Thanks to a tip from Gord Lansdell at Northwest Broadcasters I discovered that 1110 KRPA Oak Harbor has returned to the air simulcasting the Punjabi programming of co-owned 1340 KWLE Anacortes during daytime hours (6am-sunset). Tuning in the signal however, there’s little to celebrate: as before the audio sounds terrible being rebroadcast from a standard computer with no sound card. In addition, there’s no audio processing on the signal. The audio distorts on peaks & as previous monitoring revealed, drops out continuously due to “buffering” as a result of using a standard, low quality Internet connection barely functional above dial-up speed. KRPA continues with numerous stretches of ‘dead air’. I have a hard time wondering what owners New Age Media Ltd of Bellingham have in mind for this waste of RF spectrum. Frankly, if I was responsible for engineering this debacle, I’d be truly embarrassed. Perhaps the plan is to put this station & co-owned KWLE up for sale? How sad that these two stations were once vibrant small-town broadcasters serving their communities of license.
