Technical Profile: WQHC

AM Technical Profile: WQHC

Frequency:: 1170
Format:: Religious: Catholic
Transmitter Location:: [map] Licensed location; tower and studio appear to have been removed by landowner.; [map] [street view] STA location on Section Line Road in Hanceville.; [map] Just east of Hanceville, on CR-538, near CR-537. (CP)
Power (ERP):: Day: 850 watts; Critical Hours: 500 watts; STA: 10 watts; Day: 1,000 watts (CP)
Antenna:: Day: 1 tower
Other Information:: 0.5 mV/m Daytime Groundwave Service Contour from the FCC's Public Files
[FCC]
[FCCdata.org]; [Radio-Locator]; [Wikipedia]
// W264DL Hanceville, AL
History:: This small station in an even smaller town dates back to an original construction permit issued to Betty Jean Stinedurf (d/b/a B. J. Morgan, who was president and GM) in the spring of 1984. The owners struggled to get the station on the air, and the license expired and had to be reinstated twice before things got up and lumbering under their own weight. The station eventually debuted in December 1985 with a religious format, and the WHZI calls. It ran 460 watts, daytime only, although it was initially licensed for 500 watts.

The station was sold by Betty Jean Stinedurf to "Rojo, Inc." for $45,000 and change in 1990, although B. J. Morgan remained station president and GM. The calls changed to WRJL in November, 1990, but it kept the religious programming. The station got a boost to 850 watts in 1994, but remained a daytimer due to its dial position. The calls changed to WXRP in early 1997, still with religious programming.

The station was sold to Maplewood Properties, Inc. in 1999, for $175,000. In 2004 the station decided to try rock music to appeal to the kids at the local community college. During this time there may have been some Spanish language programming on the weekends.

Rock music on AM did about as well as you'd expect, and the station struggled to stay on the air. It was sold to WJR Broadcasting, LLC in 2004; they in turn donated it, likely while it was off the air, to Joe Communications, who sort-of operated a network of AM religious stations in Alabama and Georgia. Joy's Christian network programming was put on the station when it was returned to the air on 8 January 2007. Shortly after getting the station, Joy changed the calls to WLYG (We Love You God?).

Joy took the station silent in August 2007. They filed for an official Special Temporary Authority to remain silent in October of that year. One year later they resumed transmitting just in time to sell the station to Queen of Heaven Catholic Radio, for $18,000. If that price seems low, it's because the sale did not include the land or tower! Queen of Heaven was thus forced to take the station silent again through another STA while they sought a place to get it back on the air. Whilst on the hunt for land, the calls changed to WQHC (Queen of Heaven Catholic Radio), to match their sister station WQOH in Irondale.

Catholic programming debuted when Queen of Heaven Catholic Radio got the station back on the air in November of 2009. It broadcast (again, with an STA) for 10 watts from a small whip antenna, mostly to keep the license from being deleted.; In late October 2011 the station was donated to La Promesa Foundation, who operates several stations in Texas as well as one in Maryland. They program Catholic religious in both English and Spanish. It appears that with the donation, the station switched to noncommercial operation. In August 2012 the station received a permit to relocate to a permanent facility, with a small boost in daytime power to 1 kW. In late July 2013 the station license was transferred to Fatima Family Apostolate International. The 1 kW facility was never built out, and one running 850 watts was instituted in 2014. In November 2015 the station again received a permit to go 1,000 watts daytime only.

As of January 2018, the station is still operating on their 10 watt Special Temporary Authority first applied for back in June of 2010, having renewed it over a dozen times.

The station received a permit to construct a new FM translator on 100.7 MHz in Hanceville in late January 2018.

In August 2019, the FCC finally had enough and granted one last Silent STA for the station, noting that if they did not resume operations by December, the license would be cancelled. The station did not resume broadcasting (or did not notify the FCC) and as of April 2020, the license has been deleted.