KAFA is the United States Air Force Academy cadet radio station. It's run and staffed by some
staffers and the current crop of Cadets from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. They have no set transmission hours, HAAT, power, or directionality. They are only limited in that they cannot cause interference to existing broadcasters. But this is a double edged sword. While the FCC does not regulate them, they also do not protect them. As a result KAFA has to move a lot.
staffers and the current crop of Cadets from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. They have no set transmission hours, HAAT, power, or directionality. They are only limited in that they cannot cause interference to existing broadcasters. But this is a double edged sword. While the FCC does not regulate them, they also do not protect them. As a result KAFA has to move a lot. The station originally went on air in 1987 broadcasting on 104.5 FM. Less than 2 years later, in 1989 they had to move to 104.3 FM. they hed onto that until June 2006 when they had to change again to 97.7 FM. They've also had to reduce power in that period but lacking a facility ID I can't look that up. http://www.myspace.com/kafafm
The result is that Colorado Springs gets to keep a LP alternative station courtesy of the United States Airforce Academy. I'd love to know more about this if anyone can direct me to the legalese...
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Loving the blog, as always.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal, as I understand it: because KAFA (and its sorta-sister stations at the Naval Academy in Annapolis and at West Point) are operated by arms of the federal government, they're not subject to FCC licensing.
Instead, they operate under authorization from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, NTIA.
NTIA is also responsible for the federal agencies that use Travelers Information Station frequencies, and for the VOA and Radio Marti's authorizations. (That's why Marti on 1180 doesn't show up in the FCC database.)
So what about Annapolis and West Point? WRNV on 89.7 in Annapolis apparently still exists (http://www.usna.edu/WRNV/), though it wasn't on the air when I passed through a few years ago. WKDT was on 89.3 in West Point, but it was displaced by the grant of a religious station in nearby Monroe some years back, and apparently never found a new home, though it still has a web page: http://www.usma.edu/publicaffairs/wkdt.htm
For that matter, I didn't hear KAFA on the air during visits to Colorado Springs in 2001, 2004 or 2006, but then I'm not sure I knew to try to listen at 97.7 on the later visits, either...