KSDS (FM) started transmitting at its newly permitted 22 kW ERP as of late June. The station, managed by City College and transmitting on 88.3 MHz from a tower at Mesa College in Linda Vista, should now cover much of San Diego County with their full-time jazz format. Now they’re on par with their commercial brethren, and with neighboring KKJZ in Long Beach at adjacent channel 88.1. That’s a long way from the 830 watt powerhouse they were before May 2000.

KSDS installed a new Shively 5-element half-wavelength spaced array at 160-feet above ground. The antenna has a cardioid pattern with shallow (60%) null to the southeast.

The radiation will remain vertically-polarized to provide some protection to nearby circular-polarized XETV channel 6 in Tijuana. While most closely-spaced channel 6 – NCE-FM combinations around the U.S. have co-located to reduce interference, such an arrangement wasn’t possible due to the international boundary here. The FCC only recently allowed the increase in power, saying that international treaties don’t specifically deal with FM-to-TV adjacent channel conflicts.

Larry Quick, CE at KSDS, says they have set-up an email address and phone number to deal with viewer complaints. Both KSDS and XETV are hoping that with the high adoption of cable, satellite, and digital TV, the interference problem will be minimal.

Disclosure: The author is employed by Bay City Television, U.S. operators of XETV Fox 6, a subsidiary of Televisa and party in recent interference FCC filings involving XETV and KSDS.