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dfaulkner
Guest
Someone wrote on here recently about 1080 sounding weak in south Ft. Worth. I noticed it sounded weak in Acton (near Granbury) on Saturday. 1190 (on day pattern) was noticably stronger than 1080.
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That's an odd report. KRLD 1080 is a Class I-B clear channel station. By day, it runs 50,000 watts in all directions. At night it has to protect the other Class I-B station on 1080, WTIC Hartford, also owned by CBS.
I took a look at the nighttime pattern on Radio-Locator.com and it shows a null to the east-northeast as you may expect to protect Hartford. But there's also what appears to be a null to the west-southwest as well. Could that be a null to protect XEPRS 1090 Tijuana, also a Class I-B? Does a Mexican station on the Pacific Coast need protection from an adjacent channel station in Texas?
Despite those nighttime nulls, KRLD still has what's supposed to be a very strong local signal from Ardmore to Waco. It should come in fine south of Fort Worth, including Acton. Of course, those Radio-Locator maps are only predicted patterns.
Gregg
[email protected]
I took a look at the nighttime pattern on Radio-Locator.com and it shows a null to the east-northeast as you may expect to protect Hartford. But there's also what appears to be a null to the west-southwest as well. Could that be a null to protect XEPRS 1090 Tijuana, also a Class I-B? Does a Mexican station on the Pacific Coast need protection from an adjacent channel station in Texas?
Despite those nighttime nulls, KRLD still has what's supposed to be a very strong local signal from Ardmore to Waco. It should come in fine south of Fort Worth, including Acton. Of course, those Radio-Locator maps are only predicted patterns.
Gregg
[email protected]
Here in Keller, I must turn the radio sideways after about 8 pm at night. Transmitter is over in Garland so I'm not really sure why other stations are stronger. I may have a transmitter in my way but have never really bother to fully investigate.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
If they are still running IBOC, that is probably the problem. They had a really good signal all the way to Conroe prior to firing up IBOC.
Gregg said:
That's not a null but the effect of the lessened ground conductivity around the "Hill Country" surrounding Austin. If you look at WBAP, it has the same "null" caused by conductivity.
I asked Eric Disen about that a few years back (pre-iboc). He explained that there are a lot of steel-frame buildings, a lot of re-bar in highway overpasses and quite a few light and power-towers that soak up the signal. SW Tarrant is a good 50+ miles from the transmitter, so there's a lot of city-stuff to absorb the 'rf'.
I had the same problem a while back when I lived in the Burleson area. KRLD was practically unlistenable during the daytime. Heck, I could get a better signal from KLBJ-AM out of Austin. I also noticed when driving around west Ft. Worth that KRLD seemed more like a rimshot 250w than the 50,000w powerhouse that it should be.
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dfaulkner
Guest
Frank Provasek said:
Sounds good to me.
DavidEduardo said:
Radio Locator is a great tool, but it creates a lot of misconceptions for people who really don't understand the subtler nuances of signal prediction. The biggest one is the arguments you get into with people that an FM station has a city grade signal over a particular city or area, when what they mean is the 60 dBu contour shown on R-L, not the actual 70 dBu City Grade. Big difference, as it would take ten times the power to cover that 60 dBu area as City Grade. Managers and sales people, who would have known better in a earlier era of radio, are even some frequent purveyors of this misinformation.
tubetop1 said:
Not necessarily. First, consider that TV and FM signals are at much higher frequencies, and as such are much less affected by ground clutter than AM. Secondly, a lot depends on the location of the transmitter site and what's between it and you (and also around you, try listening while driving next to high-tension wires). AM came into existence in a much less urbanized time and doesn't fare well with all these new-fangled electrical devices and metal structures we've erected.
Take a ride down scenic Garland Road north of 635 some afternoon. Note the failed car lots on your left. Note the high voltage power poles on your right. Notice that every power poll from Kingsley Rd. to past Miller Rd. has a detuning skirt on it. Gaze in awe at the 2 500' towers of KRLD, Blaw-Knox masterpieces they are on Saturn Road just south of Miller. Then cricket, you will understand the challenge of AM broadcasting in 2012.
Dallas Fort Worth has decent ground conductivity. Atlanta, GA doesn't and that's why you always here about WSB underperforming their signal potential give their power output.
Also, TV and FM signals, at higher frequencies benefit from height. There are those who would tell you that the Cedar Hill towers may be too short to properly serve the ever expanding DFW Metropolis.
Dallas Fort Worth has decent ground conductivity. Atlanta, GA doesn't and that's why you always here about WSB underperforming their signal potential give their power output.
Also, TV and FM signals, at higher frequencies benefit from height. There are those who would tell you that the Cedar Hill towers may be too short to properly serve the ever expanding DFW Metropolis.
317C50KW said:
Now that I live in what was once a northern outpost of the market, I'm actually inclined to agree with that. Frisco was once on the edge of the growth but Celina and even Gunter are moving toward becoming suburbs.
I'm not sure if its height (since Cedar Hill is high as it is) but its location now seems less than optimal. Even the 100 kW FMs with the best HAATs (KRLD-FM and KJKK on the Potter Street tower) are iffy when heading up Preston Road north of Prosper. With the benefit of hindsight, somewhere around Lewisville now seems like a better location for the farm to serve the market.
It almost remind me of when KLIF's nightime site was changed. Even by the 70's, the incredible sprawl to the north wasn't envisioned.
...except that an "ideal" FM signal in north Texas pretty much requires a super-tall tower, and the presence of DFW (and GSW, before that) right in the middle of what would otherwise have been the "ideal" spot for such a tower means there's really never been a time when the FAA would have signed off on a 1500-footer, or even a 1000-footer.
(Come to think of it, even WFAA/WBAP was only able to build its fairly tall towers where present-day DFW sits because it predated the construction of Fort Worth Airport/GSW just to the south...)
(Come to think of it, even WFAA/WBAP was only able to build its fairly tall towers where present-day DFW sits because it predated the construction of Fort Worth Airport/GSW just to the south...)
Scott Fybush said:
That's the elephant in the room that I neglected to mention in my post. I believe that there were similar flight path considerations that limited the heights of the Cedar Hill sticks. None of them are quite reaching the skies like those in Missouri City, the farm for the Houston market.
As an aside, it's interesting to read the old Telecasting Yearbooks that David Eduardo Gleason has made available. Seemingly every other display ad for the television stations of the 50's was boasting about the height of its then newly-built tower. An entire sequence of "Tower Site of the Week" lies waiting in that treasure trove that he's made available.
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dfaulkner
Guest
Either sounds good. 105.3 is a better signal.
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