EDITOR’S NOTE: WKNC is a part of Student Media.
WKNC, the student-run radio station, has been undergoing problems with transmission since Feb. 7. That morning the station employees noticed a problem with the station’s output.
“We had static in our signal,” Jamie Lynn Gilbert, the assistant coordinator for Student Media, said. “[The static] would literally block the audio.”
Austin Page, the student engineer for WKNC, said the problem is somewhere within the transmission process, causing the signal to became very weak.
“The effect the user experiences is…all you’re getting is static. The sound is just what you would hear if we weren’t broadcasting,” Page said.
In order to deal with the problem and still broadcast to some extent, WKNC reduced the power for the transmission on Feb. 8, Gilbert said.
“It decreased the signal range. As of right now we’re still at 10 percent [or capacity],” Gilbert said.
Page mentioned that listeners away from campus have not been able to listen.
“We’ve been getting complaints from our listeners in Durham and Chapel Hill,” he said.
Kyle Robb, the manager for WKNC, said campus and most of Raleigh should be covered, but past that the signal is too weak.
The decrease in the signal range is accompanied by a decrease in penetration power. Page said if you were behind a building or in a dense place such as a forest there would be no way for the signal to get through.
Page said he is working with another engineer on WKNC’s staff and Capitol Broadcasting Company to fix the issue. While some equipment has been tested, the problem has not been found.
“We’ve ruled out a lot of equipment that we know [the problem is not coming from],” Page said.
Gilbert said nothing has been purchased yet except for some firmware for the transmitter. The firmware is important to actually finding the error in the system, according to Robb.
“The transmitter wasn’t giving us any error messages even though we knew something was wrong,” Robb said. “[After replacing the firmware] we are receiving error messages but haven’t been able to isolate the problem.”
Taylor Adams, a senior in communication media, said the amount of funds at the radio station is probably the source of the problem.
“Since it’s a student organization, they are probably running low on money and trying to figure out the problem and finding a solution costs money,” Adams said.
