We get lots of calls about reception, especially from our Terre Haute listeners.  Well, the WAXI tower is about 5 miles south of Rockville on US 41, about 15 miles north of Terre Haute.  WAXI has 3000 watts, not 50,000 watts, so while our range is pretty good, about 40 miles in most directions, one can experience "multipath" distortion in parts of Terre Haute...that's where the signal bounces off buildings and other obstructions.  It is also difficult to get WAXI  inside commercial buildings.

The answer to better reception is always a better receiving antenna.  Make sure you have the whip up, if your radio has one.  Or better yet, hook it up to an outside TV or FM antenna.  Many radios simply use the line cord as an antenna and this is not adequate.  If you can get your radio close to a window, this may help a lot.  And those $10 clock radios just won't cut it.  We have a Bose Acoustic Wave radio in our office and it brings in WAXI very well.  (Yeah, I know, they're $350!)    Boston Acoustics has just come out with a new model for $160 that's getting rave reviews.  And Cambridge Soundworks has a new one out for $250 that is outstanding.

WAXI-FM in Rockville is located 5 miles south of the city of Rockville on US 41. WAXI uses a Harris 1kw transmitter installed in 1978, and an ERI 3-bay antenna on top of a 440 foot tower. It uses an Optimod 2200 for stereo generation and processing. We installed a new Nicom 30 watt exciter in March, 2001.  We use an Armstrong STL transmitter/receiver for our microwave link between the studio in Terre Haute and the transmitter.  The Scala Paraflector antenna is horizontally polarized, and is up 350 feet at the receive end, 120 feet at the send end.  WAXI has 3000 watts effective radiated power.  NOTE: A power increase of about 50% was recently granted WAXI by the FCC, which will take us to about 4500 watts.  A new transmitter will have to be installed in order for us to take advantage of the increase.  We hope to do that within the next few months--stay tuned!

WAXI's building south of Rockville is now a transmitter site only.   Our main studio is at 1301 Ohio Street in Terre Haute.  It contains a Dynamax 8RL console, 2 Shure SM 7 mics, a Symetrix mic processor, 2 CD players, a Sony mini disk recorder, a production computer with Cool Edit Pro, a phone coupler, and a Comrex frequency extender.  WAXI's programming is run through a Scotts automation system.

For additional questions about our technical plant, e-mail us at WAXI.