[BC] "New" station in SF

[Alan Kline]

I'm guessing here that Peter refers to the San Francisco Municipal 
Railway, and its streetcar and trolley-coach operations. Those can wreak 
havoc on the reception of AM radio anywhere near a car or TC line. The 
scraping of the current collector shoes against the overhead wire 
generates all kinds of AM noise. For a trolley coach, multiply by two, 
as each coach has two poles.

When my wife and I were first married, we lived briefly at her 
grandparents' home, about a half-block from the 31-Balboa trolley coach. 
Whenever a coach would go by, it would completely obliterate KCBS--not 
exactly the weakest signal in the market.

I can guarantee that the Muni's electric vehicles are not going to go 
away--not in *that* city. In fact, the voters by referendum have 
mandated the elimination of diesel coaches. I think they have to be 
replaced by LNG or propane fueled vehicles, or by electric transit. 
Besides, at the moment it seems that everyone there is preoccupied by 
the Mayor's love life...

IIRC, the Muni's land-mobile radio system operates up in the 480 mHz 
band. For years, they still used a channel way, way down--31.14 mHz off 
the top of my head--but I'm sure that's long gone. Anyway, I've never 
heard of the Muni's two-ways causing BC interference.

ak

Dana Puopolo wrote:
> Then the 'muni' system will have to shut down...
> 
> If I recall, that station will eventually be a DA-3. I would assume that the
> daytime (non critical hours) pattern is pretty good....
> 
> -D
> 
> ------ Original Message ------
> Received: Wed, 07 Feb 2007 05:17:54 PM EST
> From: PeterH5322 <peterh5322 at rattlebrain.com>
> To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> Subject: Re: [BC] "New" station in SF
> 
> 
>> Pappas Telecasting's KTRB this month began broadcasting a 50,000-watt 
>> signal at 860 on the AM dial. It's reportedly the first new AM radio 
>> station to broadcast in the Bay Area in 50 years. 
> 
> True, but it is largely unusable, as has been reported in ba.broadcast, 
> some of which reports include FIM measurements (favorable), but others 
> report complete obliteration by S.F.'s Muni system in the COL itself.
> 
> Not withstanding those reports (which see), the station's present DA-1 
> operation, which was never intended to be anything besides the station's 
> _night_ operation, has nothing due north (and towards some North Bay 
> cities), due south (towards some South Bay cities, including parts of San 
> Jose and all of Monterey Bay) and very little due east of the Livermore