Terry Green Blogs About KUSP

KUSP would probably not exist, or would be nothing like it is today, without Don Mussell. Don came to KUSP in the year of its birth, 1972, and has provided the lion’s share of our technical guidance and support over the ensuing 38-plus years.

In recent years Don’s public radio-oriented time and energy has been concentrated in Hawaii. Hawaiian Airlines features Don in an article in their August-September in-flight magazine, Hana Hou, which is linked here.

It’s a nice piece about the challenges faced by broadcast engineers like Don who make public and community radio possible, in all kinds of places and conditions.

Congratulations to Don, and thanks to Debbie Walsh, one of our soul music programmers from days gone by, for tipping us off about the article!

Last week, Big Sur area listeners began experiencing problems receiving our translator at 95.3 FM. Murphy’s Law dictates that the hardest-to-troubleshoot problems with our equipment will crop up when our Chief Engineer is out of state, and so it was this time.

He’s back now, and went to Big Sur to investigate first thing today. It appears that there’s a problem with the final power amplifier for the translator (the last piece of equipment before the signal goes up the transmission line to the antenna, and out to you). The problem seems to be aggravated by fluctuations in the voltage of the utility power coming into our equipment, which we’re also experiencing.

We’ve made adjustments to the power amplifier this afternoon that we hope will cure, or at least minimize, the audible signal problem. Longer term (as in, before winter) we plan on repairing a more robust power amplifier that is presently out of service and substituting it for the amplifier that’s been pitching a fit.

Big Sur listeners — if you continue to experience reception problems, especially if they persist for more than a few minutes, please phone the station at 800-655-5877 and let us know. We depend on you to help us keep tabs on our occasionally-grumpy equipment…

Listeners to three of our FM translators are presently experiencing reception problems that are turning out to be hard to fix. Translators are pieces of equipment that rebroadcast the KUSP 88.9 signal into areas where terrain makes reception difficult.

In Los Gatos (90.3 FM – also serves nearby communities, including Saratoga, Campbell, and parts of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino) we are facing long waiting times for repairs by Verizon and AT&T. The two telephone companies team up to provide the audio link to our translator site (AT&T serves our studio location, Verizon provides phone service in Los Gatos). Something is broken in the link and after several days of troubleshooting they don’t seem close to finding and fixing the problem. The next step is to bring in more personnel, but that isn’t going to happen until next Wednesday, April 21.

As we were doing battle with our problems in Los Gatos both of our translators on the Monterey County coast began to malfunction. We broadcast to Palo Colorado Canyon on 91.3 and to the Big Sur area on 95.3.

The symptoms of the problem, as reported by our listeners, have been inconsistent. Our chief engineer appreciates listener reports of technical difficulty, the more detailed the better. Key information includes telling us when you are experiencing problems (date and time), the nature of the problem, and how best to follow up with you (name, phone number, e-mail). You can send us reception reports via e-mail to brant@kusp.org.

Rest assured that we will put things right just as soon as we are able to.

We’ve resumed operation on FM 95.3 in Big Sur after a three-day interruption due to equipment failure. Our technical support people, led by Chief Engineer Brant Herrett, rounded up loaner equipment from other stations to make our return to the air possible. We’ve tested the antenna system to make sure the storm did no additional damage after we went off the air on Monday night, and everything looks OK.

As always, we ask our listeners, especially those listening to us via our FM translators, to let us know if they experience problems receiving our signal. Call our toll-free studio number, 800-655-5877.

We have additional repair work to do at Big Sur over the next couple of weeks to get everything back to normal, but there should be no lengthy interruptions in service as a result.

Late Monday 10/12, as a early-season storm blew on to the Central Coast, KUSP’s Big Sur translator at 95.3 went off the air. A technician living in the area inspected our equipment (following directions sent by cell phone from our Santa Cruz-based Chief Engineer, Brant Herrett) and determined there had been a major failure in the transmitting equipment beyond his capability to fix. KUSP’s spare equipment inventory had already been strained to the limit by failures in our HD Radio transmitter on Mount Toro (about which I had blogged here).

Consequently, we have nothing in our inventory to put into service in Big Sur and (given the storm situation) some uncertainty as to when our principal engineers can get there to start repairing what’s on site and now out of commission.

We are reaching out to other stations to see if there is any equipment we can borrow or rent in order to get our Big Sur signal back on the air. It should be obvious that the middle of a pledge drive, with a major storm brewing, is about the absolute worst possible time for us to be off the air, especially in a place where our broadcast signal is so important to listeners. No apology we can offer to the people of Big Sur will be adequate.

Our engineering team will do the best they can with what they have, as always. And I’ll try to update this blog as the situation develops.

Next Tuesday, September 29, KUSP’s Big Sur translator will move from 105.9 FM to 95.3 FM.

The change in frequency is necessary because the FCC has authorized a new commercial FM station on 105.9 in that part of Monterey County. FM translators, which are the kind of broadcasting facilities we have in Big Sur (as well as in Palo Colorado Canyon, Hollister/Gilroy, and Los Gatos/Saratoga/Campbell and vicinity), are “secondary” services — which means that if the FCC adds a new full-power station to the FM band that might receive interference from us, we have to get out of their way.

Thankfully, our consulting engineer, Don Mussell, identified another slot we could move to under the rules, and we will be making that move this coming Tuesday.

There may be minor coverage differences between the 105.9 and the 95.3 signals, but they should not be significant.

If you have friends or associates in the Big Sur area, you can help us spread the word about the change. FM listening options are few in and around Big Sur, and we sure don’t want anyone to be left behind. Especially since we’re close to the start of our Fall Membership Drive (October 8)!

Tonight about 8:00 PDT the main KUSP 88.9 transmitter shut down and won’t restart. While modern FM transmitters have a lot of built-in redundancy and outright failures are rare, some parts of the system don’t have back-ups — and it would appear something in that category malfunctioned. Our engineers are on their way to the transmitter site right now to see what happened.

The kusp.org audio stream is unaffected, as are the 89.1 translator serving Hollister, Gilroy, and points north, and the 89.3 translator that serves part of the Santa Cruz area.

I’ll keep you posted as I learn more.

12:30 AM update: Our engineers suspect there is a problem in our FM exciter, a key piece of equipment that takes our stereo audio signal and uses it to synthesize the 88.9 FM signal (which is then amplified and sent to the antenna). An attempt to put a back-up FM exciter into service was unsuccessful (some kind of problem with its power supply). So the primary (and suspect) FM exciter is back in service pending repair and reinstallation of the back-up unit, or discovery and repair of whatever is wrong with the primary exciter in the first place. Not the ideal state of affairs, especially in the middle of a holiday weekend, but it is the best our team can offer you at the moment…

5:00 PM update 9-6-09: The primary FM exciter malfunctioned again about 12:40 PM this afternoon. We were able to round up the parts needed to fix the back-up exciter (thank you Santa Cruz Electronics for being open on Sunday of Labor Day weekend!) and restore programming everywhere by mid-afternoon.

At noon today the 91.7 MHz public radio facility that serves the Highway 101 corridor from King City south to Paso Robles (and communities west of there) passed from KUSP’s ownership to our colleagues to the south, at KCBX. KCBX now has three major transmitters: KSBX 89.5 in the Santa Barbara area; KCBX 90.1 for northern Santa Barbara County and most of San Luis Obispo County; and what will be (after the FCC approves a change in call letters) KNBX 91.7 north of that.

This change in ownership furthers the strategic plans of KUSP and KCBX, and has been under study by our stations for almost a year. For KCBX, the acquisition of the 91.7 frequency fills in areas of poor coverage in the northern part of their home county, San Luis Obispo, and adds coverage in more rural parts of southern Monterey County — a place that, culturally, has more in common with San Luis Obispo County than it does with the communities ringing Monterey Bay and the urbanized areas along 101 (from Salinas north to Silicon Valley), where almost all of KUSP’s audience lives and works.

For KUSP, this transition is a strategic move that accomplishes three important and interrelated goals.

First, it strengthens us in financial terms. That in turn makes it possible to keep moving forward in two critical programming areas — building a team to bring you the news and issues in our area that you care about, and building the capacity at kusp.org to get all our programming to our audience how they want, when they want, wherever they are.

In the past year KUSP has invigorated our news and information service, and you have responded. Our audience research indicates the station’s core audience — the number of people who depend on us more than any other station — is about 30% bigger than it was in early 2008, and as big or bigger than at any time in KUSP history. More people are tuning in more often, and stay with us longer. Audience size is not the only measure of how a public radio station serves its audience, but it’s significant.

And in the past year we have worked very hard to build kusp.org into a public media center that can carry our station and our values far into the future. The RadioEngage project, developed with our partners at Quiddities and supported by a generous grant from the Knight Foundation, is just about ready to go. We know that the choice and interactivity the Internet brings our community of listeners has changed, and will continue to change, our public radio world — profoundly and irreversibly.

Thirty-eight years ago, the people who started our station didn’t sit around and just pine for their own AM radio station — they went out and got an FM license, even though FM listening was only a tiny fraction of AM listening in 1971. They saw what the medium was capable of and moved to secure that capability for their community. We reap the rewards of their foresight around the clock, every day.

Now, we must do something nearly as bold. We need to strengthen the over-the-air service built on our founders’ foresight, and move — quickly — to build a great on-line service. If the world of public media moved more slowly, we might have chosen to wait until the economy had recovered, before charging ahead into the world of on-line listening and connectivity though mobile devices like the iPhone. But I think all of the professional and volunteer leaders at KUSP agree that it’s necessary for us to move assertively. This arrangement with KCBX is one step towards securing the substantial financial resources we need to go forward.

When KUSP put KBDH San Ardo on the air in 2001, we filled in one of the largest geographic gaps in public radio coverage in California. The transaction completed today maintains public radio service for everyone in or passing through the 91.7 signal area, something we felt was vital. And, having finished this particular transaction, we hope to explore future collaborations with KCBX in other ways that strengthen public radio in central California overall.

I wouldn’t leave this subject without thanking the hundreds of KUSP supporters in southern Monterey and northern SLO County who have listened and contributed to our station these past eight years. As Internet and mobile device technology improves (and this is happening at lightning speed) we’ll still be a listening option for many of you.

We hope that these changes benefit everyone in the long run. Indeed, we’re confident they will.

Not much today has gone normally, it’s fair to say. Most of the KUSP news and information team have been working since early this morning on coverage of the Lockheed Fire, which broke out last night near Bonny Doon. KUSP’s on-line coverage is here. Our reporters are working day and night to bring you accurate and up-to-date information as it becomes available.

However, tonight brought another round of unexplained transmitter problems that knocked out our 88.9 transmitter, and the other KUSP signals that depend on it. People in the vicinity of the Lockheed Fire may have a more reliable signal from our downtown/west side Santa Cruz translator on 89.3. Our engineer is at the 88.9 transmitter site now working to isolate and fix the problem.

This afternoon (Wednesday 8/5) our main transmitter that broadcasts on 88.9 MHz malfunctioned, knocking off our analog FM and our digital HD Radio signal. This in turn killed most of our other frequencies. The Downtown Santa Cruz signal (89.3) and Hollister/Gilroy signal (89.1) receive their audio through different means and are unaffected, as are the Internet streams at kusp.org.

Our engineers are on top of the mountain where the transmitter is right now trying to diagnose and repair the problem. As information becomes available I’ll report what I can here…

Update at 6:30 PM: the transmitter is back on the air. We appear to be experiencing cooling problems. Other radio stations using our same site (in general, FM and TV stations are clustered together to reduce costs and minimize the impact of their antennas and towers) are grappling with similar issues this afternoon. Temperatures are cooling off now and that may be helpful. We will continue investigating this problem tomorrow.