San Diego/emergency alert stations

[radiode]

A little history- KOGO volunteered to be the SD LP-1 at the direct orders of Randy Michaels when Jacor aquired Par Broadcasting. When I was with Jacor, and then CC, I always attended the San Diego EAS meetings, along with Bill Thompson who was the actual committee member. (Bill deserves a tremendous amount odf credit and appreciation for getting the local EAS system more or less functional back in the late 90's and for being a major player in the roll out of the Amber Alert system in the early 2000's.) On numerous occasions the other SD broadcasters in attendance were urged to volunteer to be the LP-2 station since having all three LP's in the same building struck me as the height of idiocy. (Even though knocking that plant off-line should be very difficult.) The ONLY person to ever stand up was John Buffaloe when he was @JP. As he has pointed out, nothing ever became of that. The KFMB guys, and everyone else, always sat there with their arms crossed and never said a word. I discussed the situation with June Gonzalez of the SD FCC office in the hope that they could unoficially 'encourage' someone else to share the load and was told that there was nothing the FCC could do since participation in the EAS is 'voluntary'

 

[SDRadio]

.It's an embarrassment to radio standards.

Radio has standards?

I'm shocked, shocked to read this!

 

[pianoplayer88key]

Other than that, KCBQ needs to be forced off the air..It's an embarrassment to radio standards.

Plenty of defective AMs with inadequate signals have made a nice business with religious or ethnic programming. It's a legitimate use for a less-than-full-market signal, and certainly no reason to demand that a station be "forced" off the air.

Also how does KCBQ have an inadequate signal?  Doesn't it cover much of its COL?  It comes in just fine where I am, and even somewhat overloads the front end of portables where I live (9.3 miles south of their transmitter) during the day.
One thing they COULD improve, though, is retuning their nighttime signal.  They seem to be something like 70 Hz off or thereabouts.  Otherwise even their night signal seems to cover the local area adequately well.  Sure it won't get up to North County or the back rural county areas well at night, but then that's not their COL, is it?

BTW, David, speaking of signal strengths, approximately how much difference would you say there is between an "adequate" signal (you say 10-15 mV/m for the L.A. metro area - would San Diego be the same or could they get away with less like 5 mV/m?) and one a DXer would begin to consider calling a "pest" (or one that would begin to compromise a well-designed (for the price whether it be $5 or $200) radio's ability to hear weak DX on the first-adjacents)? Or, how much stronger would the pest be than the signal that would be adequate for market coverage?

 

[davideduardo]

Also how does KCBQ have an inadequate signal?

An AM that does not cover its marekt day and night is not competitively viable.


[/quote]BTW, David, speaking of signal strengths, approximately how much difference would you say there is between an "adequate" signal (you say 10-15 mV/m for the L.A. metro area - would San Diego be the same or could they get away with less like 5 mV/m?)
[/quote]

All noisy metros show that about 95% of in home and at work listening is inside the 10 mV/m contour.

It's going to be the same in Palm Springs or Bakersfield, too.

 

[radio-darn]

All noisy metros show that about 95% of in home and at work listening is inside the 10 mV/m contour.

I was working on an old Hammarlund receiver recently, a classic piece of radio gear. It worked just fine, but my gosh the noise on the SW bands is mind-blowing. In the 60's as a ham and shortwave listener you could find something on one of of the SW bands at any time of day and it was possible to do things like communicate across oceans using just 10 or 15 watts of CW (Morse Code) power. Now there are times of day when you can go through the entire shortwave spectrum and find nothing that rises above the noise. Right after I shipped the Hammarlund to its buyer I dug out a fairly modern semi-high-end SW receiver and I swear it was worse than the 60-year-old Hammarlund.

I did decide that I have to get some batteries in my Sangean ATS-803A so that I can do some old school DXing during the next major power failure.

 

[600kogo]

Mr. Thompson was and is a diligent and devoted EAS operator. He is on top of all of the county, state, and city messgaes that are sent down. He does a great job! And is a good guy to have a beer with!

But it needs to be looked at about another station lifting part of the load. It's a pain to be the LP-1 but to be both is alot of work. Plus there needs to be redundancy by having the LP-2 at another facility, and one that the night time signal covers the market. Whether it's one of the LF stations, CBS stations, or the KFMB stations. I dont know of too many other markets where both LP's are co-located at the same studio, and the transmitters are so close. Please note that I am not saying that CC does a bad job, quite the contrary, logic would dictate that having a seperate LP-2 would optimize the EAS system.

 

[OKCRadioGuy]

Up until a few months ago our LP1 and LP2 in Oklahoma was ran off the same 1970s generator shared by two companies. Now they are just located next door to each other. So, one decent-sized tornado going the usual direction they go would be able to wipe out both operations. SD certainly isn't the only place that has this issue. I think it's certainly a bad idea, however.

 

[syvjeff]

I'm going to dive in here and toss in my two cents here and working on about 14+ years of memory of being involved with the selection of EAS LP-1 and LP-2 stations. In the Spring of 1997 there was a decision that a new committee for EAS would be created. Randy Michaels and the folks at Jacor really wanted to make sure that KOGO was the LP-1 and wanted for us to make sure as a county this was implemented and in place. I was invited to a meeting at the old Par Broadcasting building for a meeting and asked to become a committee member of the committee.

As things become to take shape it was Oscar Medina from NBC 39/7 who really set the frame work for a plan. The only parts missing was the LP-2 station and preferably an FM. NOBODY stood up including some of the stations commercial or otherwise didn't want the "liability" nor really address the the need to have generators and direct STL links to transmitters.

As time progressed and discussions continued I was promoted to PD of KPOP AM-1360. We really wanted a plan presentable to the state and with an FCC blessing in a timely manner. Against the wall with the blessings of my management, I offered KPOP to be the LP-2 station and moved forward. Within 2 years I was offered the opportunity to run more stations in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. Where I'm still living.

Bill Thompson along with other CC engineers, Oscar Medina and June from the FCC really pushed this ball along and organized it all. I learned a lot.

Jeff Williams

 

[syvjeff]

Also I want to point out that any station willing to monitor more than LP1&2 stations are completely welcome to directly the same local, state and national resources. That's the volunteer part of EAS.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

Jeff I recall that meeting and you're right, no one wanted to be the LP-2, including me because I just didn't know enough about what it required at the time, and I also didn't want to commit without first consulting with corporate engineering and counsel. It seems like it was later down the road, and may have been in the Granite Ridge building when I did offer up KSON-FM as the LP-2. Now here was the problem, even though we had generator power at the studio location, the KSON-FM transmitter relied on the same generator as KOGO, so there was the hole in the swiss cheese. I had a frequency agile site on Mt. Miguel, but no back up power. I'm pretty sure that's why KSON-FM never became the LP-2.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

Also, the other problem with any of the LF stations becoming an LP-2 is that the two Soledad stations don't have backup generator power. Yes there's a gen up there big enough to handle the entire hill, but the cost of getting connected is something LF considers out of reach, especially since Soledad so seldom loses power.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

One other comment on LF becoming an LP-2, all three of the stations run on a T-1 (unless Bill has changed things since I left) and all three are backed up with a two hop STL that runs through Hillcrest. The equipment is atop Green Manor, a retirement home, and is on their backup generator. We have had occasions in my history when the Green Manor gen failed, so you could potentially lose the T-1's and have the gen at Green Manor fail. There is a direct STL shot to the frequency agile transmitter on San Miguel, and if aux power was installed there (it's only a 2K transmitter), that could fill the hole in the swiss cheese, but coverage from San Miguel is not the best. I hope I'm not pissing Bill of jumping in here.

 

[radiode]

But at least you stood up and made the offer, John. Something no one else ever did.

 

[RadeoEngineer]

But at least you stood up and made the offer, John. Something no one else ever did.

Thank you for the recognition. I did at the time and do still respect the concept of serving the public interest.