Keeping an eye on a few translators…

A few translator moves have cropped up in the FCC database.  First up is W244CN, licensed to Enterprise but "transmitting" (I'm not convinced it's on the air) from the Highland Home area of south central Alabama.  It recently made a move on paper to the community of Ada, north up US-311.  An application is now pending to move it further up the road, this time to a site near US-331 and CR-23 in an empty lot of farmland.  The facility is predicted to throw at least some signal into the city of Montgomery, which may be the ultimate destination for this facility.

Second, there's the old standby W286AQ, ever on the move and never on the air.  It started out licensed to Northport and actually near that city.  It has since migrated across Tuscaloosa County to Vance and then Wilton in Shelby County, near Montevallo.  This facility also has an application in the works, moving it further south of Birmingham and towards Jemison.  This frequency is a real fruit-basket turnover in central Alabama.  Since this one vacated Tuscaloosa, a Demopolis-licensed translator on the same frequency has crept into Tuscaloosa County.  Meanwhile, another translator that's never been on the air as far as anyone knows, licensed to Alabaster, is hiking up the road to Hoover.  My original thoughts were that W286AQ would eventually be combined or replace the Alabaster facility, but now it appears to be moving further south.  The APP shows 218 watts and would put a good signal into the rural area between Jemison and Calera.

In other news, Selma's W232AN is to change over from relaying another FM to carrying WJUS-AM out of Marion. WJUS has been rumored to be getting this as an FM translator for a while.  Plans are to move the translator on into Marion in the near future.

Moving to new servers (again)

Our host, Bluebot, just announced they are shutting down effective the first of the year.  Starting today we've moved to new servers.  The change should be complete across the internet in about 48 hours, so in the mean time you may run into missing files or other unexpected errors.  I pointed the nameservers to the new address BEFORE uploading all the files, d'oh.  At least where I live the changeover hasn't happened yet and it's been a few hours, but I did see some error messages being logged off the new server, so someone somewhere got the change in a hurry!

W298BG gets CP to change COL to Albertville, and move… out of Albertville.

For many of the entries on the translators page of ABMP, you may have noticed that I sometimes that to the city of license for a translator, I sometimes add another community name in parenthesis.  For example:

Blue Mountain (Albertville)

This is because the COL for a translator need not resemble its actual location or even its service area under some circumstances.  For the above, the translator W298BG, which relays local AM WAVU, is licensed to the Blue Mountain community but actually serves Albertville.  Blue Mountain is actually a suburban area of Anniston and nowhere near Albertville.

At some point translator owners will eventually change their COL to reflect the new location.  W298BG has done just this; they have received permission to change COL from Blue Mountain to Albertville.  Except, with their change to Albertville, they're actually moving the transmitter site outside Albertville, to a point well east of Sardis City, near I-59.  It is within the 2 mv/m coverage of WAVU and also within the 25 mile limit imposed by the FCC for translators, but will greatly improve coverage of WAVU's gospel music format towards Gadsden.

The translator will likely still cover Albertville well while adding a lot of Gadsden to the service area.  It will be co-located on the WQSB stick.

WFGX, a Selma translator and a Kiss for the Shoals…

A few quick tidbits of radio information for this Friday evening…  First and foremost WWFA St. Florian has finally debuted its actual format: CHR.  They've picked up the "Kiss FM" branding and signed on with a lengthy robotic voice countdown, followed by a slam of the competition, read with a bad Casey Kasem impersonation.  The competition is WMSR 94.9, licensed to the Tennessee town of Collinwood, which is why it isn't listed on this site.  (Perhaps it is time to include The Shoals as a metro area?)

In translator news, Selma-area W232AN has received a construction permit to move a bit further from Selma and relicense to the community of Suttle.  The power will remain the same but the height will be taller, so coverage shouldn't be affected that much in the Selma area.  Not that this matters as the translator has been silent for a while.  The current location is on CR-27 in Dallas County, between AL-14 and US-80.  The new site is further up AL-14 near the intersection with CR-6.

Finally, for our friends in Mobile, TV station WFGX has added another subchannel to its matrix.  35.3 debuted The Country Channel today.  It's all country music videos, complementing 35.2, which carries general music channel The Cool TV.

W286AQ makes another move closer to the Birmingham metro

W286AQ (105.1 MHz) started out in the Tuscaloosa area and had moved on to West Blocton when I first began keeping tabs on its whereabouts.  It's now making another move, this time to a site just west of Wilton, a small community on AL-25 near Montevallo.

It's the same frequency and power (250 watts).  Will this be it's final resting place?  Who knows, but this one is worth keeping an eye on.  Lots of small AMs like WBYE Calera could use a boost, not to mention WHPH "Peach 97.7" out of Chilton County.

WGAD and WJBY to switch… again.

The Gadsden Times is reporting that WGAD and WJBY will switch frequencies again.  The two stations switched frequencies several years ago, so this will put each set of calls back on its "original" station.  The oldies of WGAD is also expected to move to 1350 and sports to 930.  The 930 frequency is expected to go dark for a short time, however, while the studio is relocated.

The switch is scheduled for Sunday 17 October, however as I will likely be out of town on that date, changes have already been made to the AM section of the website.

A few updates for the first of October

First, in the LPFM world.  W286BV has received a construction permit to move from one rural area to another.  The currently licensed site is halfway between Greensboro and Moundville in Hale County.  The construction permit is for placement on the tower that currently houses WTUG and WFFN, in southern Tuscaloosa County.

Notice that neither is anywhere near the city of license, Demopolis.  Such is life for translators.

In low power digital TV, two new construction permits have been issued.  The first is for W28DX-D to Tuscaloosa.  It's authorized 2 kW from the site of WZBQ and WALN in Pickens County, south of Carrollton.  This station is licensed to King Forward, a spectrum reseller, so chances are it won't be built out unless they sell the license on to someone else.

Columbus, Georgia also scores a new entry, with W29EA-D.  This station will burn up the dial with a whopping 6 watts of authorized digital power.  Wow, I know.  It's shown to be emanating from an existing tower south of Crawford Road (US-80) west of Phenix City. It's licensed to Three Angels Broadcasting Network (3ABN) and that is likely what they will carry should it be built out.