Our KUWC station in Casper, Wyoming has been broadcasting in HD for quite a while.  If you aren’t familiar with HD Radio technology it allows a digital signal to be broadcast alongside the existing analog radio signal.  The new digital signal can also carry additional channels of audio.  KUWC had been broadcasting an HD2 signal carrying classical programming but we wanted to investigate adding Jazz as an HD3 signal.  Unfortunately to add the third signal we would need to reduce the bandwidth of the existing two signals.  We performed some listening tests to ensure the quality of the existing two services would not be impacted.  Those tests were extremely positive so we proceeded with adding the third service.  Since there was already an HD2 signal, no additional equipment (other than an audio source) was required for the 3rd HD signal.

The two silver boxes are audio decoders, each capable of receiving two audio channels.  The top unit (silver) is actually receiving main channel and classical audio via satellite.  The second unit receives the Jazz audio via a microwave network available at this site.  Unfortunately our Jazz service is not available via our satellite network yet so we can only add it at certain sites where the microwave network is available…

Done!  On to the next project…