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Just Another Day In Paradise

Hawaii is beautiful place to visit and live. Yes, there is radio in paradise and there are the unique challenges of a new mountain top transmitter site on the island. Consulting Engineer Don Mussell is the “go-to” man when it comes to good radio in Hawaii. Don piqued my interest when he explained what he had to do to build his new transmitter site.

An Xtreme Build
According to Don: “The transmitter site is 4,500 feet above sea level, and situated high above Kihei and the south coast of Maui, on the lands of the historic Ulupalakua Ranch. Getting to the site requires four wheel drive, at a minimum, as the “road” (as we like to call it) is more or less a lava rock path on the bottom three miles, and graduates to pasture land on top three miles. “But the pasture land is also lava, but older and more weather beaten, so it is ground up into small pebbles and new soil. On a good (dry) day, the road can be traveled in about 30 minutes, as long as the rough lower section has been smoothed recently by a road grader.”

Weather Woes
“During wet weather, the lower section is slippery but mostly passable, but the upper section can become impassible due to mud and pasture by-products. If the clouds move in , it is very easy to get lost quickly if you are not familiar with the twists and turns of the various trails that branch off of the ‘road.’ To get the transmitter up on the mountain was difficult, as one might imagine, but we managed as the weather was favorable. Once we completed the hour long journey (in low gear and at crawl speed), we then had to forklift the transmitter into the upper level of the 40 ft. container.”

“As one might imagine, this was a sunrise to sundown operation. Installing the Nautel was the easy part of this project. After finding a few loose connections, the transmitter went on the air, on schedule, and has been running since day one with no down time and no real trouble at all. It really is a dream machine.”

I asked Don some specific questions about this very unique installation.

Callahan: When and why did the station decide to locate at the Ulupalakua site?
Mussell: KIPM is a new station as of 2011. After a long wait, we finally received authorization for constructing KIPM in 2010. We originally applied for the permit during the 2007 filing window. It was modified to allow operation as a full class C FM.

Callahan: Was there already a station operating from the site?
Mussell: Hawaii Public Radio was already operating KKUA from the site, and it was moved there in early 2007 after operating for many years atop Haleakala. We would have preferred to stay at Haleakala, which is 10,000 feet above sea level, but the observatories and Air Force facilities atop the mountain forced all broadcasters (our FM and a number of TV transmitters, and even the Weather Service) to move away. Ulupalakua was the only place we could go, due to countless restrictions, including cultural and environmental concerns. Ulupalakua was established as an electronic site in the 1990s, and does a good job covering Maui and Hawaii County. It just requires much more power than our previous operation at 10,000 feet (14 kW was a full class C up there).

Callahan: What special environmental requirements are there, when building such a site in Hawaii?
Mussell: There are migratory bird concerns, and towers need to be hidden as much as possible. A remote site, far away and above main populated areas, and the use of private land, are the easiest way to establish a site. But it is not easy or quick by any means. It takes years and years, and many many dollars to move through the process. This being Hawaii, we are especially concerned with being a good neighbor, and not be something that tourists notice while sitting on the beach.

Callahan: What is the electrical power to the site and how does it get to the peak?
Mussell: MECO (Maui Electric Company) supplies the three-phase power. We are a long way from the generating plant down on the south coast, but not too far from the local, up-country communities of Kula and Keokea, so the electrical service was extended about eight miles up to the site, when it was originally built 20 years ago. Because we are at the end of the line, power regulation and surge protection were essential to dependable operation. But because we are so far away, there are three large generators at the site: a 60 kW unit for the commercial FMs, an 80 kW for public radio, and a 150 kW unit for the TV broadcasters (at the adjacent site).

Callahan: It looks like everything is housed in four containers arranged on top of each other. Is there a limitation on ground space, and what is in each container?
Mussell: The lower containers house the commercial FM transmitters, which are mostly 10 kW units; they utilize a large panel array at the top of the tower. Public Radio has the upper container on the south side. The individual containers are 10 feet wide, 10 feet tall, and 40 feet long. They are secured to the ground and also guyed in place for earthquake and hurricane protection.

Callahan: Why was Nautel the transmitter you chose?
Mussell: Maintenance is difficult at most of our sites, either because of lack of easy access, or lack of spare parts close at hand. We were looking for transmitters with enough power, good efficiency, small footprint, and fewer moving parts – and a price that would not break our budget. Before just a few years ago, we did not have the choices we have now. Nautel has placed their higher power transmitters in the same price range as our tube transmitter choices. Based upon all of these factors, it made sense, long term, to go with solid state. Another important consideration for us was, way out here in mid- Pacific, was the lack of experienced engineers. There are just a handful of engineers maintaining nearly 100 transmitters spread across five very separate islands. Maintaining a high power tube transmitter is partly an art, as well as requiring experience and caution. Add in unpredictable tropical weather, and I think you can see it is not typical by any means. A solid state device, kept cool, just provides more dependability in this environment, and allows us to sleep a bit more regularly.

Callahan: At such a height, what considerations were there for antenna performance?
Mussell: I was not happy with the coverage of the antenna system in use by the commercial stations at the site, so public radio opted for a separate, optimized antenna system. We needed to have enough gain to allow full class C power, but few enough antenna bays to reduce the nulls to the population below. In hindsight, we would have chosen horizontal polarization as well, mostly because the main audience is no further away than 15 or 20 miles, and the lack of vertical power does not appear to make any difference to signal strength close in.

Callahan: Has the performance of the station from this site met your expectations?
Mussell: Yes, very much so. And our listeners as far away as 130 miles south on the Kailua-Kona coast of the Big Island are very happy to be able to hear our services now.

Read the full article with photos at rwonline.com

U.S. radio engineers are building up experience with modulation-dependent carrier level operation on AM stations.

Among broadcasters using the power-saving MDCL approach is Crawford Broadcasting, as RW has reported previously. The FCC recently started to allow U.S. AM stations to use such techniques through rule waivers.

Director of Engineering Cris Alexander provides an update in the company’s latest engineering newsletter.

“We now have two full months under our belts with the KCBC modulation-dependent carrier level operation, which we started in late October,” he wrote, referring to a Crawford station in Manteca, Calif. “For both November and December of 2011, our energy usage was reduced by 21% over the same period in 2010.”

Crawford recently also has begun MDCL operations on AM stations WXJC and WYDE in Birmingham, Ala.; and KLTT in Commerce City, Colo. All these AM stations are using Nautel transmitters.

“WXJC is another 50 kW AM, and [engineer] Stephen Poole performed the required firmware update on the AM-IBOC HD exciter to enable the MDCL option. We look forward to gauging the energy savings at that station starting here in a month or so.”

He wrote that Poole wanted to try MDCL on 5 kW WYDE as well, “not so much for the energy savings but as a means to simply reduce stresses on the transmitter. As with WXJC, all it took was a firmware upgrade and enabling the MDCL option. Once we learned how, enabling the MDCL option on the new KLTT [Nautel] NX50 was a piece of cake.”

The stations are using the AMC algorithm, which reduces the carrier with modulation; it returns to full power during low or zero modulation.

“I have had the opportunity to evaluate the effects of the MDCL operation on the signal firsthand and … well… I haven’t detected any,” Alexander continued. “The signal is strong and robust, maybe even louder than before, and the digital performance is outstanding (we get a digital lock in about one second on most receivers).”

Alexander noted a related implication: “One thing that occurred to me as I was thinking about all those power savings is that if we operate our aux transmitters at KLTT or KCBC (where we have full-power auxiliaries), in about 15 minutes we will produce a peak demand that is the same as it used to be, something that will really hit us in the wallet.”

For KLTT, he wrote, this is not a concern. “The ND50 aux is driven by a two-year-old AM-IBOC exciter. We were able to do a firmware update to the AM-IBOC and enable the MDCL option. So now both the main and the aux operate with AMC with 3 dB of carrier reduction. We can, if we need to, operate the KLTT aux at full power (including digital carriers) without much of a power cost penalty.”

But at KCBC, its ND50 aux is driven by an older NE-IBOC exciter that can’t be updated for MDCL. “So for the moment and until further notice, if we have to use the ND50, we will operate it at 25 kW to hold the peak demand down and avoid the utility bill hit.”

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Read the full article at HalifaxChamber.com

Nautel Ltd. is an International Business of the Year – Bronze Winner at 2012 Halifax Business Awards, announced by Halifax Chamber of Commerce on Thursday, January 26th, 2012.

The Halifax Business Awards are intended to recognize those businesses and business people in Halifax who exemplify the best that our city has to offer: innovators, who are willing to take chances, push the boundaries and stretch the limits for success.

The annual event, now in its twelfth year, featured Gold, Silver and Bronze winners in five categories: New Business of the Year, Small Business of the Year, International Business of the Year, Business of the Year and Business Person of the Year.

Peter Conlon, Nautel President and CEO, accepts the Bronze International Business of the Year 2012 Award.

Read the full article at drm.org

Vatican Radio Trials DRM+ in Rome on VHF band II

Vatican Radio carried out DRM+ trials on VHF band II in Rome during December 2011 on frequency 103.8MHz using 200W RMS. The frequency allocation came from GE-84 agreement and the transmission was performed by switching the broadcast to digital during timeslots which were free in the normal program schedule. The digital transmitter used the same antenna system as of the analogue and was combined with other 3 FM frequencies. The antenna, located in Vatican City, is a 10 bay omnidirectional system elliptical polarized. During tests coverage measurements and coverage comparisons between analogue and digital have been performed.

Support for the trials was provided by other DRM Consortium members. Nautel provided a VS1 FM/DRM+ Transmitter and VS-DRM Digital Exciter. Fraunhofer IIS supplied a Fraunhofer DRM ContentServer R5 – Professional Edition, for the DRM+ multiplex signal generation. RFmondial provided an LV6m DRM+ Modulator and a DRM+ Measurement Receiver Professional.

The results will be published soon.

Read the full article with photos at rwonline.com

Los Angeles engineer Mike Tosch spotted Radio World’s recent story about MDCL technology being used at WOR(AM) in New York, and shared his own experiences. Here’s his letter.

KSPN-AM710 in Los Angeles (DA2-50k ND Day/10k DA Nite-3 tower) is running MDCL full-time on our Nautel NX50 using AMC mode since early December 2011. We were able to do this simply on the NX50 by selecting the desired MDCL scheme and just enabling it. It is built into the NX50 “out of the box.” KSPN no longer runs AM IBOC and runs full 125% positive peak, full NRSC modulation.

We elected to use the AMC scheme first at the suggestion of Tim Hardy, DOE at Nautel. The Nautel NX50 does not require any upgrades or Nautel personnel to be on site to invoke this system. I was even told by Gary Warner in Nautel Customer Service, “As for stress on the transmitter, it’s actually less stressful.” This was of interest to me as I did not want to make the transmitter work harder to achieve the results. Gary went to explain the AMC scheme: “With AMC, as modulation goes up, power goes down. With no modulation, the power will be as per the preset. With 100% mod, the power drops 3 dB.”

We intend to analyze our electric bills once one full billing cycle with LA-DWP has passed. This will be compared to last year’s bill for December and we will see how the savings looks. We spend about $65K/yr on electricity costs for the whole site (includes HVAC, etc). The transmitter meter now usually sits at about 28 kW (day) with jumps higher with modulation.

In listening tests and talking to several different folks, both engineers and non-engineers, no one has noticed any changes to audio levels or modulation density, quality or basically anything. I did listening tests at night in usual places and could not discern any difference in audio quality or loudness. PPM decoders are all operating fine at transmitter and studio with no glitches at all. We would be interested in any additional studies performed on actual PPM units carried by the public. At present, we do not have access to any of the actual PPM units.

We are thankful that the FCC has allowed this technology to be used on U.S. AM stations as it will help with our engineering budget and hopefully extending the useful life of the transmitter.

Read the full article with photos at rwonline.com

Crawford Broadcasting provided details of two transmitter installations.

WYCA(FM) in Chicago has a new Nautel 2.5 kW VS2.5. “This is one of the new BYOR (‘Bring Your Own Rack’) transmitters that Nautel is offering these days,” CBC Chicago CE Art Reis wrote in a recent engineering newsletter article. “It has an integral digital exciter, HD exgine, IP audio I/O and USB backup audio automation. Provided we keep the internal library up to date, should we lose the STL to that site, the transmitter can continue to play the hits all by itself.”

He said the aux transmitter is a 1960s vintage Gates FM-5 that functions but for which Crawford can no longer get parts. “That old beast is coming out of service and going to the scrap yard,” with a new Middle Atlantic rack going in to house the new transmitter. “That arrangement will provide us with a brand-new main transmitter and a full-power digital aux system (Nautel FM-4 and BE FMi73 high-level combined).”

Separately, Crawford station KLTT(AM) in Denver just received a new Nautel NX50. They’ve removed a Nautel ND2.5, which once served the station at night but is no longer active.

That project involved removing 7/8-inch transmission line from the ND2.5, enlarging the hole in a phasor to accommodate a 3-1/8-inch EIA flange and moving the current main transmitter output to the aux port in the phasor. The engineers also reworked and added remote control wiring. The new transmitter features a remotely accessible GUI user interface, connected via IP to the studio network.

Director of Engineering Cris Alexander said Crawford is employing MDCL on the new transmitter to take advantage of the “considerable power savings that offers.”

Alexander (who also is a contributor to Radio World) recalls putting in the previous KLTT transmitter 17 years ago. “I clearly remember unloading that thing off the truck, uncrating and installing it — and the tower crew lived in the empty crate during the rest of the project!”