KRBE HD down

For KRBE to be heard reliably in Dallas on a "crumpled" antenna in the 1970s or early 80s required sunspots or some hellacious tropo.....I'll go with the sunspots as the Cycle was BIG about that time and all VHF bands were hot.. ALSO KRBE was on One Shell Plaza at that time...750ft and NOT 2000 ft AGL....Senior Road tower was built in 82 (and after it crashed, #2 was built by 1983) where KRBE is now. SO any comparison from the 1970s to now is TOTALLY useless... Also the physics of RF donot allow a 104MHZ signal at 100KW ERP to traverse the distance to a CRUMPLED no gain antenna in Dallas to be hear reliably UNLESS there was enhanced propagation...the 60dbU range (1mV or decent stereo noise free coverage in the car) is maybe 65 miles MAX for a Class C at 2000 ft HAAT

THATS the numbers BY SCIENCE....you CANNA change the laws of physics....(kudos to Capt Montgomery Scott for that)
Listeners in Dallas may have liked KRBE in its Top40 days of the 70s (I did...and listened to it when I COULD in Groves but that was usually at night...and with 93.3 local, the LO from the car radios slightly off tune 93.3 would put the carrier DEAD on 104.1 and wipe it out) BUT the advertisers DONOT GIVE A RATS A**.....all they care about is the counties of Harris and those directly bordering it...outside that area, THEY could CARE less....and KRBE is not designed NOR is capable of covering the outside areas RELIABLY...oh enhancments from sunspots OR tropo makes it listenable in the car in Beaumont or even Lufkin at times, but NOT 100 NOR even 80%...with an outside yagi? SURE...but again, the advertisers DONT CARE....

And thats my story and Im sticking to it..As a broadcast engineer, I can say this; KRBE's signal is as good today as it was in the early 1980s when it moved to Sr Road....PERIOD.

CW, I remember those days also. I distinctly remember listening to KRBE, KILT and KLOL on FM in Beaumont on occasion when atmospheric conditions allowed. We were not the main target audience but enjoyed listening to major market stations.

rbrucecarter5 said:

I go in the that 2 foot dip on Tuckerton, every time KRBE just about drops. Same with those 50 overpasses on the Katy freeway. Same with the new overpasses on 290. Bad signal, multiple dropouts or at least HD dropout to analog.

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KRBE currently has (or at least had, the last time I saw it) a 1st generation HD transmitter. The 1st generation transmitters from the manufacturer that made KRBE's are known to have issues that cause less than reliable reception.

I strongly suspect the dropouts will become a thing of the past when they install their new transmitter with low level combining later this year.

As for now vs. the 70s, a lot has changed. KRBE now has a 100kW blowtorch on its lower 2nd adjacent. They have a translator on their upper 2nd adjacent. There's a co-channel LPFM just 70 miles away and multiple 1st adjacent full power stations nearby, two of them just 100 miles away.

Most of these sources of interference didn't exist 10 years ago, much less 40.

2Speakers said:

KRBE currently has (or at least had, the last time I saw it) a 1st generation HD transmitter. The 1st generation transmitters from the manufacturer that made KRBE's are known to have issues that cause less than reliable reception.

I strongly suspect the dropouts will become a thing of the past when they install their new transmitter with low level combining later this year.

As for now vs. the 70s, a lot has changed. KRBE now has a 100kW blowtorch on its lower 2nd adjacent. They have a translator on their upper 2nd adjacent. There's a co-channel LPFM just 70 miles away and multiple 1st adjacent full power stations nearby, two of them just 100 miles away.

Most of these sources of interference didn't exist 10 years ago, much less 40.

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I am kind of curious about this beam tilt - just how narrow a beam do those bays put out? Lets say to the 1/2 power -3dB point? I seems to me that the geometry just doesn't add up to any sort of advantage at all of beam tilt vs. aiming at the horizon. Sugarland and Stafford are going to be overshot, no matter what you do. That is a lot of valuable listeners receiving less than optimum signal. But by the time you are looking at downtown, Memorial, Katy, etc. you are talking about a triangle 2000' on one side, 20 miles on another, or about an angle of 0.0189 radians or 1.08 degrees. Do those bays really have a beam width of 1.08 degrees? If you are reaching downtown by doing that, then the affluent suburbs of the Woodlands, etc. are going to be undershot and not have a good signal. Forgive my ignorance - I've always thought that the only stupid questions are the ones that aren't asked.

As for the people in the apartment in South Dallas, I only visited them for about 30 minutes, I had no other contact with them, they did what they did, I thought it was remarkable / counter-intuitive / violated the conventional wisdom of reception / violated the laws of physics - your words. They gave me the impression that they had been doing it for a long time, and KRBE was a better station anyway. I do have a theory as to why this might have worked - besides somebody below them re-broadcasting. They were on the third floor of the complex, but that would not give a lot of help. But - using that Sony HDR-F1 tuner or whatever it is, I had absolutely dependable reception of KLTY for 5 months on the second floor of my sister-in-laws house in Cypress. With a dipole. So strange things can happen with a dipole. There used to be a Texaco gas station in Lake City, FL by I-10. Its a vacant lot now. But every time we stopped there, WFOX97.1 Gainsville GEORGIA came in loud and clear. Regardless of time of day or year. What I think is going on is that multiple antenna bays don't present a wavefront. They present a moire pattern, and there are little chunks of power stretching out hundreds of miles, becoming fewer and farther between until you reach a vanishing point. That would explain the dipole reception of KRBE in South Dallas, the KLTY at my sister in law's, and the WFOX in Lake City. It doesn't violate any physics, but if you move the receiving antenna even a few feet one way or another, you go from node to null and the reception would cease. I actually looked for some of those unexpected nodes on KLTY before 94.9 was jammed. Had one at a CVS on Spring Cypress, another in front of my Dentist's office in Katy, another at an auto parts store on Hempstead. Absolutely dependable, repeatable, any time of day or year. If you are lucky enough to be in one of those nodes, and you want to listen to that station, you can - like a local. But move the radio - gone. That's my theory about why these weird things happen. And if there is a moire pattern, that explains some of the drops on KRBE locally. I am hitting nodes.

Anyway, a one degree beam width. I suppose its plausible, but I'd sure like to see specs from the manufacturer saying it. The best Yagi I have is 30 degrees wide. If the beam tilt is really that critical, it would explain why Bob-FM came in a like a local in far West parts of Houston - they are aiming at the horizon because they are after Austin, and parts of Austin are well below the horizon behind hills.

Speaking of HD I went to BEST BUY to buy a new car stereo for my car. I wanted an HD radio but the guy kept insisting me not to buy one. That they have bad quality and lose signal all the time. How right is he?

I have HD Radio in my car being near Austin it does pretty good some drop outs but not bad. I use to listen to KRBE all the time here I had a good outdoor antenna pointed to Houston, I could almost get KRBE regularly. Now with KSAH it's hard to get them. This weekend I still can't get KRBE down in Lavaca county and I actually got WRR from Dallas instead of KLOL or KONO.

rbrucecarter5 said:

I am kind of curious about this beam tilt - just how narrow a beam do those bays put out? Lets say to the 1/2 power -3dB point?

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It's not a matter of narrow, it's a matter of overshooting the audience without it.

Antennas these days often employ beam tilt and null fill. Beam tilt directs some of the power downward closer in to the tower. It can be mechanical, accomplished by physically tilting the antenna downward a degree or two, or electrical, accomplished through phasing. The only time I wouldn't employ it is on a rimshot station where all the power needs to be delivered to the horizon.

For each bay, there will be a null going out in concentric circles around the tower. Null fill helps mitigate that.

Mrtejano said:

Speaking of HD I went to BEST BUY to buy a new car stereo for my car. I wanted an HD radio but the guy kept insisting me not to buy one. That they have bad quality and lose signal all the time. How right is he?

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The salesman - and Best Buy - have probably experienced dissatisfied customers, returning units as "defective", when they are actually working within the normal operating range of HD. I have bemoaned many times the lack of a backup plan for the HD2+ channels when lock is lost. It is disconcerting to have them go completely silent for several seconds at a time, and them come back abruptly. It can be distraction while driving. Due to the nature of HD, it is probably not possible to have a backup plan without a second FM broadcast frequency, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of an HD-2+ in the first place.

Another scenario: I can see the clueless consumer putting a radio in a car that has a shark fin or nub antenna - unaware that their factory unit supplied power to a pre-amp directly inside the antenna nub, and without that power, the radio barely picks up anything because the signal has to leak through a powered- down semiconductor. The consumer assumes the radio is defective and returns it.

The average consumer is not prepared to learn the skills of a DX'er just to receive HD radio. And DX'ing skills / antenna knowledge are exactly what is needed in a lot of cases. Maybe - HD advocates should not have been so quick to marginalize all the DX'ers, because those are the very people who can make HD work!

DavidEduardo said:

More likely the salesperson just does not know what HD is.

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And Best Buy sells SiriusXM subscriptions. Most likely, they're told to steer customers in that direction.

rbrucecarter5 said:

The salesman - and Best Buy - have probably experienced dissatisfied customers, returning units as "defective", when they are actually working within the normal operating range of HD. I have bemoaned many times the lack of a backup plan for the HD2+ channels when lock is lost. It is disconcerting to have them go completely silent for several seconds at a time, and them come back abruptly. It can be distraction while driving. Due to the nature of HD, it is probably not possible to have a backup plan without a second FM broadcast frequency, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of an HD-2+ in the first place.

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There is a built-in "backup plan" for HD. The data for the first 98.4k of the HD signal is simulcast above and below the analog signal as a form of forward error correction.

Of course, when pretty much half of the HD transmitters ever made transmit the data so poorly that it can't be received reliably even with that, you're going to have issues.

HD reliability will improve substantially as all the first generation transmitters are replaced.

Last time I went looking for a stereo replacement was the 1990s.

But I'm assuming the feature most folks look for in stereo replacements is Bluetooth. I can't recall the last time I listened to music on terrestrial radio. I'll mostly listen to sports talk and that's it. Any music goes through Spotify. As a matter of fact, I don't know anyone who prefers FM radio over internet based media.

BamaTX said:

Last time I went looking for a stereo replacement was the 1990s.

But I'm assuming the feature most folks look for in stereo replacements is Bluetooth. I can't recall the last time I listened to music on terrestrial radio. I'll mostly listen to sports talk and that's it. Any music goes through Spotify. As a matter of fact, I don't know anyone who prefers FM radio over internet based media.

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Well you my friend have just met one.

LOL it all depends on how stations have their audio quality set up. If I like the music a station is playing, and it sounds nice, I will listen. Many Internet streams for stations are set at so low bitrates they're not good-sounding.

BamaTX said:

Last time I went looking for a stereo replacement was the 1990s.

But I'm assuming the feature most folks look for in stereo replacements is Bluetooth. I can't recall the last time I listened to music on terrestrial radio. I'll mostly listen to sports talk and that's it. Any music goes through Spotify. As a matter of fact, I don't know anyone who prefers FM radio over internet based media.

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You basically CAN'T put in an aftermarket stereo in a car. Radio is so interlinked with navigation, backup, even climate controls that you would disable multiple systems to put in an aftermarket unit.

Added bluetooth to my wife's car. It has RCA jacks for input. Walmart has a $20 dongle. Really BAD low frequency response, replacing some caps on the board helped. Now we play music from our phones through her car stereo - it doesn't have HD for oldies. We could probably stream as well if incoming calls didn't make it drop.

Are any of the AM stations in Houston broadcasting in HD?

There's a great piece about the future of radio - and many of us who are digitally connected are already using it. For an ever increasing population, radio is no longer the main medium for listening in the car - or for that matter - anywhere. The product is pretty bad compared to its competitors.

https://dicktaylorblog.com/2017/06/18/what-does-a-radio-look-like/

stan said:

Are any of the AM stations in Houston broadcasting in HD?

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Nope - last one was the old Radio Disney. They shut HD off years ago. There is a hold out in Bryan / College Station on 1620.