[Updated] The FCC in late February and early March granted Minor Modification applications for all of the iHeartMedia FM stations atop Mt. Soledad to consolidate at the historic KFMB-TV site, moving from KGTV’s antenna across the street. iHeart’s KMYI 94.1 and KIOZ 105.3 will join current master FM antenna partners KPBS-FM 89.5, KBZT (FM) 94.9, KXSN (FM) 98.1, and KFBG (FM) 100.7. The move will require a new 12-bay master antenna to handle the high input power. The current 8-bay antenna has been known locally as “Quadzilla.”

At the same time, EMF’s KLVJ (FM) 102.1 Encinitas will move its main transmitter from the UCSD tower site to the new master FM antenna.

iHeartMedia’s KSSX (FM) 95.7 Carlsbad will also move from KGTV to KFMB-TV, but their allocation requires a separate, directional antenna to be mounted on a tenant tower at KFMB-TV. The signal has some light reduction in signal toward Mexico to the southeast.

he FCC granted a Minor Modification application for iHeart Media to move K277DH, the KLSD (AM) translator on 103.3 MHz, from a KGTV-owned tower to the KFMB-TV tower. The CP specifies a vertically polarized Kathrein yagi with an east-west orientation at 250 watts ERP.

Since the KFMB Stations were sold to TEGNA, InSite has been managing the site for income and there have apparently been some reductions in site leasing costs. American Tower Corp. recently acquired all of the InSite properties and management contracts and will take over management of the KFMB-TV property.

Congratulations to Doug Alman for the renewal of his SBE Certified Broadcast Television Engineer (CBTE) certification in November 2020. 

Congratulations to Chairman Tony McDaid for having passed his Cisco Certified Network Administrator (CCNA) test recently. Tony said about the venture, “For the CCNA I attended evening classes at San Diego Continuing Education. I would encourage anyone in broadcasting to take the classes. I also used the Boson practice test simulator.”

It’s never a bad time to work on your own certification, whether for Cisco, SBE, or CompTIA. You make yourself more employable, learn new skills, and walk away with a real achievement. 

On Friday, December 11, the FCC granted a nearly three-year-old Minor Modification application by KFMB-TV channel 8 to increase power from 19.8 kW to 87.4 kW ERP. According to Rick Bosscher in 2017, the change was designed to help with over-the-air reception in households without external VHF antennas, a rarity these days. The change also used the limits of the existing transmitter and antenna systems. The FCC has been approving increases in VHF station power as long as interference zones are not greatly expanded.

Some AM stations went silent last week as SDG&E cut power to San Diego County zones they deemed vulnerable to winds during extreme fire season. According to Darnell Forde, Salem Media Group Chief Engineer, KCBQ 1170 kHz and Family Radio’s KECR 910 kHz at their shared site in Lakeside lost power December 2nd, 2020 at 10:13 PM and it did not return until 5:02 AM on December 4th, some 31 hours later. They do not have generator backup power available.

KPRZ 1210 kHz south of San Marcos lost power briefly the same night, but an emergency generator ran until the utility restored power at 9:28 AM on December 4th.

Darnell said Lakeside and the area around Elfin Forest where the KPRZ transmitter is located experienced high winds during those outages.

San Diego Gas & Electric has adopted a policy of cutting power during wind storms since several fires in California were blamed on power lines arcing.

Mike Curran, SBE 36 Vice-chair, was caught by the Mt. Woodson UCSD HPWren webcam leaving the site in his Jeep.

Says Mike about this photo: “It’s very rare that I windup in my own weather picture. As I hung out after a service call up on Mt Woodson, I wanted to catch a sunset shot, but as you can see the fog, drizzle, and clouds had a different plan. Just by chance my buddy Drew over in Phoenix was watching the UCSD HPwren cam and was able to grab a screenshot of me leaving in my Jeep. Foggy and windy conditions are not much fun driving down that road, but it sure beats the heck out of driving a desk! Like Julia Roberts said in Oceans 11, ‘You should know, somebody’s always watching.'”