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Lots of open carriers in San Antonio

A

AnyHuman

Guest
At least we're having more open signals broadcasting silence recently than usual.
It started with KHJS 99-1 LPFM, Friday it went silent and the silence lasted over 24 hours until Saturday afternoon, when regular GenX programming resumed and is still working fine.

Then there's 87-7 and 102-3. They were broadcasting silence for several hours and in 102-3's case the silence is going still, no audio on it. 87-7 was fixed though.

Lastly KTSA and it's translator on 107-1 have had a lot of dead air tonight. But they're working well now.


So currently, the silent station is 102-3 FM which was rebroadcasting KYRQ's Spanish Christian up until at least 8 hours ago.
All this makes me wonder if the stations use the same equipment to get audio to their transmitters, and if the equipment's having problems...
 
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AnyHuman said:
At least we're having more open signals broadcasting silence recently than usual.
It started with KHJS 99-1 LPFM, Friday it went silent and the silence lasted over 24 hours until Saturday afternoon, when regular GenX programming resumed and is still working fine.

Then there's 87-7 and 102-3. They were broadcasting silence for several hours and in 102-3's case the silence is going still, no audio on it. 87-7 was fixed though.

Lastly KTSA and it's translator on 107-1 have had a lot of dead air tonight. But they're working well now.


So currently, the silent station is 102-3 FM which was rebroadcasting KYRQ's Spanish Christian up until at least 8 hours ago.
All this makes me wonder if the stations use the same equipment to get audio to their transmitters, and if the equipment's having problems...
Click to expand...

Unless you are a big commercial station with deep pockets, the cost of a dedicated tie line and/or microwave STL link is cost prohibitive. Most LPFMs use an internet stream, and even a substantial number of commercial stations, use an internet stream to get programming from point A to point B.

Have you ever had your internet go out? You call ATT or Xfinity and they tell you service outage or routine maintenance? You simply have to wait. These same outages affect radio stations. Although the equipment is supposed to auto reconnect, in reality its kinda hit and miss. It you are using a Barix box to decode the stream, sometimes you have to physically go out to the shack to reboot it. If you use a CPU, sometimes you have to log in with remote desktop to click on the play button.

Oftentimes those running a remote translator will not even know its off until someone calls to complain. Most of us running stations do not want to listen to the station during off duty hours. You get burned out.
 
Makes sense. I already know some smaller stations use Internet.

The bigger ones have satellite dishes and such.

One more open carrier I forgot to mention is KQQB 1520 during the day. These past few days it's been dead air. But then again KQQB has been dead air a lot recently and never really took off since it's move into town.

102-3 still is dead air, BTW.
 
Uknowit said:
Oftentimes those running a remote translator will not even know its off until someone calls to complain. Most of us running stations do not want to listen to the station during off duty hours. You get burned out.
Click to expand...

When I owned stations, I would check my cluster’s 4 AM signals and 5 FMs at least once an hour no matter where I was. Of course that was before the day of cellphones and in my market we did not have pay phones. So checking on air was obligatory. It was not burn out... it was survival!
 
DavidEduardo said:


When I owned stations, I would check my cluster’s 4 AM signals and 5 FMs at least once an hour no matter where I was. Of course that was before the day of cellphones and in my market we did not have pay phones. So checking on air was obligatory. It was not burn out... it was survival!
Click to expand...

Where was this cluster?
 
102-3 has been fixed, once again Spanish Christian KYRQ and KSXT simulcast. Both KYRQ and KSXT are on 90.3.

KQQB is still silence.
 
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As for checking things remotely, it's possible if you're not a broadcaster. If you have your part 15 transmitter connected to a smart plug, you can do so and even power it on and off from whereever you have Internet in the world. But keep in mind that while some smart plugs provide energy monitoring capabilities and allow you to look at the wattage your device is pulling, they don't connect directly to the insides of part 15 FM transmitters so all you'll know is the wattage.
https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/what-is-a-smart-plug/
 
Ryan Williams said:
Where was this cluster?
Click to expand...

Quito, Ecador, where I owned 4 AM on 570; 590, 660, and 805 and 5 FM, one of which was Ecuador’s first FM station. . Smaller clusters in Guayaquil and Cuenca and stand-alone’s in Ambato, Puerto Agrio y Bahia de Cortez.
 
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Uknowit said:
Unless you are a big commercial station with deep pockets, the cost of a dedicated tie line and/or microwave STL link is cost prohibitive. Most LPFMs use an internet stream, and even a substantial number of commercial stations, use an internet stream to get programming from point A to point B.

Have you ever had your internet go out? You call ATT or Xfinity and they tell you service outage or routine maintenance? You simply have to wait. These same outages affect radio stations. Although the equipment is supposed to auto reconnect, in reality its kinda hit and miss. It you are using a Barix box to decode the stream, sometimes you have to physically go out to the shack to reboot it. If you use a CPU, sometimes you have to log in with remote desktop to click on the play button.

Oftentimes those running a remote translator will not even know its off until someone calls to complain. Most of us running stations do not want to listen to the station during off duty hours. You get burned out.
Click to expand...

Ask an engineer who's had his Barix AoIP "hacked"....what kind of headaches it's caused!! He/she will probably say (and station management would agree.....) that STL or leased phone line(s) just MIGHT start looking less "cost-prohibitive"....!
A couple of stations in the South had their Barix link "hacked" .....and "new programming" was streamed to the transmitter site!!! When discovered, the station shut down until the issue was resolved...for "NOW"!!!
What about the NEXT time? Perhaps not just non-format music --- but a barrage of profanity....costing the station listeners AND reputation!!
Used STLs can be had for a fraction of their new cost....yeah, it ain't "digital".....but I'd rather HEAR analog programming than "digital" SILENCE!:(
 
Oldie919 said:
A couple of stations in the South had their Barix link "hacked" .....and "new programming" was streamed to the transmitter site!!! When discovered, the station shut down until the issue was resolved...for "NOW"!!!(
Click to expand...

Reports in engineering trades are that the affected stations had failed to reset the default password.
 
That's a lesson you should learn. Always use a complicated and hard to guess password... Otherwise someone just might guess your's!
 
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