KTRB engineering

[50kguy]

I'll admit I have paid no attention to the KTRB situation until they signed the A's. As mentioned in other posts, the only consistency in the A's radio network has been inconsistency.

But looking at Radio Locator http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=ktrb&sr=Y&s=C, KTRB is operating from three different transmitter sites: a day site near Vallejo, the old site for nights to the south and a critical hours site near Concord. I've never seen anything like it.

Has this bizarre set-up actually given them a good, market-wide signal? How noticeable are the transitions from one site to the next?

 

[DanStrassberg]

I'll admit I have paid no attention to the KTRB situation until they signed the A's. As mentioned in other posts, the only consistency in the A's radio network has been inconsistency.

But looking at Radio Locator http://www.radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=ktrb&sr=Y&s=C, KTRB is operating from three different transmitter sites: a day site near Vallejo, the old site for nights to the south and a critical hours site near Concord. I've never seen anything like it.

Has this bizarre set-up actually given them a good, market-wide signal? How noticeable are the transitions from one site to the next?

As I understand it (I'm 3000 miles away) KTRB is operating DA-1 (four 200' heavily top-loaded towers producing a teardrop pattern directed pretty much due west) from the "night" site near Livermore (a site where it has so far proven to be economically unfeasable to bring in enough ac power to run a 50 kW AM, so KTRB is running from a propane-powered--environmental regs prohibit use of diesel fuel at the site--alternator, which requires daily fuel deliveries for the station to stay on the air). I know nothing about a separate CH site. KTRB still holds a CP for day/CH operation (same facilities D and CH) from a site with three tall towers (just about half wave) in what I believe is the Sacramento River Delta in the North Bay. Given the state of the financial markets, the licensee's bankruptcy, and technical problems with the day site, it's certainly an open question whether the day site will ever be built. Sooner or later, the CP for the day site will have to be tolled, but it sounds as if there are so many excuses for failure to construct that tolling should be a snap.

 

[KBOS1965]

That Radio Info site info is way out of date. There were at least a couple of modifications to the construction permit after that. DanStrassberg is correct about the current operation. Unfortunately, the signal is reportedly marginal in many areas including the city of license (San Francisco). It comes in great in Fremont, where I am, but I'm only about 10 miles away. The coverage from the planned day site would be great, but construction has been repeatedly delayed. Who knows if it will ever be built.

 

[djj]

I believe one of the proposed sites (daytime? nighttime?) is supposed to be near the
town of Sonoma (closer to Infinity Raceway) in the North Bay, but environmental
issues may have something to do with KTRB having only one site operating presently...

Wasn't KTRB supposed to be a DA-3? That is, two seperate patterns for day and night,
plus one for the "critical hours"? If so, it does not appear to show here:
http://www.recnet.com/cdbs/fmq.php?...ountry=US&zip=&party=&party_type=LICEN&jaws=0
--jay

 

[KBOS1965]

Wasn't KTRB supposed to be a DA-3? That is, two seperate patterns for day and night,
plus one for the "critical hours"? If so, it does not appear to show here:
http://www.recnet.com/cdbs/fmq.php?...ountry=US&zip=&party=&party_type=LICEN&jaws=0
--jay

That proposal went away. Revisions to the construction permit did away with it. There was a lot of engineering and re-engineering that went into this before it was done. The intended night operation, that is now both the day and night operation, was a less than ideal compromise. A lot of that came about because of potential second adjacent channel interference.

 

[DanStrassberg]

The coverage from the planned day site would be great, but construction has been repeatedly delayed. Who knows if it will ever be built.

From the proposed day site, KTRB would deliver a solid 5 mV/m to Sacramento, which is probably even better than KNBR does. Believe it or not, it supposedly has proven impossible so far to get the program from the studio to the day site!!! Allegedly, they can't get copper to it and all possible RF-communication frequencies are in use. I don't understand why a satellite link would not work, though. OK, it wouldn't be 100% reliable (meteor showers, etc), but how often do they knock out geosynchronous-satellite communications? And yes a satellite link would be expensive, but so are daily propane delivieries to Livermore. Maybe the Delta site needs propane deliveries too and is inaccessible by road. Would they have to bring in the fuel by boat!

 

[DaveBayArea]

Believe it or not, it supposedly has proven impossible so far to get the program from the studio to the day site!!!

You can put me down as one of the people who doesn't believe that...

Dave B.

 

[Jim P. Pappas]

Our current site for day and night transmission is in Sunol, CA. We are working to construct the new daytime site in Sonoma in 2009.

 

[weav]

Believe it or not, it supposedly has proven impossible so far to get the program from the studio to the day site!!!

You can put me down as one of the people who doesn't believe that...
Dave B.

Likewise. One can get a T1 to a pole somewhere and run a 5.8 GHz T1 radio from there, e.g....

 

[BossRadioDJ]

Believe it or not, it supposedly has proven impossible so far to get the program from the studio to the day site!!!

You can put me down as one of the people who doesn't believe that...
Dave B.

Likewise. One can get a T1 to a pole somewhere and run a 5.8 GHz T1 radio from there, e.g....

If you're talking about the current day site, not so easy...

I'm sure Mr. Pappas can address this better than I can, but I remember that one of the major issues the engineers talked about during the build-in of the rural Livermore site was getting the audio feed from San Francisco to the transmitter location.

The way it was explained to me was that the original plan simply didn't work, and it took a lot of creative thinking (and hard work) to get the "hops" fine tuned.

(Aside to Mr. Pappas: on behalf of hockey fans outside of greater downtown San Jose -- and yes, as a matter of fact there are a bunch of us -- howzabout picking up the San Jose Fighting Sharks radiocasts? You're on the way to putting together a pretty decent stable of sports programming; another major league franchise wouldn't be a bad thing.)

 

[DavidKaye]

Our current site for day and night transmission is in Sunol, CA. We are working to construct the new daytime site in Sonoma in 2009.

A site near Sonoma makes a lot of sense. It's a clear shot over water to SF and it'll hit Sacto as well, assuming that a lobe doesn't have to be brought in to protect anything.

Who in the world came up with the Sunol idea anyway? Even someone like me who has never planned an AM station could see that it was infeasible given that the site has terrible ground conductivity (there are maps available) and there's a....uh...mountain range between Sunol and SF! KTRB comes in fine in Sunol, though...