Roy H Selling Off?

[TC Talks]

He also has a place at the Crystal Downs Club (at least he used to).

He lives in Flower Mound Texas too.

In case we all forgot, most of the money comes from his wife.

He sold some stations in Texas back in the 90s for millions after moving them closer to major cities (92.1 in Houston/Galveston and 100.7 in Houston/Beaumont come to mind)

Roy is pretty sharp when it comes with "Move In". This is the process of buying stations of a particular frequency that ring around a major market, then shut them down to create a new Grade A signal in that market. The economics are simple; small town stations can be bought inexpensively, but a Class A - C license in a major market was worth millions.

The best part? If you can simply change the frequency of the small market stations, you end up with one major market station and a few small stations. This is why he has small stations in Texas. Some were part of successful move ins, others were part of speculative opportunities. The FCC frowns on the practice now.

This was the original plan in Traverse City. Five very powerful stations. He had signals in Escanaba for a while too, and I seem to remember he was negotiating with owners in Wisconsin. He also had purchased an old building on Front street right across from Radio Centre to turn into his headquarters. It all fell apart.

I had a client in Southern California who owned 92.1 in Riverside, Thousand Oaks and Catalina Island. He tried the same thing, but never got it approved.

[Dr. Sandi]

I had a client in Southern California who owned 92.1 in Riverside, Thousand Oaks and Catalina Island. He tried the same thing, but never got it approved.

Seems to me that with the new lack of a local studio rule, that the economics of this maneuver might well work out these days.

[TC Talks]

I had a client in Southern California who owned 92.1 in Riverside, Thousand Oaks and Catalina Island. He tried the same thing, but never got it approved.

Seems to me that with the new lack of a local studio rule, that the economics of this maneuver might well work out these days.

that's true, except he's now dead.

[Dr. Sandi]

OK, dead makes it tougher. But stealing from the dead is a time honored tradition.

I was in LA around that time, I think. I was engineering at the 92.1 in Thousand Oaks and the AM. That owner was bleeding cash and had to sell. I think that's when the new guys decided to try to gather the three 92.1 suburban Class A stations into a circle and create a single signal.

One major problem was that the GPS time correction technology wasn't readily available and the co-channel signals were always interfering with each other around the middle. Unfortunately, around the middle was LA proper. That can be mostly fixed these days though.

[CK-722]

I don't see how you could avoid interference fringes, as radio signals are coherent. With enough sources, you might be able to have every point so that it vectorially doesn't cancel completely, but it still seems to violate the Laws of Physics to avoid fringes completely. The same applies to boosters. If boosters worked well, they would be all over the place.

[Dr. Sandi]

Coordinated on channel signals have varying degrees of success depending on terrain, directional antennas and frequency lock.

Los Angeles is divided by various mountain ridges which are effective FM blocks for Class A FM signals which tend to be at lower elevations than the regional superpowered giants on Mt. Wilson.

The Hollywood Hills separate the San Fernando Valley from Hollywood, Downtown and the beach communities. So 92.1 above Thousand Oaks never really reaches south of the Hollywood Hills. There are smaller hills running north to south between Riverside on the east and Los Angeles. So the theory of operating 3 stations on 92.1 was mostly sound. There will be a lot of locations on hillsides with terrible interference, but lots more with a good signal.

That's assuming they're all synchronized to the exact same frequency using a GPS time lock. Modern transmitters have that feature as an option. Back in the 90s, it wasn't as easily accomplished. Out of frequency lock means the interference zone between 2 or 3 of the transmitters would wander back and forth as the transitters got warmer and cooler each day. Harder to sell ads if you don't know who is listening at any given time.

On channel FM boosters are slowly becoming more popular because of the lower cost of using GPS as the reference frequency. Now it's possible to tweak the components to find the least objectionable location for the interference zone to live. Maybe a river or a lake or a lightly developed part of town. Sometimes there's no good place, so a compromise has to be made by station management. Which part of town has listeners that can be written off?

In fact, one enterprising company has petitioned the FCC to allow stations nationwide to place low powered on-channel FM boosters in strategic parts of any station's coverage area that could provide localized programming to various zones inside the main signal area. Localized weather, news, school sports or even ADVERTISING.

Maybe larger cities will once again see a dollar a holler ad rates for these little nibbles run from FM boosters.

[ftballfan]

What station did he own in Escanaba? During his last Northern Michigan docket proposal (which would have moved 99.3 [then WOUF] to the Kalkaska tower used by WPBN/WGTU/WCMV, with WATZ moving to 101.5, WMJZ moving to 97.1, and a few new drop-ins on 99.1 (Alpena and Au Gres) and 99.5 (Shelby)), WGLQ was proposed to drop from Class C0 to Class C1 while remaining at its current tower site.

For the SoCal examples, did you mean 92.7? There are three 92.7's in the Southern California area licensed to Fountain Valley (KYLA), Thousand Oaks (KYRA), and Adelanto (KYZA), all of whom are Air 1 now. KYLA was originally on Catalina Island and KYZA was originally in Riverside. KYZA was moved over Cajon Pass to allow KYLA to move onto the mainland.

[CK-722]

What station did he own in Escanaba? During his last Northern Michigan docket proposal (which would have moved 99.3 [then WOUF] to the Kalkaska tower used by WPBN/WGTU/WCMV, with WATZ moving to 101.5, WMJZ moving to 97.1, and a few new drop-ins on 99.1 (Alpena and Au Gres) and 99.5 (Shelby)), WGLQ was proposed to drop from Class C0 to Class C1 while remaining at its current tower site.

For the SoCal examples, did you mean 92.7? There are three 92.7's in the Southern California area licensed to Fountain Valley (KYLA), Thousand Oaks (KYRA), and Adelanto (KYZA), all of whom are Air 1 now. KYLA was originally on Catalina Island and KYZA was originally in Riverside. KYZA was moved over Cajon Pass to allow KYLA to move onto the mainland.

That Petition was thrown out several years ago. In the meantime, the Consultant and Radio Chess Player, David Schaberg, passed away. He was very bright in coming up with his plans, but they were usually tied up for years with Petitions to Deny, and at best difficult to build out. Roy should have built the CP for the C2 and called it a day. As I recall, it was for 99.3, and quite close to TC.

Dr. Sandi, there was one station near San Diego that had about 10 Boosters. The key to Boosters is to use very low power, which limits the interference fringe areas. This looked like they did extensive field research, experimenting with locations, terrain holes, and different polarizations in different Booster locations. I don't know if they are still operating today. When the engineers are dismissed, or now when the true radio engineering geniuses are sadly passing away, the projects fall by the wayside.

Any serious DXer/Radio Experimenter/Borderline Pirate will tell you that it takes very little power to serve a surprisingly large area. I remember a while back when someone put a 100 mW FM transmitter from Europe on a 50 foot tower, and got out at least 10 miles. I video recorded a 1 watt translator from 10 miles away back in the 1980s, just on a Delco Automobile Radio. I bet I could have gotten it 20 miles away with a good antenna. I tried, but it was directional away from where I was trying. It used a separate H and V Polarized 5 Element Yagi type Scala Antennas on a downtown circa 50 foot building.

[TC Talks]

Holy Cow I just remembered that Radio used to be fun...

[Dr. Sandi]

Holy Cow I just remembered that Radio used to be fun...

Yeah, I miss that part.

Oh, wait, I still have a little fun and make chump change doing radio with low power.

My twin 250 Watt flamethrowers are fill in translators for a Shelton/Olympia, WA Class A FM. I supply the translators and the engineering/equipment and they supply the full power station and sales/billing.

Height really makes a difference. We're at 360 meters, about 1400 feet above sea level. Much of the listening area is at sea level, so we have a decent reach with just pea shooter transmitters. Our signals are limited by intervening mountains and annoying co-channel LPFMs more than distance. We're strong in Olympia, covered up by LPFM in Tacoma and obliterated by a Canadian full power FM around Seattle. Maybe a quarter million population in our coverage area. The FM band sure isn't what it used to be with 50 pounds of new stations crammed into that 20 pound bag.

But a hybrid FM HD/Translator arrangement makes it financially possible to own a kiddie FM inside the edge of a major market, in this case Seattle/Tacoma. There's about $20,000 of my own money and a matching amount from the full power station invested in hybrid equpment. This got us on the air with two additional signals FM from the Seattle market's only commercial Class A station. We're not getting rich, but it has improved everybody's cash flow. And it's a little bit of fun to be free to do whatever we want to do with both signals.

My full power partners are doing well financially with Classic Rock on one translator. They almost flipped the main station to Classic Rock when they bought it a few years ago, but stuck with their unique Hot AC blend to keep the sales smooth. But now, they're playing the Classic tunes they all prefer to hear on their radio on their second 'station' and making sales.

And I'm having a little fun doing Boomer Rock & Roll on the other translator. Nobody gets paid, but it pays the bills and has repaid my original equipment bill, so life is good.

So put me down as a H*** fan of low power broadcasting. Yes, we have totally wrecked FM DXing, but it keeps a bunch of senile delinquents off the streets and in their home studios, so what's not to love?

My guys have been with me doing radio by remote control for nearly 20 years now around Western Washington on LPFMs. We've always done it with automation and voice tracking via Internet. We were WAAAAAYYY ahead of the curve on the Covid social distancing rush.

OK, maybe I'm having a LITTLE fun in spite of myself. Radio is a chronic disease that will eventually take my life, I'm sure.

[Dr. Sandi]

Being a couple thousand miles away keeps me out of the loop, I didn't know until the recent post from CK-722 that Dave Schaberg no longer walks among us.

Dave was a year ahead of me in high school in Lansing. He owned a DJ service, even as a student. And he wouldn't hire me to be one of his announcers, but I always admired his chutzpah. Great idea guy.

As the old hands pass from the scene, I fear that the great technical ideas for radio will slow to a trickle.

[TC Talks]

I used to run the Lake County Colorado translator association. We ran 10 watts (solar) at 12,800 feet.

David's obit

https://estesleadley.com/obituaries/david-schaberg/

[CK-722]

I never knew until recently that Carl E. Smith, developer of many (mainly post WW II) AM DAs and design ideas for others, AM DA Author, and founder of The Cleveland Institute of Electronics, inherited the American Gothic painting house in Iowa, and owned it for quite a while. After The Field Of Dreams baseball field and the Dewey the Library Cat Library, it is a favorite Iowa tourist attraction, and was even before selfies. He passed away quite a few years ago.

Leonard Kahn invented AM Stereo in the late 1950s, and the "independent" sideband AM Stereo system, and more recently hybrid DRM systems. He passed away several years ago.

Glen Clark, developer of many recent complex multi tower AM DA arrays, passed away about a year ago, within a few weeks of Ron Rackley at DLR, who also developed recent complex arrays. Glen Clark also developed Texar Audio Prisms. Long ago, he was CE at WLS-FM (for lack of another set or two of intervening callsigns), and a staff engineer at WLS (AM), where he developed early versions of audio processors that became default standards of the era. Oddly enough, one of Glen's last projects was designing a new array for WMVP, whose transmitter building still displays the legacy WCFL callsign, WLS's primary competitor in the Glory Days of Top 40 Radio in Chicago.

So there's a short list of some of the great geniuses of radio engineering.

[/Historical Mode Off]

[Dr. Sandi]

Hey TC Talks, thanks for the link to Dave Schaberg's obit. A lot of memories were stirred, and several names were people I used to know back in the day. Wow.

As for 2 mile high translators in Colorado, I can only imagine the range across, say Kansas, as opposed to clanging up against the next Rocky Mountain peak.

[Dr. Sandi]

CK, your list of engineering greats gone away was all names I recognize.

Thanks to Carl Smith, I was able to learn to be a enjyneer at home. Fired through that home study course in about 3 months, drove to Detroit and passed the FCC First Phone exam by knowing how to figure out the answers. Unlike the 'engineer' for my employer of the time who had memorized the test answers at his 'engineering school. Elkins I think it was. He had me take the antenna monitor point readings because he didn't know how the FIM worked.

Anybody who loved radio in the 60s remembers the great WLS/CFL battle for ears. I always preferred CFL because they weren't afraid to play those naughty 'controversial' songs that Clark Weber banned. Also, the CFL night signal was pointed at Michigan, which was great for my cheaper radios.