AM Station Nighttime PLAN

[bigdummy]

If a daytime station has a PLAN listed where they are authorized some nighttime power, how does one go about getting that enacted? Is there a form to file with the FCC?

 

[Bengalsfan]

What do you mean by a "plan"? Either you are licensed for night time service, which would be listed on..well...the license, or you are not.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

What do you mean by a "plan"? Either you are licensed for night time service, which would be listed on..well...the license, or you are not.

My memory is that at some point the FCC did a big study and they came up with a "plan" that designated certain stations were eligible to apply for night time coverage, and the "plan" spelled out how much power could be used at night. (They did for the industry what it would have taken a lot of money for every station to hire a consulting engineer to figure out.)

Some stations arranged to use their "night time plan" while others let it sit there saying: "Why would I operate at night with that power. Can't make any more money that way." I remember looking at one station that was for sale. Nothing in the license indicated it was anything but a daytimer. Then I came to realize they were on at night. I asked about it. I got the idea that a station simply had to write to the FCC and indicated they wanted to "accept the plan" and that made it legal. But for me and you, reading license information on line without access to the letters in the file, we would say: "They are not legal for night time."

I may have this all wrong. Maybe one our heavy-duty engineering friends can give us the straight-skinny.

 

[DanStrassberg]

My memory is that at some point the FCC did a big study and they came up with a "plan" that designated certain stations were eligible to apply for night time coverage, and the "plan" spelled out how much power could be used at night.

I may have this all wrong. Maybe one our heavy-duty engineering friends can give us the straight-skinny.

And this happened when??? Not saying it never happened, but I have no memory of it.

It is unlikely that such a plan would have included some of the Class D AM nighttime operations that are now on the air--for example the ones that use different directional patterns (and in some cases different towers, not to mention whole different sites) at night than during the day.

 

[Schroedingers Cat]

I think nearly all of the stations with the Class D nighttime authorization are licensed, whether or not they use the authorization. Look it up on CDBS to see if it is already licensed. At that time, back in the late 1980s as I recall, there were a few more authorized that never licensed.

As I recall, they just had to show how they were going to accomplish the power reduction. With really low powers, they often required a low power transmitter.

You could file an application for a new authorization, nondirectional or directional, same or different pattern than daytime, as long as they are under the 25% RSS limits of all cochannel and adjacent channels. As I recall, the original authorization did not take adjacent channels into account. In a few cases, it is an issue.

In some cases, where you have a station with a really low NIF countour to be protected, even a Class B on a regional channel, the Class D can only be authorized for a few watts. If your day directional antenna manages to protect those other well protected stations at night, you could get 100-249 watts (effective). A very few can mangage Class B operation, perhaps with the same towers but a different pattern, but not likely.

If you can get 100+ watts and an antenna close to the center of the population to be served, and you are not being blasted on a cochannel where the NIF is very high, you might get decent service.

In some extreme cases, I have seen applications that had 6 towers to allow just 50 watts. The protected stations had NIFs in the 5 mV/m range, and were 100-250 miles away.

 

[Nostalgia]

The PLAN thing was several years ago. A station that I looking to purchase had a pending application listed in the database as "PLAN". I asked my attorney what that was, and exactly as stated by GRC and others the daytimer was presented with some formula which often ended up leaving you with flea power at night (ours was 78 watts- woohoo), and filed that with the FCC. While the application was pending you had the "PLAN". Havent seen this for awhile since most of the class D's have gone through the process years ago. If you still have the PLAN pending, just send a letter, or have your attorney send a letter accepting the PLAN. If you are contemplating purchasing a station with a PLAN still pending have the sellers clean that up as a contingency for purchase.

 

[boiseengineer]

Well, any PSRA or PSSA (Pre Sun Rise Authorization or Post Sun Set Authorization) is not part of your normal station license. It would be a separate piece of paper. I’ve seen them tacked to the wall at a transmitter site or two. DON’T LOOSE THAT! IF you can find the original PSRA/PSSA authorization you're OK. If not, the FCC probably does not have any record of it.

Few years ago (DA 07-938 March 1, 2007) the FCC had a "PLAN", tried to recalculate what class D stations could use for PSA and PSSA. Here's the infamous document:
http://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-07-938A1.pdf

Go to http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/amq.html. Look in ”Correspondence for <call letters>" for any PSRA PSSA authorizations. These are the NEW calculations!

But it raised a big stink because a lot of stations would have gotten much less or no PSSA power than they were currently "authorized" for. So they relented and allowed stations to keep their older powers.

 

[DanStrassberg]

But it raised a big stink because a lot of stations would have gotten much less or no PSSA power than they were currently "authorized" for. So they relented and allowed stations to keep their older powers.

I'm almost positive that the FCC admitted that there were substantial errors in those new PSRA/PSSA calculations and promised to send out corrected calculations the following month. But they never arrived and the FCC just kind of made the entire sorry episode "go away." BTW, not all Class Ds were screwed by the new calculations. A couple stations that I know of (both are co-channel with Canadian Class As--although one of those Canadian stations is not a true Class A--as is true of many Canadian Class As that were granted Class A status as a result of the Rio treaty, its nighttime-skywave service is not protected) got very generous PSSAs even though they had previously had none--only nighttime authorizations at substantially lower power. In one case, a US station that runs 250W ND-D and is co-channel with a legacy Canadian Class A (with protected skywave service--within Canadian borders) received a PSSA for its full 250W D power for the full two hour period following its local sunset--notwithstanding that the US station is EAST of the Canadian (meaning that the US Class D would have been able to run its full daytime power for two hours after local sunset). The FCC had clearly made an error and it sent e-mails to all of the Class Ds that it had notified to disregard the previous communication and stand by for a new e-mail--which never arrived.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

When these powers were authorized in the mid 80's, each station that was blessed with the grant was instructed to send an informal letter stating that they were going to use the power and provide a brief description of how they were going to achieve the power reduction (as almost no transmitters of the day had multiple power levels that could be set with a greenie screwdriver). Several stations that I now or previously have had responsibility for are using these powers...ranging from WJCP 1460 with almost 100 watts to WIFE with 4.6 watts. The 4.6 watter serves the whole town with it being located about 3 miles from the farthest city limit. Before laughing off these relatively low powers, remember than 62.5 watts provides 1/2 the field strength that 250 watts does. Many people mistakenly assume that 15.625 watts is only 1/16 as "powerful" as 250 watts...doesn't work that way...it's 1/4 as "powerful". If you want 1/16 the field strength, the power of a 250 watt daytimer must drop to less than 1 watt. Unless you have a watt or two, you'll almost always be amazed at how much better your flea power works in real life than you expect it to. Actually, I know of no AM station in my neck of the woods that isn't using their authorized night power 25 years after it's authorization. Like they once said....Try It, You'll Like it". Unfortunately, the only answer I don't have is what you have to do to begin night operations a quarter century later.

 

[radioboy]

This did happen sometime in the mid-1980s. I was working for a 5kw AM daytimer that had a 500 watt pre-sunrise authorization.

The owners were kind of excited about the nighttime study. However, when they found out the night power was something like 33 watts, they never bothered to apply for it.

I just read BobontheJob's post as well. I'm thinking this was around 1986 or '87.

 

[semoochie]

The FCC authorized former daytimers with nighttime power, equivalent to the second hour of Post-sunset Authority. I don't think you had to apply for it. You just needed to notify them that you were going to use it and how that would be accomplished. There was however the stipulation that if you didn't use it, within a certain period of time, you would lose it. With this in mind, 25 years later, it may not be yours to use.

 

[oldiesfan6479]

Then there's a former daytimer with a stick in a lumberyard in
Scottsdale (AZ) that has had 52 watts night authorization for
some years now, however they only seem to use it every other
year in April for a few days.

They also have a PSRA that is used during months when sunrise
is after 6 AM that used to "sound" as if it approximated 52 watts;
more recently it seemed much weaker, while it's also claimed that
their Gates Five can't even get down to that power level.

Meanwhile, their PSRA authorization (from the FCC AM Query) is
a complete jumble of changing numbers and calculations.

And don't ask about the lamptimer. ;D

 

[bilco]

I know of a 50KW non commercial AM that has a night time potential according to the FCC of only 6 watts. They have chosen not to bother.
Bilco

 

[KE4KLS_Radio]

On a similar note there is a comment filed with the FCC to allow some daytimers on regional channels to start their broadcasting day earlier:

http://rwonline.com/article/99994