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KBME 790 transmitter troubles

M

Mediafrog+

For the past few days the KBME transmitter has been throwing off HUGE spurs 210-220 kHz either side of its 790 fundamental frequency, as well as heavy splatter immediately either side of 790. I’m hearing this in and around NW Harris County on multiple receivers. Heaviest on 570-580 and 1000-1010. Does NOT appear to be a mixing issue with the other two signals at the site (950 and 1320 appear to be clean) but rather a malfunction of the 790 unit.

If anyone knows someone involved with engineering for iHeart you might let them know. Whenever I’ve called stations in the past about such things, I always get a clueless person on the other end who has no idea of what I’m talking about and likely thinks I’m a crank caller.😖

The 790 audio has sounded rough for the past couple of years, but I couldn’t tell if it was an STL issue or modulation issues with the transmitter.
 
theantennaguy said:
Media Frog, I have shared your post with Bob Stroupe, the engineer who is flanked and guarded by all the "clueless" people you mentioned.. 😂. By the way, Bob was recently inducted into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.
Click to expand...
To be clear, I wasn’t criticizing any engineering staff. However people who answer the phone tend to be non-technical types who might check the OTA fundamental signal which, on the surface, might seem okay, but actually has severe problems.

True story, back in the days when 91.7 was KTRU and 92.1 was KRTS: One day I tuned to KRTS and found it being clobbered by spurs. I quickly determined that the KTRU transmitter was malfunctioning, throwing heavy FM spurs over a 4 MHz swath of the FM band, interfering with several stations.

I called KTRU and advised them about the transmitter issue. They basically blew me off, turned up the air monitor and said everything sounded fine. Got nowhere with that.

Then I had an alternate idea: I called KRTS and explained that their signal was being clobbered by a defective KTRU transmitter, and they might want to have their engineer get in touch with the KTRU engineer. The person I talked to at KRTS thanked me for reporting that.

Guess what: A few hours later KTRU was off the air, and stayed off for around 24 hours. When they returned, the spurs were gone and the signal was clean.

Just pointing out that signal issues can pop up that are not immediately apparent from listening to the fundamental frequency.

Let’t not get started on out of whack directional arrays…😖
 
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