KHSS News

KHSS NEWS
 
KHSS celebrated its 12th anniversary of sanctifying the airwaves on December 7, 2009. Praise God!!
 
Over the Christmas 2008 holiday, we completed the move of our studios from the Die Brucke Building in downtown Walla Walla to the Gardner Building just a few blocks down the street. It was a monumental undertaking – easily the single most difficult task we’ve undertaken since going on the air in 1997. The Lord blessed us with an abundance of volunteer help, however, and we had the old studios completely vacated by the end of December. We still have some work to do to completely move IN to our new studios, but we have plenty of time to do it. We’re on the air from our new studios and that’s all that matters for now.
 
KHSS SIGNAL UPGRADE STATUS
 
Our new signal went on the air at 2:10 PM on 2/10/2010.  KQFM in Hermiston completed their frequency change from 100.5 to 100.1 on 2/10/2010 and we turned our new signal on the same day. 
 
Here is the sequence of 10 events that had to occur in order for our signal upgrade to be completed.
 
  1. File upgrade permission papers with the FCC (done – March, 2005)
  2. Wait for FCC approval of our upgrade request (done – September, 2006)
  3. Prepare and file explicit upgrade plans with the FCC (done – October, 2006)
  4. Wait for FCC approval of our upgrade plans (done – November, 2006)
  5. Pay off KQFM 100.5 FM in Hermiston, OR, to change frequency to 100.1 to make room for a larger and more powerful signal at 100.7 for KHSS (done – September, 2009).
  6. Pay off KWRL 99.9 FM in La Grande, OR, to change frequency to 92.9 to make room for KQFM to change frequency to 100.1 (done – September, 2009).
  7. Acquire a larger-capacity transmitter for KHSS (done – July, 2009 and installed in October, 2009).
  8. Acquire a new antenna and transmission cable for KHSS (done – October, 2009). 
  9. Hire a broadcast engineering firm to install new antenna at the KHSS transmitter site on Pike’s Peak (done – October, 2009). 
  10. Begin broadcasting with a more powerful signal that is roughly 5x our current power (done – February, 2010).
 
The cost for all of this was in the neighborhood of $150,000.  Past pledge drives for KHSS have helped us to raise roughly $170,000, most of which has been set aside to pay for the signal upgrade. Our goal for the Spring, 2009, pledge drive was to raise $30,000, $23,000 of which was set aside for the signal upgrade expenses. With your help and God’s grace, we exceeded our goal.  We have enough funds to pay all of our upgrade expenses.
 
So what's next for KHSS once  the upgraded signal is on the air?  HD radio -- which will allow us to broadcast in both english and spanish at the same time.  Stay tuned for more information.