Some Questions About Houston FM Signals

[Gregg]

--Many Houston FM stations (KTBZ, KKBQ, KHMX, KRBE, KHJK, KKHH, etc.) run with 90-something thousand watts. Why not the full 100,000 watts?
--KMJQ used to be licened to Clear Lake City. Now they've got Houston as their City of License. How did that happen? Usually, to get a favor from the FCC, a station will agree to change their COL to a smaller community that has no radio or TV station currently. It's rare for a station licensed to the suburbs to get moved into a major city that already has dozens of AM FM and TV stations.
--How did KLTN 102.9 wind up with such an inferior signal? It's licensed to Houston, it runs 100,000 watts. Yet its tower is about half as tall as other Houston stations.


Gregg
[email protected]

 

[jrobert]

I'm going to try to answer your questions in the simplest way I know. A good place to start would be going to Radio-Locator.com and looking up one of Houstons fine C1 FM stations. I'll use KHMX. You'll notice that there are 3 entries for tower height. The one that matters, is the "Above Sea level". Sea level, is ground zero. Anything else is "added height above that". As with all FM stations, height is "Everything". The higher your antenna the more coverage. Because the curvature of the earth is such, there is a formula for height vs. horizon. This formula gives us the city Grade A coverage area. Anything past that is Grade B (listenable, but not so strong). KHMX's tower height is 1985ft above sea level. This is the height of the tower to the base of the antenna. A 100K FM antenna "could" be as tall as 200 ft. 1985 + 200= 2185ft. The electrical center of radiation, the point of measurement, would be about 100ft, putting KHMX 85 ft over the 2000 foot limit for a class C1 FM to broadcast at 100k. For every foot above the limit, the FCC requires a reduction in ERP to compensate for the extra height so as to not interfere with either adjacent or co-channel stations.

You answered your second question yourself. Their tower is only half as tall as the others. Hence the bad signal. No height, no gain. Remember, in FM, it's not the power so much as it is the tall stick.

 

[AndyWaldrop]

--KMJQ used to be licened to Clear Lake City. Now they've got Houston as their City of License. How did that happen? Usually, to get a favor from the FCC, a station will agree to change their COL to a smaller community that has no radio or TV station currently. It's rare for a station licensed to the suburbs to get moved into a major city that already has dozens of AM FM and TV stations.

--How did KLTN 102.9 wind up with such an inferior signal? It's licensed to Houston, it runs 100,000 watts. Yet its tower is about half as tall as other Houston stations.


Gregg
[email protected]

Gregg,

At one time Clear Lake City was, in fact, its own city. The city of Houston annexed all (or most) of the geography that was Clear Lake City. At that point, KMJQ (or whatever the calls were at the time) became licensed to Houston since Clear Lake City was no longer it's own community/city/town.

Dave Morris, the President and GM of KQUE, was too cheap to join the Senior Road Tower Group. He would have been able to, for all intents and purposes, double KQUE's tower height if he had. Then, as new frequency assignments came along, he was "trapped" and not able to move to one of the tall towers south-southwest of Houston (if he had wanted to). Certainly, the 103.3 assignment to Freeport/Lake Jackson precluded him from being able to move to the south-southwest. As time went on, there may have been others.

An interesting side note to KQUE (now known as KLTN)...at one time they were licensed to operate with an effective radiated power of 560,000 watts (280,000 vertically and 280,000 horizontally). When Morris applied for a tower height increase to 1,000 feet, the FCC approved it with the stipulation that the effective radiated power be capped at 100,000 watts. Morris agreed...and the rest, as they say, is history.

 

[fredcantu]

On the subject of moving from a small COL to a big COL, IIRC channel 11 started off as KGUL-TV licensed to Galveston, then Galveston-Houston, or was it Houston-Galveston, and then finally just Houston.

 

[jd]

At one time Clear Lake City was, in fact, its own city. The city of Houston annexed all (or most) of the geography that was Clear Lake City. At that point, KMJQ (or whatever the calls were at the time) became licensed to Houston since Clear Lake City was no longer it's own community/city/town.

Andy, you're right about the annexation part of it but Clear Lake City was not a city; rather it was an unincorporated subdivision and one of the earlier occupants on 102.1, KMSC, somehow convinced the FCC that Clear Lake City was a licensable community. I didn't see the original paperwork but I seem to recall it was missing some of the standard arguing points for "community of license" status (things like a post office, businesses, churches and a governing body in the usual sense). By comparison the COL for KYND 1520 for a number of years is Cypress, another unincorporated community with no clearly defined boundaries. Cypress has a post office and businesses; Clear Lake City didn't have much besides houses back then, although its actual boundaries were somewhat clear.

Certainly, the 103.3 assignment to Freeport/Lake Jackson precluded [Dave Morris] from being able to move to the south-southwest. As time went on, there may have been others.

Interestingly the FCC entertained two separate plans for the Freeport allocation, either 103.3 or 102.5, but both frequencies had the same spacing requirement to 102.9. By approving the assignment of 103.3 two full Class C stations had to change frequency; KOUL 103.3 Sinton/Corpus Christi moved to 103.7 and KEYI 103.5 San Marcos/Austin switched to 103.5. The second choice, 102.5, is home to KMKS Bay City,

 

[Fieldtech1]

Actually all these stations do opperate at 100kw. Radio locator shows the average ERP for the stations in any given direction. However most of the houston stations use beam tilt which aims the highest ERP at the city.

See:
http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?call=KHMX

 

[jrobert]

I should have gone to the FCC site as well. Thanks for the info. I did not consider the beam tilt issue.

 

[Mediafrog+]

--How did KLTN 102.9 wind up with such an inferior signal?

Despite the lower tower height, 102.9 gets out quite well. Travel away from Houston and it does almost as well as the Missouri City sticks. Besides, the target demos are in the urbanized metro area anyway, so any signal increase wouldn't add many listeners. The current signal blasts into Houston's heavily Hispanic east end.

Interestingly the FCC entertained two separate plans for the Freeport allocation, either 103.3 or 102.5, but both frequencies had the same spacing requirement to 102.9. By approving the assignment of 103.3 two full Class C stations had to change frequency; KOUL 103.3 Sinton/Corpus Christi moved to 103.7 and KEYI 103.5 San Marcos/Austin switched to 103.5.

In KEYI's case, the frequency change in 1983 allowed them to move to a much taller tower than the original stick from 1971. Much needed, as so much of Austin's growth has been to the north.

The original 103.3 inhabitant was KGLF, which went on in 1986, IIRC. Only lasted a couple of years with a Country format before becoming a simulcast of (the original) KJOJ 106.9. The 103.3 frequency has been a simulcast with 98.5 since the mid-90's.

 

[TexasTuner]

An interesting side note to KQUE (now known as KLTN)...at one time they were licensed to operate with an effective radiated power of 560,000 watts (280,000 vertically and 280,000 horizontally). When Morris applied for a tower height increase to 1,000 feet, the FCC approved it with the stipulation that the effective radiated power be capped at 100,000 watts. Morris agreed...and the rest, as they say, is history.
[/quote]

Actually, he was licensed for 260kw ERP, H&V (circular polarization). I know this becuase I've seen a copy of one of the old licenses at the KLTN transmitter site. What should have happened is that 102.9 be allowed to keep whatever ERP it needed to match their old coverage. In other words, they were 260kw at 500 feet (approximately). If they went to 1000, then their power should be backed down so that their 1.0 mv/m contour didn't exceed what they had with the higher power but lower antenna height. He had a 12 bay circular antenna and a pair of Gates 20H3 transmitters into a combiner when the high power operation was in use. One of those transmitters is at a backup site, I don't know where the other one went to. It's true that the cap on Class C power is 100kw, and that may have been the sticking point. An FCC attorney or an old timer at the Commission would be better able to explain. There were a number of things done over the years which make no sense, at least when you look at the rules and see how they've been applied.

 

[mrbeasley]

One reason that they did away with that power and antenna system (it was called the "Broadhead" and advertised in print and billboards) was because it lit the tower up something terrible. You couldn't hardly touch the tower; because it was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Multi-path abounded all over town. They quietly dismantled it and replaced it with a normal FM antenna.

 

[radiobop]

Re: Dave Morris

Dave Morris was definitely his own person and one of a kind. Many years ago, as a CPA, I was engaged to do a valuation of Texas Gulf Coast Broadcasters for the estate of one of the stockholders so I got to see and learn a lot behind the scenes about the company's operations. I always wondered what the franchise would have yielded in the hands of a major operator (we, of course, are talking pre-Clear Channel when ownership limits were deemed to matter) as opposed to the mom-and-pop management style of Morris. Of course, he eventually sold the two Houston stations for 40 mil (less 2 mil to cover the cleanup at the transmitter site for buried battery casings and spills from the adjacent chromium plating company) [but it really improved ground conductivity!]. Back when I valued the facility, the most recent sale at the time was KODA-FM which Westinghouse had sold for 5 mil. Dave did OK but it was kinda sad that he only got to enjoy his payday for just two years before he passed on.

 

[TexasTuner]

One reason that they did away with that power and antenna system (it was called the "Broadhead" and advertised in print and billboards) was because it lit the tower up something terrible. You couldn't hardly touch the tower; because it was hotter than a two-dollar pistol. Multi-path abounded all over town. They quietly dismantled it and replaced it with a normal FM antenna.

And I forgot to mention that AM 1230 is still on that tower. Lousy ground system (if any). They'd be better served by moving and going to a different site with a new ground system and a 1/4 wave antenna, instead of the mashup they've got now at KLTN. This, of course, a leftoever from the KNUZ(AM) days when it was co-owned with KQUE.

 

[Mediafrog+]

And I forgot to mention that AM 1230 is still on that tower. Lousy ground system (if any).

And the 1230 signal has deteriorated badly over the last 20 years. It is noticeably weaker at my Cy-Fair location than it used to be. Nonetheless, the signal is probably still adequate for the current format, booming into Houston's heavily Hispanic east end.