Local low power AM stations offer generally no useful content

Posted at 3:07PM on Thursday, November 8, 2007 in am.

Wednesday, November 7, 2007. The work hour commute in the Washington, D.C. metro area is typically miserable. Fortunately I don't have to make this trip but once every couple of weeks. Today I amused myself in the endless slow moving metropolitan parking lot by picking out all of the low power AM stations that seem to have popped up suddenly in the past five years or so. It is truly amazing that many of these stations endlessly play out of date, incorrect , useless, or just plain superfluous information; for example:

  1. National Weather Service robot-delivery that has the weather report right but the time off by an hour,
  2. National Park Service radio advertising events from a month ago,
  3. Arlington County/City radio alerting us to traffic disruptions from last month,
  4. Maryland State Police telling us "traffic is slow" as if we needed a radio station to tell us that.
  5. Useless CIA station in an endless station ID loop.

Your taxpayer dollars at work.

Here are the logs:

Morning drive:

Rockville, 1259, 1630. Weather Radio WXM42 162.475 MHz Hagerstown weather being relayed on a local government station. At 1300 (8am local time) the station IDs "The current time is 9am eastern time." Signal good.

Langley, 1321, 1700. Arlington County radio with West Nile Virus mosquito control and emergency preparedness tips in English and Spanish. Signal good.

Langley, 1326, 1670. National Park service information station, describing events at the FDR Memorial. At 1328, detailing special events and tours from October 2, 19, and 20th. Signal fair.

Langley, 1330, 1660. Traffic information. ID "KFC 70." Signal fair.

Langley, 1330, 1640. endless ID loop "This is KJI955 transmitting on 1640 kilohertz." A previous report in World of Radio #4035 says this station originates at CIA Headquarters in Langley. Signal fair.

Langley, 1333, 1630. Another local station relaying Weather Radio, this one relaying KHB36 on 162.55 MHz. Signal good.

Langley, 1334, 1620. TIS mentioning virginiadot.org. Signal poor.

Rosslyn, 1340, 1680. Weather station with music from a broadcaster underneath. Broke in with City of Fairfax ID at 1351. Signal poor.

Arlington, 1344, 530. National Airport info. Signal fair.

Arlington, 1345, 1700. October road closings. Signal fair.

Evening drive:

Arlington, 2120, 1700. Arlington County emergency preparedness messages. Signal good.

Arlington, 2120, 1680. "1680 AM Radio" Fairfax Virginia, and into National Weather service relay. Signal fair.

Arlington, 2120, 1670. National Park Service, loop about memorial tours. Same loop as this morning. Signal excellent.

Arlington, 2125, 1640. "This is KJI955 transmitting on 1640 kilohertz" endless loop continues. Signal fair.

Langley, 2130, 1630. National Weather Service relay. Signal good.

Potomac, 2145, 1630. WNBY570 Maryland State Highway Administration radio, with police tiips such as "Mobile users call #77." Signal poor.

Potomac, 2145, 1640. KJI955 loop, signal good.

Potomac, 2145, 1700. Arlington County. Signal good.

Potomac/Rockville, 2150, 590. "This is WPBJ 590 in the I-270 corridor and WPDD 1070 in the US-29 corridor." Montgomery County Maryland radio. "Traffic is slow on I-495 and I-270" DUH. Also, report of a power outage in Bethesda.

Rockville, 2156, 1660. "1660 NIH Radio." KFC70 station ID. National Institute of Health bethesda campus parking info. Signal good.

Rockville, 2210, 1630. National Weather Service relay. Very low modulation, good signal.

Winterfester 2007 airchecks

Posted at 8:48PM on Tuesday, March 20, 2007 in am and fm and hf and pirates and winterfest.

New Howard County TIS

Posted at 10:20AM on Wednesday, November 29, 2006 in am and broadcast media and rants.

Wednesday, Novemver 29, 2006, 1430, 1700. One of the new Howard County TIS services is sending out a reasonable signal into north-central Montgomery County. WQMV923 noted here with call letters and ID "Howard County Government AM 1700" and a tape loop of emergency preparedness PSAs. The station's putting out a fair to good signal from home to work at an average distance of around 8 miles.

FCC data for this station puts it off of Tridelphia Road south of MD 144 with an EIRP of 10 watts.

This is part of a cluster of stations run by Howard County's Office of Emergency Management, as reported in DX Listening Digest 6127 and 6117.

Howard's TIS has a better sounding signal in neighboring Montgomery County than either of the Montgomery County's TIS stations, WPBJ222 AM 570 and WPDD643 AM 1070. Nothing is generally heard on 570, and 1070 is always weak, bothered, and frequently putting out bad audio, even though I drive within a couple of thousand feet of one of 1070's transmiiters twice every day.

I've questioned the utility of the Montgomery County system a couple of times in the past. Montgomery County's two TIS clusters say they provide up-to-date traffic and travel information for the I-270 corridor (570) and US-29 corridor (1070) and they claim to broadcast in parallel. It seems silly and wasteful to have tax dollars funding twelve scratchy, weak and unlistenable stations broadcasting traffic information, when every commercial news station in the metropolitan area has up-to-date and regular traffic reports once every five minutes or so.

Howard County's system is providing a good public service as a standby network. Monkey County's needs some work. I say give both networks to the public school system, and let the high schools develop future broadcast professionals by running the public airwaves.