On July 31st 2016 the KUSP board sent out a press release stating “Local independent public radio station KUSP 88.9fm | kusp.org will sign off at midnight tonight, ending nearly 45 years of distinguished on-air public service in the greater Monterey Bay Area and more than 20 years online.”.
This prompted me to record the experience of hearing KUSP go off air.
This is a non-standard short episode of GeekSpeak.
Episode 31 of Season 16
1) I said “we put a radio on the roof” – I meant antenna.
2) I claimed that FM carriers were to modulate 1 MHz. This is silly. I mean 100Khz of spectrum that the carrier signal, the main frequency, is modulated with. That 100KHz includes the mono audio + stereo audio info + plus sub-bands that hold things like RDS.
The spacing of 200kHz (89.1MHz to 89.3MHz = 200kHz) makes sure that if the carrier is not modulated too much the stations will not “collide”.
Check out this great FM Tutorial PDF which explains all of this much more completely.
3) I claimed that my radio was picking up another station up or down the dial from KUSP. In listening to my recording I realized that my radio would not do that and that it was simply picking up an 88.9 frequency that was further away, probably coming from San Jose. My home was on the edge of KUSP’s broadcast range.
