Its signal is broadcast from Entercom's backup tower on Cougar Mountain, and covers an area from north of Seattle to roughly halfway into Tacoma, Washington and across the Puget Sound.

The transmitter was located at Wedgwood Elementary School, and the station broadcast with 10 watts, covering about a 5-mile circle in the north end of Seattle.

At the same time, the Mass Communications magnet school program at Hale begins, including courses in radio, television, journalism, photography, and graphic arts.

KNHC's format entering the 1980s featured light rock and pop music, with specialty shows in the evenings and on weekends, including jazz and classical.

One of the primary challenges in the 1980s was an application filed in December 1983 by the Jack Straw Memorial Foundation and its station, KRAB (now KNDD), to share time with KNHC.

The commercial station, which had been facing financial difficulties, set up a noncommercial foundation with the goal of broadcasting in the reserved band between 88 and 92 MHz; Seattle Public Schools saw the filing as a takeover attempt.

The case was designated for hearing in 1986, and the courts found in Nathan Hale High School's favor in May 1988 and again after Jack Straw appealed.

The early 1990s also brought a magnet grant to bolster the high school's mass communications program and a renovation to the radio facility that added a second production studio, engineering room, and offices.

While the effective radiated power dropped, the coverage area was vastly improved with the move to the mountaintop site, primarily to the north of Seattle.

Additional technical and facilities improvements, came in 2008, when KNHC installed a new transmitter on Cougar Mountain and began broadcasting in HD Radio, and in November 2009, when it moved into brand-new digital studios and classrooms at Nathan Hale.