In about the time it takes most people to rear a child, Hawaii Public Radio will have found the perfect solution to a radio transmitter problem that first started being problematic on the morning of Sept. 15, 1989.

As problems often do, this one came on strong and ornery — and persisted for 18 years.

Imagine the relief then, when this news came last week: problem solved.

Hawaii Public Radio announced a week ago today that it had found and secured a location atop Tantalus for a new transmitter tower that would allow KIPO, one of its two public radio stations on O'ahu, to be transmitted island wide for the first time since its waves took to the air almost two decades ago.

The station's present reach, from its spot on Palehua Ridge in 'Ewa, is severely limited as a result of getting its watts whacked just a few hours after it started transmitting for the first time. With 100,000 watts of power to propel its signal to listeners' radios from Kapolei to Waimanalo, KIPO went on the air that day in 1989, only to discover that its signal interfered with a Federal Communications Commission and Federal Aviation Administration monitoring station in Pearl City.

After sending out just a few hours' worth of KIPO programming, HPR officials were forced to turned the power down on the transmitter until it was operating at a mere 3 percent of its ability, producing a signal that was too weak to down airplanes and also too weak to reach most O'ahu listeners.

As so it's been for 18 years; with some of central Honolulu getting the KIPO signal, and the rest of the island either doing without it or completely unaware of its existence.

BACK TO THE BEGINNING

However one describes it — the dawning of a new day, the turning of the tide, the clearing of the static — one thing's for sure: Being able to catch, say, "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" on a Saturday morning from your lanai in Kailua is certainly worth turning up the volume for. And it's exactly what makes the folks at HPR hum with satisfaction, because their programming on your radio means something's gone terribly, terribly right.

And after so many wrongs, it's about time.

"Everybody is so happy that KIPO is actually being built and is actually coming together. The KIPO angst is finally, finally gone," said Judy Neal, promotions director for HPR. "It's really exciting. During this long, terribly frustrating process, our staff and volunteers have remained focused and kept telling our listeners that yes, KIPO really is going to happen, because after a few years of hearing that, people come back and say, 'Yeah, right' ... and I'm thrilled that I won't be getting any more complaint letters from people telling us that we're not telling the truth about KIPO."

When Michael Titterton joined the HPR team as its president and general manager in 1999, he inherited not only an organization in need of much shepherding, but also an impotent transmitter in need of a permanent fix — not to mention a horde of devoted HPR listeners who were jonesing for a static-free station.

The internal matters were rectified rather swiftly under the guidance of Titterton who, in a previous life on the Mainland, operated a radio consultancy firm that specialized in reviving ailing radio stations.

With HPR on solid footing and operating as a viable business, Titterton turned his attention to the KIPO transmitter.

"When we began to look seriously again at fixing KIPO in 2000, the conclusion we came to is that it just couldn't be fixed, and that was very difficult to swallow," said Titterton. "We had a sinking feeling going into it, that this was going to be a long road."

After years of trying to fix the existing transmitter, Titterton, with the support of the HPR board, made the decision to start from scratch. No more fixing, tweaking or rewiring. It had to be a ground-up solution if it was going to work. He hired an engineer to scout out the best possible location for a transmitter that would transmit KIPO's signal at 26,000 watts. When that place was found — a parcel of state-owned land on Tantalus — he started jumping through all the legal hoops that would eventually lead to a 30-year land lease from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources to build a tower that would house the antenna that would send its signal to all parts of the island and beyond.

2 IS BETTER THAN 1

But why go to all that trouble? Why not just nix KIPO altogether and stick with the station that works, KHPR?

Because that's not the dream.

"We are a mission-driven organization, and we have a mission to educate, inform and to bring cultural programming to the state that wouldn't happen commercially. We take that very, very seriously," said Titterton.

With two streams, or stations as they're known to layman listeners, HPR can provide its audience with two places to get very different content. KHPR is the classical music and fine-arts station; KIPO is the news, talk-show, jazz and blues station.

When the KIPO transmitter is up and running in three to six months, HPR will pull the current news shows from KHPR and redirect them to KIPO, allowing KHPR to be wholly devoted to matters of high culture.

KIPO will then be the go-to station for everything else.

The bottom line: Two is better than one, but two high-quality stations is the best possible solution.

"In an almost Machiavellian way, we're trying to get the word out that we can produce this superb product. We were temporarily restricted in the number of people we can get it out to, but we can do this thing," said Titterton. "We can get it out there. It's really about providing a really good service."

But like anything else, there's always a higher calling. A more eminent reason for an 18-year struggle than just the service-providing rhetoric of a good businessman.

"What we're developing is a platform on which Hawai'i can start a dialogue," Titterton said. "To develop our future and to have mutually beneficial lives, we have to talk to each other. I'm not aware of a medium that's more effective than radio. It's flexible, it's accessible and it's ubiquitous.

On the Web: www.hawaiipublicradio.org