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WBFO Buffalo-Signal Upgrade

B

Buehly

I read a story in the Buffalo News on 1/18 that WBFO (88.7 FM) is upgrading their signal with a new 443-foot tower. The article says the university will begin work on the project when they raise the remainder of the money for the improvement. According to the article, the cost is about $800,000, of which some of the money to defray this amount will be coming from matching grant funds.

What I don't understand is the articles' reference to repeater stations and how this upgrade will stengthen their signals as well. BUFFALO NEWS: "In addition to providing a stronger signal within the City of Buffalo, the upgrade is expected to strengthen signals from WBFO’s repeater stations, WUBJ (88.1 FM) in Jamestown and WOLN (91.3 FM) in Olean." Is this just a mistake, or are they separately upgrading the repeaters as well? Upgrading the main signal would have no effect on the others' signals, or am I missing something.

Anyone?
 
Just a friendly advisory. When quoting a story, it helps to create a link for the rest of us shlubs who may have missed it. Creating a link can be done two ways.

1) The fancy-shmancy way using the "url" open & close tags:

Here's the link for the story in the Buffalo News.​

2) Or simply copying the web address from the story of note, pasting it here, highlighting it and clicking the globe icon above, which automatically ascribes the proper tags and creates the following:


As to how the power increase on the main 88.7 WBFO frequency will help the repeators... hmmm, the two seem to be mutually exclusive, unless I'm missing something, which, given my history on this board, wouldn't be the first time.
 
The only "obvious" answer (and it's not very obvious) that I can think of is that perhaps reception of the primary is not so good at the translators, so an improved primary means a cleaner source material for the repeaters. Of course, the translators/repeaters are both in the NCE band so they don't need to be fed via over-the-air reception like a commercial band translator does. Many stations feed via OTA anyways, just because it's cheaper, easier and often more reliable than alternative means (such as webcast, satellite, ISDN, T-1, POTS codec, etc)...so I admit this "obvious" answer is stretching a bit.

The only other thing that comes to mind is perhaps they're "future proofing" the setup in anticipation of frequency-shifting translators. These will start becoming a lot more relevant when transmitter OEM's finally make them HD Radio-compatible, because a frequency-shifted translator doesn't require a separate iBiquity license fee like other translators do; it's because there's no encoder in a frequency-shifted translator transmitter...it's just taking the incoming signal and bumping it to a different output frequency. No OEM has released such a device, though...a few were slated for release in 2007 but the technology has proven difficult to produce. Last I heard there was hope for a working production unit by NAB 2008 (mid April) but people aren't holding their breath....many, MANY deadlines have been "hoped for" with HD Radio and not met for another year or two. Eh, it's new technology...stuff like this happens. :-\
 
Buehly said:
What I don't understand is the articles' reference to repeater stations and how this upgrade will stengthen their signals as well. BUFFALO NEWS: "In addition to providing a stronger signal within the City of Buffalo, the upgrade is expected to strengthen signals from WBFO’s repeater stations, WUBJ (88.1 FM) in Jamestown and WOLN (91.3 FM) in Olean." Is this just a mistake, or are they separately upgrading the repeaters as well? Upgrading the main signal would have no effect on the others' signals, or am I missing something.
Click to expand...

WOLN does in fact have a permit to increase power from 120 watts to 1,000. I have no idea what they might mean with regard to WUBJ. None of the three stations have any translators, that I can tell. (maybe some of the money is going to buy a translator from someone else & use it for WUBJ?)
 
Webcastboy is correct. From what I've heard, it's hoped the higher tower will deliver a better signal to the transmitter sites of WOLN and WUBJ. Leave it to us radio people to find the obvious flaw in the news release on the new tower.
 
"In addition to providing a stronger signal within the City of Buffalo, the upgrade is expected to strengthen signals from WBFO’s repeater stations, WUBJ (88.1 FM) in Jamestown and WOLN (91.3 FM) in Olean." Is this just a mistake, or are they separately upgrading the repeaters as well? Upgrading the main signal would have no effect on the others' signals, or am I missing something."

A repeater is just that--a transmitter that picks a distant station up off the air, and retransmits it to a limited local area on a different channel to give that area a stronger and clearer signal than they can get directly from the originating transmitter. Upgrade the originating signal, and you improve the received signal at the transmitter site and clear it up (reduced noise most of all) for retransmission.
 
Whew.....thank God we got that straightened out.

By the way, I thought the press release was pretty clear.

-30-
 
alw said:
Whew.....thank God we got that straightened out.

By the way, I thought the press release was pretty clear.
-30-
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you're in management now, which taints your idea of "clear"... ;D
 
SirRoxalot said:
alw said:
Whew.....thank God we got that straightened out.

By the way, I thought the press release was pretty clear.
-30-
Click to expand...

Yeah, but you're in management now, which taints your idea of "clear"... ;D
Click to expand...


I don't know who you are Rox, but if you know me you'll know that my idea of "clear" has always been.......let's say ASKEW
 
Sorry to beat a dead horse on this, but an upgrade at the main tower of WBFO on the main frequency doesn't improve the SIGNALS or coverage area of the Olean and Jamestown repeaters. It might improve the AUDIO QUALITY on those repeaters. There's a difference.
 
Buehly said:
Sorry to beat a dead horse on this, but an upgrade at the main tower of WBFO on the main frequency doesn't improve the SIGNALS or coverage area of the Olean and Jamestown repeaters. It might improve the AUDIO QUALITY on those repeaters. There's a difference.
Click to expand...

And that assumes that WUBJ and WOLN are fed directly over the air, which I kind of tend to doubt. (WXXI's WJSL repeater in Houghton *is* fed over the air, sort of, via a hidden audio stream on the WXXI-DT signal, which is why Houghton goes off whenever there's a shutdown on Pinnacle Hill.)
 
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