NIMBY's 1 Salt Spring FM 0

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NIMBY's 1 Salt Spring FM 0

Postby skyvalleyradio » Thu Nov 08, 2007 11:01 am

The resident's opposition to the proposed CFSI tower switched from concerns abut radiation to the unsightliness of a tower in their neighbourhood. They dragged in some realtors who stated that the surrounding property values would drop if the tower gets erected. Therefore, the owner of the land that was to be leased for the tower, has rescinded his offer and we are now on the hunt for a new tower location. There is an area to the west of the proposed site (on Mt Belcher) that may be suitable but it sounds as though the residents will demand another Islands Trust public hearing. The Trust must approve the land use permit for the tower in order for construction to proceed. If this fails, SSI Radio Corp will have to investigate using existing tower sites that may prove suitable for coverage of Salt Spring Island. These include Mt Parkes on Mayne Island where the Coast Guard radio tower and Environment-Canada weather station are located. At one time there was a low-power UHF ch 49 transmitter rebroadcasting the Knowledge Network from this site. Other possible sites include the following Vancouver Island mountains: Mt Brenton west of Chemainus, Mt Hayes west of Ladysmith or even Mt Benson west of Nanaimo where Sunshine Coast station CKAY has been allowed to transmit from. Will keep you posted...
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Postby jon » Thu Nov 08, 2007 12:02 pm

Could you use an existing cell phone tower? Or would you have to increase its height, and again get resident complaints?

Does the local cable company have any decent size towers that you could piggy-back on? Or would that interfere with their reception?
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Postby skyvalleyradio » Thu Nov 08, 2007 2:20 pm

jon wrote:Could you use an existing cell phone tower? Or would you have to increase its height, and again get resident complaints?

Does the local cable company have any decent size towers that you could piggy-back on? Or would that interfere with their reception?


jon - we're going to look at a number of options. The main cluster of towers here is on Mt Bruce at the south end of SSI and provides very poor coverage into Ganges and the adjacent areas. There is a cell-phone tower on the north west side of the island and we'll investigate leasing space there. Before SS Cablevision sold out to Shaw a few years back, there was a tower a half mile west of my home but has been dismantled. Shaw's main head-end for Seattle-Tacoma reception for much of south west BC is located on Mt Bruce.The coverage would be the same as at my home - might as well stick the antenna up on one of my 60' ham towers if thats the case (then we can fight with my neighbours!!!) Establishing ANY new tower site here on Salt Spring may well be a tough accomplishment. CFSI's owner is away for a week so we haven't even met to discuss the next strategy. My own personal opinion is that Mt Parkes on Mayne Island will give us the best coverage possible. The variable terrain on the Gulf Islands make ANY location difficult to provide city-grade signal coverage to all of the licensed listening area. Using Mt Parkes will require a sharply-tuned semi-directional antenna as the potential for intereference to co-channel CILS Victoria will be increased.
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Postby jon » Thu Nov 08, 2007 6:26 pm

I hadn't realized that Shaw took over the local cable company.

You might be able to put a tower on the site of the SS Cablevision site near your home without going through the "neighbour approval process" on the grounds that it was the status quo until very recently. You'd need a legal opinion on that.

I forgot to mention an "Edmonton trick" that got a lot of cell towers up during the days when no neighbourhood wanted one: find an appropriate site with a church on it, or where a church wants to build, and hid the tower behind a church structure, i.e. - typically a tower with a cross on the top.
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Postby Dan Sys » Thu Nov 08, 2007 10:14 pm

Just out of curiosity Sky, is CILS Victoria on the air yet? All I get on 107.9 is the B.C.I.T. campus station from Burnaby "Evolution 107.9" which used to be referred to as CFML, but the legal calls are now apparently VF2448. It blows me away how well those measily 12 watts get out. Heard them loud & clear in Mission on the car radio a few weeks back.

So 107.9 will be the home of stations in Burnaby, Salt Spring Island, and Victoria in the near future. Talk about a crowded FM band.
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Postby PMC » Thu Nov 08, 2007 11:38 pm

Dan Sys wrote:Talk about a crowded FM band.


Some time ago, on a sunny Sunday afternoon, I sat pushing a seek button through the FM, while parked at the Mount Washington ski lodge, which is located near Courtenay on Vancouver Island... a good distance from Vancouver and Seattle etc.

The strongest station signal was KISM... others came close, but it topped. I was amazed at the distance covered by some of the stations.

There was some channel noise, but I can't confirm it came from conficting frequencies since other devices exist that use the FM band.
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Postby skyvalleyradio » Fri Nov 09, 2007 10:50 am

Dan Sys wrote:Just out of curiosity Sky, is CILS Victoria on the air yet? All I get on 107.9 is the B.C.I.T. campus station from Burnaby "Evolution 107.9" which used to be referred to as CFML, but the legal calls are now apparently VF2448. It blows me away how well those measily 12 watts get out. Heard them loud & clear in Mission on the car radio a few weeks back.

So 107.9 will be the home of stations in Burnaby, Salt Spring Island, and Victoria in the near future. Talk about a crowded FM band.


Dan - CILS did their mandatory 3 week signal test to satisfy IC regs about interference. This was early last August, then they shut down and haven't been heard from since. Here at mid-island, they came in pretty clearly with a 10 element rotatable yagi antenna and my superb ridgetop location and could be heard nicely at parts of the south end. On the north end of Salt Spring there are locations where "Evolution 107.9" from BCIT comes in with city-grade signal. However their status is very-low-power therefore receive no protection from CFSI which may well be heard in Tswassen/Point Roberts with a decent signal. Our projected signal coverage has some overlap with CILS from Sidney north to the Swartz bay ferry terminal but CILS is licensed to serve Victoria not Sidney or the Saanich Peninsula. The two most crowded FM freqs at my location are 90.1 and 91.7 Rotating my FM yagi (on a 40' tower) -

90.1 yields: CJSF Burnaby, CJMP Powell River (lots of tweaking of the rotator to pull this in!) KNWP Port Angeles and used to get KMWS Mt Vernon before they moved to 89.7

91.7 yields: CKAY Sechelt, CBC Radio 1 Chilliwack, KZAZ Bellingham and KSVR Mt Vernon
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