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Yet Another Tucson Station from Ted?

The mountain could more appropriately be called a hill. You could hike to the site in about half an hour from the highway. There are some nearby ranches that seem to have commercial power but the installation fee would likely be in the thousands.
Will the new station be limited to daytime operations as is the case with all other stations that have transmitted from this location? If so, will the FCC overlook its minimum operating schedule rule? Eventually Tucker will want to sell the station but who would buy an FM daytimer?
 
RF101 said:
<...>A 5-6 KVA solar array with battery storage might actually be sufficient Some poor tech will need to climb the mountain periodically to clear the desert dust off the panels . More importantly - there will be some serious windloading on that tower with that stacked yagi.
Click to expand...
I'm not running down these rat-holes nearly as thorough as you are, but the last iteration of broadcast property at that location simply seemed to not have enough power to keep that xmtr on-air longer than about ~14 hours a day. In the dead of winter, it may not have been that long. A bit of cloudy weather, reducing the power meant the occasional not on at all as the batteries continued to charge to a sufficient level.

Is it that the parcel of land the station's technical equipment is sitting on isn't adequate to provide sufficient space to put a larger solar array/battery storage to provide 24hr coverage?

Perhaps it's an issue that surrounding property owners aren't willing to have an access road & a power line run up the side of that to make it viable.
 
I occasionally tune in the Vail station on 104.5 and it seems like I have to turn up the radio volume in order to hear it. A couple nights ago I took along a modulation monitor and parked the car near the cell tower that the station uses for its transmitting antenna.. The station was about 5 db below all the other stations. This is a violation that the FCC rarely encounters. Usually it is a war to see who can modulate the highest without breaking the rule. Either there's a careless adjustment or Mr. Tucker doesn't care if anyone listens or not. Or maybe a little of each. Well, at least this isn't a daytimer.
 
Nearly two months ago I reported that 104.5 in Vail was badly undermodulated. Now they've taken the undermodulation to the ultimate extreme. The present modulation percentage is an even zero. Transmitter is on but no programming. That's probably a worse violation than undermodulation.
 
Looks like Tucker is proposing to move 104.5 from the cell phone tower to the solar power site that other Tucker stations have used. All such stations have been FM daytimers. Why the FCC allows that is a mystery. Big problem with 104.5 is that it is on the second adjacent to Jesus-104.1 so it is pretty limited in its ability to reach Tucson with a strong signal. It is also the second adjacent to 104.9 licensed to Tanque Verde. 104.5 might not be this station's final resting place.
 
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