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Positive peaks increase at KIHP

K

K7VOR

Sorta makes one wonder how their modulation can sound high and distorted, yet no excessive sidebands. KIHP is obviously making an effrot to cut through the mash with their low nighttime power and pattern. FCC allows for 125% positive peaks and KTAR experimented with it (but with little or no compression) a few years back, but one can find listening to 1310 today difficult.

Tune in for five minutes to their excessive compression. It can leave you feeling fatigued. Not from the Catholic programming -- as any verbage with this much emphasis is hard to listen to very long.
 
Bob Dreste said:
Sorta makes one wonder how their modulation can sound high and distorted, yet no excessive sidebands. KIHP is obviously making an effrot to cut through the mash with their low nighttime power and pattern. FCC allows for 125% positive peaks and KTAR experimented with it (but with little or no compression) a few years back, but one can find listening to 1310 today difficult.

Tune in for five minutes to their excessive compression. It can leave you feeling fatigued. Not from the Catholic programming -- as any verbage with this much emphasis is hard to listen to very long.
Click to expand...

At first we thought it was the crappy AM radio in the Gremlin, but Nurse Jeff and I think you nailed it. Not only is the audio compressed, but most of the time it's terribly distorted. But given we can't listen to 13~Ten for more than a couple of minutes without wanting to donate something, it'll probably stay that way!
 
The main transmitter when they purchased the station is a Collins Power Rock 5 and the back up is older than that and I'm not sure what model it is. The Power Rock is a very dangerous transmitter to work on and a pain to fix. You cannot modulate them very hard without distortion and when the tubes get soft they don't sound good. Solid state is the only way to go now. No transmitter maker does tubes anymore the solid state rigs run really good and you can modulate them and they just run and run and run..
 
Hey catfish (with a "C")--you mean there's a Phoenix market
station with an older rig than the primary at the Lumberyard?
 
Yes there is and lumberyard has a Gates 5KW transmitter which is solid state. The back up for KIHP is a Bauer which has not been made for several decades. The Power Rock was made in the late 70's. Most all of the other AM's in town are all solid state. Some still have the old tube rigs as a standby.
 
catfish said:
Yes there is and lumberyard has a Gates 5KW transmitter which is solid state. The back up for KIHP is a Bauer which has not been made for several decades.
Click to expand...

Hmmmm...KIHP's Power Rock is a pain to fix, but can drop to 500 watts. Lumberyard 14~Forty's Gates is not a pain, but can't go low enough to run the goldmine at night. For $1mil you'd think IHR would have at least gotten a semi decent xmttr to go with no land, no studios and no goodwill. The Nurse and I'm sure the Gersons will make it good ;)
 
1440 can go to 500 watts with no problem. You can turn the power down to almost nothing on most all of the solid state AM tranmitters but the audio on some just goes away. Some of them just will not run at that low power level and pass NRSC.. The technolgy on some of these just will not allow it. Bitch about it all you want but it ain't changing. There's always a fix but how much do you spend and how much does it help in returning the amount of cash is costs.. Doing changes in AM's can be very expensive and today broadcasters have to think about that too. I hope KIHP gets a new rig soon and I'm sure they will, they are nice people and staring and running a radio station when you start out takes a bit.. we all have to learn.. and hope fully program what we all want to hear and make some money to pay the bills..
 
Many "newer" radios with PLL and (ugh) square-wave IF "detection" do NOT sound good at all with positive modulation peaks
exceeding 100%. KIHP, if they are letting peaks fly, should be judged on a an old "passive" radio where peaks exceeding
100% do fall off into a non-linear range for detection.

On the other hand, they could have any number of bad things happening to the audio.
It's just possible that a particular receiver could make a wide-dynamic signal sound bad because of the square-wave detection and AGC circuits with poorly designed time-constants. GM car radios of the past few years come to mind.
 
No it's when you modulate over 125% and not all transmitters or ATU's can handle that it's the negative peaks above 99% that screws all radios up. The old transmitters could never do what the new ones can do.. source material being sent out.. how is the processing set? FM gets messed up if it over modulates also.. In the old days you ran it as hard as you could to get the most out and sometimes it sounded it too.. the new stuff you have to have something go out or you really have something not set right(being polically correct). Not as many engineers now..
 
Or Tom it could be the flux capacitor is on the wrong inductive frequency curve.. or my mind is still in the loose screw section in Home Depot..
 
catfish said:
Or Tom it could be the flux capacitor is on the wrong inductive frequency curve..
Click to expand...

Not 1.21 gigawatts? ;)


...or my mind is still in the loose screw section in Home Depot..
Click to expand...

The Home Depot is where you can get a new lamptimer for $4.88. Sometimes
it's even a two-for-one sale! (Hint hint, Gumpdusky. ;D)

BTW, haven't checked the KAZG sign-off since last Friday...is the "old reliable"
Lumberyard lamptimer still running about nine minutes late?
 
catfish said:
The Power Rock is a very dangerous transmitter to work on and a pain to fix.
Click to expand...

For dangerous, my vote goes to the Vanguard I. The Power Rock, once you got to know it, was not that awful. Beats an MW5 for sure.
 
oldiesfan6479 said:
BTW, haven't checked the KAZG sign-off since last Friday...is the "old reliable"
Lumberyard lamptimer still running about nine minutes late?
Click to expand...

6:40:03 PM tonight (just answered my own question). The lamptimer
has now broken the ten minutes late mark.

"Do you believe in magic" that they did a legal ID at sign-off? Nope,
just cut the carrier on the Spoonful near the top of the song.

Doing two legals around 1 PM out of the food show doesn't make up
for no legal at sign-off. ;)

Yo, catfish (with a "C")--it seems like you have at least some rappor
with the Gumpduskers; couldn't you put a bug in their ear about both
of these oversights?
 
catfish said:
Yes there is and lumberyard has a Gates 5KW transmitter which is solid state. The back up for KIHP is a Bauer which has not been made for several decades. The Power Rock was made in the late 70's. Most all of the other AM's in town are all solid state. Some still have the old tube rigs as a standby.
Click to expand...

Does 55 KOY--er--550 KFYI still have a 5kW Power Rock as their backup, or did they turn the not-too-old Harris DX-10 into the spare when they added AM HD (just like KTAR did with theirs, despite the DX-10 being HD compatible)? 1230 also had a Bauer rig for a standby as recently as ten years ago, according to old photos from Steve Blodgett's site (he still has pics a time when 910 ran a Gates [pre-"Harris" branding] MW-5 main and a Collins tube-type for a backup). Most likely, 1230's Bauer and either of 910's old transmitters went to the scrap heap when Clear Channel decided it was a bright idea to upgrade to AM HD at both stations.
 
Eric,

Did you notice that until a week or so ago, KGME 910 wasn't
I-CRAPping all over the place for 3-4 weeks? But now they
are again. ::)

In other news (did Ben Homel ban that phrase too?), Sports
Parking Lot 620 has had its I-CRAP off for a couple of weeks
now. Not just during PBP but all the time. :D
 
Up here had our Continental backup on today to blow the dust out of the Gates-5. I ran the Gates-5 into the dummyload @ around 50 watts. Sounds acceptable! Tell the Lumberyard to look in the Gates-5 manual and find the part about "Zero Power Adjust A15R111".
 
boiseengineer said:
Up here had our Continental backup on today to blow the dust out of the Gates-5. I ran the Gates-5 into the dummyload @ around 50 watts. Sounds acceptable! Tell the Lumberyard to look in the Gates-5 manual and find the part about "Zero Power Adjust A15R111".
Click to expand...

Yeah but Catfish (with a lower case "c") will probably tell us Lumberyard 14~Forty's xmttr can do 50 watts, but not 52 ;D

What all this has to do with KIHP is beyond the Nurse and my pay grade. Oh well, guess we'll have to chalk it up to "A Day In The Life Of A Lamptimer"




anyone else notice KFWhyEye is now running FOX News at the top of the hour during the day?
 
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