HFU HF Underground
Technical Topics => Part 15 AM and FM Station Operation => Topic started by: ThaDood on September 06, 2024, 1704 UTC
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Another Part 15 option that has existed, at least since the early 1970's in the USA, is Cable FM Radio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cable_radio (I'm sure there are other explanations out there, but that was from a very quick search.) Anyway, in the 70's, 80's, and the 90's, college campuses and small towns, with CATV companies, could allow a station to exist via only being available on their cabled system. Where I grew up, we had Cable FM, but not anything local access like, just re-FREQ-assigned of rebroadcasted stations from Buffalo, Rochester, Hornell, Olean, Niagara Falls, in WNY, and even Toronto, ON, Canada. Local FM reception was dismal, at best, in that area, so FM was nice for the cable company to offer at the time. The only thing that was Cable-Only was the leaky-cable coo-coo at the very start of the FM dial. That, was the tool where cable company employees could drive around, using just a car stereo's FM RX, to find out where the RF leaky cable faults were, and, or, see whom was stealing CATV illegally. Bottom-line, does anyone know of any Cable FM only stations that exist only on the local CATV system, that they are carried on? Or, do you have stories of such station in the past?
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My family had a cable fm station back in the 70's it was FM 88 cable radio. What's crazy I still have one of the cable radio transmitters as there was 2 styles. One you send your signal up to the cable company head end and they would send it back down on a different frequency. The Other was you were able to do both yourself. Also while in the military I assisted in running on on our base which was WKFO.
Not sure if any are still around but they were nice to operate. 8)
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Would you believe that actually goes back to the 1930s? That when it began mid 30s. Mostly hotels, in each room you had a selection of 4 genres of music styles to pick from.
Edit: Actually I'm not certain it was FM, but it seems most likely, as FM was becoming a kind of fad around then but so few people had FM receivers and they were more complicated to build.
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Also while in the military I assisted in running on on our base which was WKFO.
Not sure if any are still around but they were nice to operate. 8)
Like to hear more about WKFO. What base? What years? Carrier Current maybe?
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@ The Dood - Not what I was looking for, and again, not positive it was FM, I just suspect it was:
St__Louis_Globe_Democrat_Sun__Jun_30__1935_~2.jpg:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jd19YoKar6aH__4urqScYsbEGSRE6N_Q/view?usp=drivesdk
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Tybee WKFO was operational when I left California in the 90's. As far as having to build something to receive the signal the cable company had an adaptor that you could get for a dollar for it. This price was what they charged back in the 70's to receive our station (FM-88) the military was free on the base.
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Tybee WKFO was operational when I left California in the 90's. As far as having to build something to receive the signal the cable company had an adaptor that you could get for a dollar for it. This price was what they charged back in the 70's to receive our station (FM-88) the military was free on the base.
TRI I'm curious about this station but can find no mention of it. Which military base in California?
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Getting back to Boomers original question, a post in Yelp in August of this year (in reply to best radio stations in the area) replied with "Wxok Radio Am 1460-Cable Fm 89.7"
https://m.yelp.com/biz/wxok-radio-am-1460-cable-fm-897-baton-rouge
But when I go to WXOK website it shops that they broadcast on AM 1460 and on their FM repeater 95.7 https://www.heaven1460.com/
So presumably they discontinued their FM 89.7 cable service after they put their FM repeater into service
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https://www.hobbybroadcaster.net/resources/low-power-broadcasting-articles.php Scroll to bottom of the page for the Cable FM Article. While you are on that page, lots of other Part 15 stuff to check out as well.