In article ,
Brenda Ann wrote:
"Mark Zenier" wrote in message
...
In article ,
David Eduardo wrote:

KIRO, 50 kw in Seattle, is going to move to FM.

Er, didn't Bonneville sell KIRO to Entercom years ago?

Anyway, it'll go over like a lead balloon. FM in Western Washington ends
up full of holes. (I live in one of them). There's a lot of rolling
hills and they can't get a transmitter high enough to fill in the shadows.

The local NPR stations end up simulcasting on two or three transmitters,
something the commercial guys probably can't afford to do.


Not just Western WA state, the whole NW is that way. Hell, we have places in
Portland city limits where there is no FM reception from the west hills only
6 miles distant (in particular, the east sides of Mt. Tabor, Kelly Butte,
Rocky Butte, and Mt. Scott, all within the city limits). Also, there are
places in downtown Seattle that you can't listen to FM on anything less than
a good car radio due to overloading (King Hill). I had friends that lived
only a few blocks from the tower on top of the hill, which is in a densely
populated part of town, and the overloading was insane.

Actually, it was KING5-TV on Queen Anne Hill. (Along with KONG-16, KIRO-7,
and KOMO-4). And over on Capitol Hill, there's the another three TV
stations and at least one FM (KUOW). There are also telephone microwave
stuff everywhere, but I don't know if that's still used.

Most of the local FM are on Cougar and West Tiger Mountains, which
bracket Issaquah to the west and east. So around the south end of Lake
Washington you've got at least a half a megawatt of FM up there on the hill.
Where I worked down there, it was about 300 millivolts on the scope probe.

There's also a few of the local runt of the litter TV transmitters on
West Tiger. PAX, and other christians, and home shopping channel UHF
stuff.

Mark Zenier
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)