• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

WWCO on 102.9 FM?

P

PaulBWalkerJr

Guest
Well, ok not quite.. that title is misleading.

An engineer friend of mine in Southern Connecticut recently turned on his SCA radio. Low and behold, one of the few stations still using it was WDRC-FM.

He said, on the 67kHz subcarrier, was the audio of 1240 WWCO. It soudned like an off-air feed he tells me.

What's the point? I'm not trying to sound negative, I'm literally curious.. as is my friend.
 
Nope, WKCI has shut off their SCA according to my friend.
 
I had heard at one point that WSHU-FM was actually using their SCA subcarrier to get audio to the WSHU-AM (the former WMMM, Westport) transmitter site. I don't know if this was backup audio or not, since their on-air sound was pretty decent (in fact, better than I ever recall it sounding in the last years of the former operator).

I doubt the practice is commonplace but I'm sure some may have used this technique for IFB to get cues from the studio during remotes, etc. I know one station I contracted at did this and it worked quite well.
 
I know that Buckley sometimes runs WDRC 1360 on their SCA, I'm told so that their play by play guys in the field at various games can hear their cues. This is a great use for SCA since the SCA on a class B like WDRC-FM will cover a much larger area than most AMs, especially in the evening. Perhaps they were running the game only on WWCO.
 
Is SCA a type of subchannel audio, much like the SAP track on a TV channel?
 
Yes, it's just like the SAP track on TV, and there were usually one or two, with degrading sound quality the further in you go. I used to have one of those old Muzak SCA radios, tuned to WKCI, and it would get either the EM-1 or FM-1 format depending on where I tuned one of the coils inside the radio, but I dumped it a few years back, as the only frequency I could get was 101.3 and I couldn't find anywhere to get other crystals.
 
Where could I get working a SCA Radio? Ive never had one and curious about em...

How do they actually work? If anyone knows a palce online where I could order one, let me know..
 
PaulBWalkerJr said:
Where could I get working a SCA Radio? Ive never had one and curious about em...

How do they actually work? If anyone knows a palce online where I could order one, let me know..
Click to expand...

Paul, the ones I've seen work like a regular FM radio, except instead of receiving the main carrier audio they pick up audio off a subcarrier - usually 67KHz or 92KHz (common frequencies). I had one back in the days when Physician's Radio Network use to broadcast over on the WDJF/WEBE subcarrier before they got pulled and eventually went bankrupt. The tuner sections are usually not the greatest, but I ripped mine apart and took the IF signal out of my Radio Shack scanner - I picked up every FM that had a subcarrier and found all sorts of stuff on it. In my mad dash to clean house that radio ended up donated to another project. I'm sure you can find kits and complete radio online.

FWIW: I believe CRIS (Connecticut Reading Service), a service for sight-impaired individuals, is still on somebody's subcarrier but I don't recall whose.
 
CRIS operates on several subcarriers throughout Connecticut (as well as several CATV outlets). CRIS' flagship station in Hartford (Windsor) operates on the subcarrier of WJMJ.

(I'm just waiting for someone to write that the subcarrier sounds better than the 102.9 main . . . .)

;)
 
DJ Jim Wayne said:
CRIS operates on several subcarriers throughout Connecticut (as well as several CATV outlets). CRIS' flagship station in Hartford (Windsor) operates on the subcarrier of WJMJ.

(I'm just waiting for someone to write that the subcarrier sounds better than the 102.9 main . . . .)

;)
Click to expand...

Well, there's certainly no mp3-like swishing on their subcarrier, so it does make it sound better than their main audio!
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom