the point - nobody cares about range, but they care about building penetration. If range is suffering, so is building penetration. Both point to a decrease in broadcast power. If one is reduced, the other will be reduced. So if KRBE reaches Huntsville and Beaumont, which they don't care about, they are probably penetrating many more feet into buildings - and they DO care about that!
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