Nightmare Antennae

[TheOriginalLarry]

Ever live next to a radio tower that interferes with EVERYTHING?

http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/5512178p-4967169c.html

I used to live near Aurora Village, by the then 115,000 watt KBIQ/KCMS (their towers located then on the Crista campus) and their AM sister KGDN/KCIS. Up until the early '90s, those stations wreaked havoc on almost every radio in the immediate area. It wasn't easy being able to listen to anything else clearly..even on higher quality recievers.

Back then, I had a hand me down Oldsmobile with a Kraco stereo (at first...STOP LAUGHING!) From just south of 212th street on Hwy 99 near Lynnwood to right where the Aurora Safeway is, if you were listening to say, KISW in my car, you always got a blast of Sandi Patti or The Maranatha Singers right around Aurora Village. And it was always worst on 99.9. My replacement Pioneer Supertuner did a lot better, It still had some crosstalk, but just directly beneath the tower and was gone in seconds.

I remember the salesmen at Woolworth's at Aurora Village always demonstrated their cheap stereo's radios only with 105.3 or 630 because they couldn't get anything else at all on them.

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"If I were in this business only for the business, I wouldn't be in this business." Samuel Goldwyn

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[Shark]

> Ever live next to a radio tower that interferes with
> EVERYTHING?
>
http://ww> w.thenewstribune.com/news/local/story/5512178p-4967169c.html
>
>
> I used to live near Aurora Village, by the then 115,000 watt
> KBIQ/KCMS (their towers located then on the Crista campus)
> and their AM sister KGDN/KCIS. Up until the early '90s,
> those stations wreaked havoc on almost every radio in the
> immediate area. It wasn't easy being able to listen to
> anything else clearly..even on higher quality recievers.
>
> Back then, I had a hand me down Oldsmobile with a Kraco
> stereo (at first...STOP LAUGHING!) From just south of 212th
> street on Hwy 99 near Lynnwood to right where the Aurora
> Safeway is, if you were listening to say, KISW in my car,
> you always got a blast of Sandi Patti or The Maranatha
> Singers right around Aurora Village. And it was always worst
> on 99.9. My replacement Pioneer Supertuner did a lot better,
> It still had some crosstalk, but just directly beneath the
> tower and was gone in seconds.
>
> I remember the salesmen at Woolworth's at Aurora Village
> always demonstrated their cheap stereo's radios only with
> 105.3 or 630 because they couldn't get anything else at all
> on them.
>

That's funny, I lived in that area around the same time as you and had the same experience. After I bought my first computer around '92 or '93, I would occasionally get hellfire and brimstone sermons coming out of my computer speakers. Thank, um, God that they moved their transmitter.

As you probably know, Aurora Village is now a Costco, Home Depot and a couple of strip malls in between.

 

[old_coot]

KTTH in the Skagit Valley & Gig Harbor

Larry, you may already know about KAPS 660 in Mt. Vernon. Within a mile radius of this antenna, this signal induces itself into phone lines and power lines. At the Best Buy store in Burlington, there was a Monster Power display and on the speaker demonstrating power line interference, you could hear KAPS. KAPS also bleeds a little into KIRO. KAPS and KBRC nearly obliviates KTTH in Mt. Vernon and Burlington, with both the 660 & 1430 signals superimposed over 770.

Speaking of KTTH, another phenomenon is that in parts of Gig Harbor, KTTH will come in, but the audio will be so distorted that it is virtually unlistenable. My radios will stop scanning at 770, but will still sound like the tuning is way off. I think that their antenna is on Vashon, so maybe it is positioned exactly between towers in that part of Gig Harbor where there is a 'cancelling effect'?

 

[TheOriginalLarry]

Re: KTTH in the Skagit Valley & Gig Harbor

> Larry, you may already know about KAPS 660 in Mt. Vernon.
> Within a mile radius of this antenna, this signal induces
> itself into phone lines and power lines.

I have a buddy who works at the Mount Vernon Lowe's, in the shadow of the KAPS towers. Dude says the KAPS signal is always interfering with phones, two way radios, faxes, computers etc. Even his wristwatch goes crazy.

At the Best Buy
> store in Burlington, there was a Monster Power display and
> on the speaker demonstrating power line interference, you
> could hear KAPS. KAPS also bleeds a little into KIRO. KAPS
> and KBRC nearly obliviates KTTH in Mt. Vernon and
> Burlington, with both the 660 & 1430 signals superimposed
> over 770.

KBRC I think was much worse near downtown Mount Vernon (the towers are just across the Division Street bridge.) We used to live on 14th St., right up on the hill and we used to hear little buzzing noises in the kitchen. It was KBRC trying to play through other appliances than a radio. I once ate at the Mexico Cafe in the shadow of KBRC's towers and could hear the station through my switched off cell phone.

KAPS domninates a good chunk of the AM dial (600 - 720 kHz) from College Way to Burlington. KBRC nukes everything from 1340 - 1520 khz in downtown Mount Vernon and the West Side.
>
> Speaking of KTTH, another phenomenon is that in parts of Gig
> Harbor, KTTH will come in, but the audio will be so
> distorted that it is virtually unlistenable. My radios will
> stop scanning at 770, but will still sound like the tuning
> is way off. I think that their antenna is on Vashon, so
> maybe it is positioned exactly between towers in that part
> of Gig Harbor where there is a 'cancelling effect'?
>
<P ID="signature">______________
"If I were in this business only for the business, I wouldn't be in this business." Samuel Goldwyn

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[xmtrland]

Try living on Vashon-Maury Island. 6-50KW and one 5KW day. 3-50KW night 7 5KW night. In my child hood I DX’ed from Vashon. All though 820 was only 500 watts and 770 and 950 were not out here then. That was still a Challenge. When KJR-am Moved out here that pretty much shot it for picky AM Radios. Must be why I see so many satellite radio equipped vehicles out here.

820 and 950 are always problems when doing any event using amplification from the “Town of Vashon” or 1000 feet of Bank Road and Vashon Highway, the center of town.

The Rose Hill site (Kirkland) for 1250 (is 1250 still running nites out there) and 1460 was always fun for RFI. Lots of high priced homes on one side and a church on the other. And the daytime 1250 site in West Seattle has had its fair share of complaints and press.

In my younger years I did and still can string a long wire antenna and drive a modulation monitor on more than one AM station from one mile of the various antennas on Vashon(using a crystal radio to do the tuning). 9 volts on KIRO 200 foot long antenna. 7 volts on 1090. This was at a friend’s house looking across Quarter Master Harbor at the 710 and 1090 and now 770 Xmtr Towers.
I can one remember one High School Graduation (not mine) with Wayne Cody doing sports line in the background.

The Phone Company on Vashon (Currently, Century Tell, I’m sure all you Vashon Xtr guys now them well) has done fairly well with dealing with interference. The local True Value has the usual heavy duty interference phone filter that work well. Contractors now use the good cat-5 cable, which has helped a lot on new home installs. I'm sure the fact that we don't have heavily populated housing developments works into the equation.

And….Jim Tharp and Robert Holcomb are the Best Engineers. Entercom and Fisher are very lucky to have such committed engineers, living on Vashon-Maury Island. Good people to have living out here!

Not only do we have radio interference out here but some radio history. KVI and KIRO-am are some of the oldest functioning transmitter sites in the North West, with their original towers if not the oldest that would be KVI.

When living on Vashon priorities are, Good Grounding to bleed off RFI on phone and cable entrance to house, Good UPS with RFI filters and 30 minutes of run time and a generator