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Post by Variety 1560 AM on Mar 21, 2016 14:31:21 GMT -7
playing devils advocate here,,,
Carl Blare brought up a good point back on p15us about any potential new service to be abused by religious broadcasters who have used legal loopholes to severely abused the translator and satellator rules.
so we can't make any potential service too effective or all the available frequencies just may get gobbled up by god casters.
something to think about.
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Post by oldieswmrk on Mar 21, 2016 21:09:10 GMT -7
I don't think you should forget FM as this is where more power is needed the most. BETS-1 as it is here in Canada should not be to much to ask for as everything isn't falling apart here....even here in southern Ontario where it's the most populated and where half the radio stations in the whole country are.
Don't see much use for hobby radio on shortwave as most people don't have shortwave radios or listen to it and the stations fade in and out and the fidelity is worse than AM...not really good for music. Also there's so many bands and frequencies that no one would ever find you.
Oldieswmrk
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Post by Variety 1560 AM on Mar 23, 2016 16:59:14 GMT -7
i just approved another interesting player to the group. i know this individual will have some good on topic dialogue to add to the petition effort :-)
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Post by rfb327 on Mar 23, 2016 17:33:10 GMT -7
Has anyone considered taking the Part 73 rules (both AM and FM) and condensing them down...technical and legal....that would apply (and support the push for a new service) so that not only the unlikely interference concerns are addressed, but also the "serve the public interest" areas are covered? Perhaps looking at all this from the angle of providing a missing need rather than from the angle of "hobby" or "experiment" may help pull more attention and serious consideration out of the FCC for a new service. Don't think that setting aside extra or other spectrum is the answer...especially outside of the intended audiences ability to listen! As mentioned earlier in this thread....not everyone sports a SW or LW receiver...and probably a lot of more that would not even know what Short Wave or Long Wave radio even is these days. Ok so there is the ability to build converters so that these out of the way and out of band frequencies could be tuned to with the everyday AM/FM radio. What about the marketing and education curve of said converters that would also come into the mix? Would there be that much interest to justify the costs of design, test and sale of such things to the general public that is sold by either brand or recognition or popularity? There's a good question...just how popular is terrestrial radio these days? !!! Sheesh...with all the choice in the world right in the palm of your hand....is it any wonder why commercial radio is struggling? (trust me) I have been an advocate of rules relaxation in regards to low power broadcasting for a long time. I think it's long overdue and can be of benefit, especially teaching engineering and all the other things involved with terrestrial radio to these younger generations. Commercial radio and even non-commercial radio are so strapped they do not have the time like years long gone where a grade school class takes a field trip to the local radio station and get's a tour while the afternoon's most popular jock is on the air spinning tunes and making jokes as the kids walk by the booth window. Smaller operations under a new service can go much further with providing a need to the community and right now every community needs all the help it can get! No this thing needs to work with what is there...ie bands and the ability...or easy ability for the public to hear it without any cumbersome or confusing "box". One example of how that can be done has been in use now for a long time...ie TIS stations. Those operations have disproved all the interference horn blowers nonsense. FM....well that's a whole different world and one that is definately prone to more interference issues than one would think about. Let's face it...the FM band is simply TOO SMALL!!! 200 channels back in the hey day was fine when only a splinter of stations existed. But today....well that is simply not the case and the band is completely full. If there should be any band expansion it should be the FM band and IMO....the old lower VHF analog tv bands. But here lies the bottomless pit with that. In order for any band expansion to become viable...the existing, or new high powered stations must begin to occupy it and draw the audience to it. That is exactly how the X band was introduced and migrated listeners to that new territory. It would have to work the same way for an expanded FM band. Otherwise what incentive would radio receiver manufacturers have in building receivers with the added band expansions? Lot's to think about with this besides I want more power/bigger antenna/run a frigging coax etc etc.
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Post by Variety 1560 AM on Mar 24, 2016 7:06:26 GMT -7
RFB i started out thinking some kind of LPAM service for AM and expanding 15.219 to cover 1710. there were several unsuccessful LPAM petitions (one of them was pretty well written), so we must figure out where they went wrong and correct those mistakes. i also think we should lobby and coordinate some US Congress people toward the effort. the fcc is afraid of congress and generally does what congress says. we could also encourage congress to add a waiver process (well within their powers to do so) for these stations and allow for commercial operation on LPAM. there is lots we might be able to do if we enlist the aid of some of our elected officials. with the TV repack and over licensing on FM i think my original assessment there is spot on and is a dead on arrival subject. i'm not sure we could even get BETS-1 on FM here. while radio audience has dropped off some i don't think it is at the out right dying stage yet. lot of millennials still listen if the programming is unique enough, you and many others have proved that point with their stations while offering unique local programming. what most are sick of is the canned spam garbage formats repeated 20 times over in a market. we have a station here called the rock and is owned by a individual not a large corporation and as far as i can tell appears to be doing pretty well for itself. they offer unique local ***LIVE INTERACTIVE*** programming through out the day that used to be common on terrestrial radio. they have (I Believe) a 4 tower DA on 1510 AM and at least one 100 Watt @ 800m HAAT Translator on look out mountain. here is their R-L listing radio-locator.com/info/KCKK-AM
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Post by rfb327 on Mar 24, 2016 12:39:02 GMT -7
We have a station here called the rock and is owned by a individual not a large corporation and as far as i can tell appears to be doing pretty well for itself. they offer unique local ***LIVE INTERACTIVE*** programming through out the day that used to be common on terrestrial radio. they have (I Believe) a 4 tower DA on 1510 AM and at least one 100 Watt @ 800m HAAT Translator on look out mountain. here is their R-L listing radio-locator.com/info/KCKK-AMBack in 2014, Pop Crush did a little Jelli Pop experiment utilizing a server that ran an applet where listeners could request songs live via their web browser or smart phones. Basically it gave the listener control of what was going to be played...a modern version of the old request method of calling up the jock and making the request. It worked incredibly well and I thought it was the s*#&! and best thing to happen for radio since 90 percent of the time it's all automated and no DJ present. I can't remember why it was taken offline..think it had something to do with policing the system...ie making sure only localized participants could actually make requests or the system was too vulnerable to random acts such as putting something into the message box where it would get displayed on RDS. Had one message that told people they were mofo's or some such thing. Imagine the station your listening to tells you to F.O. on the RDS display! Well given the complexity and attempts at relaxing the Part 15 rules a bit, in which so far the efforts have meet with..or should I say...ran into a solid brick wall and got nowhere...getting representation from elected officials can help. Didn't the president enact something for community radio some time back? I think thats what opened up the LPFM door and the plethora of LPFM applicants flooding the FCC. I've read through some of those previous petitions and indeed they are well written. Pretty much everything covered. I think what is missing is filling a need. Like you mentioned, people are tired of formats repeating. But the FCC does not care about that. What they would want to know is if they allowed for more power, longer antenna, etc....will such operations be capable of providing far more than non repeating music formats? For example....EAS. Will said operations have the ability to participate on a volunteer basis and will there be problems with allocating these small stations with their identifier codes in the headers, monitor the area's LP1/2 etc etc, keep EAS logs and forward EAS messages etc. That's just one little area that I am sure someone at the FCC would be concerned about. Would it make a cumbersome system that more cumbersome and/or cause confusion to the public. Regarding FM...well back before 1989 the rules were 250uV at 1000 feet. But due to all of the pirate operations back then and all the busts with those good ol Panaxis FM-10's as exciters pushing 500 watt or more amplifiers, well they sure did put the brick wall on those of us who adhered to that 250uV at 1000 feet rule and cut it all back to the current 250uV at 10 feet, which in all honesty and purity...is totally useless for the realm of Part 15 FM broadcasting. Maybe a push to the pre 1989 specifications, or even half that. 250uV at 500 feet would sure be a huge jump and be a signal level that would actually be useful. Pretty darn pathetic that one of those so called "FCC Certified Part 15 FM transmitters" with the current 250uV at 10 feet can't even shoot a signal through 3 rooms from one end of the house to the other. One thing that we can all be thankful for is what we have now may not be preferred, but as Han said in Fast N Furious Tokyo Drift..."50 percent of something is better than 100 percent of nothing". In many parts of the world, there is no such thing as a Part 15 or special allocation of spectrum for experimenting.
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Post by Variety 1560 AM on Mar 24, 2016 12:51:59 GMT -7
sure wish we could locate a scan of a hard copy of those pre 89 FM rules straight from the Government Printing Office. even 250uV/m @ 30m would go at least as far as a typical 15.219 compliant system.
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Post by rfb327 on Mar 24, 2016 14:10:13 GMT -7
www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2009-title47-vol1/pdf/CFR-2009-title47-vol1-part15.pdfPage 67 Taken from PDF: "The above field strength limits are specified at a distance of 3 meters. The tighter limits apply at the band edges." From table page 67: 70-130Mhz - 1,250uV fundamental, 125uV spurious and out of band limits. Not quite 250uV at the 1000 foot point, but indeed FAR better than the current 250uV at 10 feet!
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Post by thelegacy on Mar 24, 2016 14:19:55 GMT -7
I've really thought about 1710 Khz for AM as a lot of Radio's can receive that frequency. Doing this could allow us to get some listeners especially 500 mW to 1 Watt. Thinking of those who have landlord issues and may not be able to erect a 10 foot antenna still could do 1 mile on an indoor AM antenna at the 1 Watt level. This could still allow for a small camp or very large neighborhood of near by cottages or homes in a rural area. Our petition on the Initiative forum the-initiative.boards.net did mention this however you would have had to acquire the Elite access in order to not risk our unfinished petition getting knocked out before it had a chance to start. The only thing was that we asked for 1-2 watts for AM (also known as the medium wave band). I see this as a place to really start and get something done as you could still get listeners if you were to transmit at 1710 Khz and still would be out of the way in most cases unless your near the station at 1700 Khz which is WRCR in New York.
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Post by Variety 1560 AM on Mar 24, 2016 15:00:45 GMT -7
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Post by rfb327 on Mar 24, 2016 15:13:34 GMT -7
It's an uphill battle for sure. If certain forms of transmission allow higher field strengths over others, don't see why those higher field strength levels can't apply to all types of operation. The document above shows a field strength of a periodic signal at 1,250uV at 10 feet of a control signal or similar. Don't see where that same field strength would cause planes to fall from the sky and the sun to go nova if the operation was voice or music. The document and noted field strength for that year shows the same field strength that was once the norm for 239. A lot of baby monitors used the FM band back in the day, and that 250uV limit today would make baby monitors completely useless with today's digital hash noise generating devices. I still believe that a need has to be identified that is being left out in the cold by the licensed entities to give incentive to the FCC to raise the cap on things. I think a good place to begin would be looking at the college campus angle with the use of an antenna and a bit more power. Here is the other thing to throw into the mix. Are these operations willing to police themselves and make necessary measurements on a regular basis, keep records of those measurements and maintain operations to faithfully abide by the relaxed rules? FCC does not have the resources to chase down operations working outside of the limits. There has to be a way for the FCC to be assured that there is a system in place either formed by and supported/managed by all these low power operations, or forming an organization, like the NALPB idea a couple years ago and develop a set of technical and legal standards (taking examples from Part 73) and even include penalties and liability schedules for violations. I'm sure some remember where K-Rocks had the opportunity to be KMLD's emergency broadcast facility for a whopping 3 days back in 2011. The FCC issued an STA to KMLD 94.5 to operate temporarily from an emergency setup location. And though it was a simple setup and ran about 25 watts into a single bay C-POL antenna, that 25 watts from the antenna sitting 25 feet up provided clear coverage to the city of license. It did not cause any interference, it did not cause any harm to the environment, it did not prevent the old guy next door from tuning in to his favorite DX station on 94.3, and the whole effort put K-Rocks on the map of "rescue the big guy". Right there is positive evidence of such an operation, granted by the FCC under STA, works and works very well and does not cause Caldera or Yellowstone to blow it's top and burn birds or make the bears run rapid and eating people. But the key point with that was there was a need to be filled. It shows that Part 15 operations can come into action and provide a service and rescue a Part 73 operation. Unfortunately that station is still being operated on STA's and has yet to recover or return to it's authorized operation parameters per it's license. (yep..still after 5 years!)
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Post by Variety 1560 AM on Mar 24, 2016 15:31:32 GMT -7
sounds like the mushroom cloud is still blooming. i would have thought they would have smacked him down years ago. how does an operation like that get away with it for so long?
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Post by rfb327 on Mar 24, 2016 15:41:23 GMT -7
I've really thought about 1710 Khz for AM as a lot of Radio's can receive that frequency. Doing this could allow us to get some listeners especially 500 mW to 1 Watt. I can say for sure because I have done it to see just how good it would work, ran 1 watt into a 3 meter 209 setup via 20 feet of RG-8 coax with the antenna 1 meter off the ground over ten 20 foot long ground radials all simply laid on the surface of the dirt including the coax. That signal was picked up 4 miles away on a car radio. A bit noisy but there. And measuring all this with a FIM 41, the coax was not radiating. The antenna tuner used was a good ol LPB TCU-30. Landlords and Rental Properties That is indeed a problem for some..ie either a landlord/rental thing or multi-story apartment building in a big city. In those cases, a CC operations or Leaky Coax operation should be considered, or perhaps both a 209 and 221 configuration. Find The Facts In The Real World See this is another part that is missing. Actual real world test data that is repeated and duplicated and peer reviewed. Since it is out of the realm of most operations to hire an engineering consulting firm to do these tests, it's up to the operators to come up with a means to obtain the missing data. I don't knock out completely the computer generated data as that is an excellent means to have a starting point of reference to conduct the testing and compare the results between the two...document that field test data and enter it into these computer analysis programs and see the results.
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Post by oldieswmrk on Mar 24, 2016 16:12:11 GMT -7
RFB327 said..."FM....well that's a whole different world and one that is definately prone to more interference issues than one would think about. Let's face it...the FM band is simply TOO SMALL!!! 200 channels back in the hey day was fine when only a splinter of stations existed. But today....well that is simply not the case and the band is completely full. If there should be any band expansion it should be the FM band and IMO....the old lower VHF analog tv bands."
Why can't the FM band be expanded to 76-108 now that TV is gone like it is in Europe, Asia, Russia, and who knows where else?
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Post by oldieswmrk on Mar 24, 2016 16:29:55 GMT -7
sure wish we could locate a scan of a hard copy of those pre 89 FM rules straight from the Government Printing Office. even 250uV/m @ 30m would go at least as far as a typical 15.219 compliant system. Never knew that before 1989 that it was 250uV/M@1000ft.!! Even if you could get the Canadian BETS 100uV/M@30meters(100 ft) it would be a significant power increase and would let you get to the neighbouhood around you. It takes more than 4x the current part 15 strength to get to BETS-1 levels.
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