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I believe there was a thread about this guy back when they first went on the air and he got a little ink back then too. I'm sure its a part 15 station with LPFM dreams! Why 1700, why not? Probably pretty clear there. I liked the part about the 6500 average listeners. Hello, Arbitron....................
In all of the early ink he was getting, the operator's claimed coverage area made it look like a Part 15. I think he's banking on the net stream to show any audience at all but might need the signal on 1700 to get any money from local businesses.
I also see in the current article that the station is now simply calling itself AMI radio (for Anna Maria Island). In the early days, it was identifying in print as WAMi, with a lower-case i.
Has to be mostly internet listeners... Great if you want to listen on line to music that no one else has heard... mostly unsigned local artists...Don't see how that is conducive to a tourist location .. Believe his office and transmitter site is on Bridge Street in Bradenton Beach, so coverage has to be minimal at best...Believe he changed the calls due to the fact that there already is a WAMI, a class A FM in Alabama...Claims to have sunk over $50,000.00 into it, so I cannot see how he expects to make any profit for now...Maybe when he starts charging for music downloads...More power to him..Holmes Beach already has 98.7 WHES covering the Island.. but we all know that that is a joke in it self...as there is not and never has been a local studio / office and the transmitter is in Pinellas County....Closest it ever got to Anna Maria Island was the 300 ' tower to the rear of Cox Chevrolet in the 2900 blk of Cortez Road West in Bradenton...and that was when it was WISP with studios in downtown Sarasota.
Is it even legal for a Part 15 station to be commercial for profit???
Part 15 doesn't regulate programming at all, or the transmission mode or bandwidth on the AM band. As long as the power and antenna limits are adhered to, and the entire signal stays within 510-1705 kHz, anything goes.
I used to run a "Part 15" AM. I had 100milliwatts running into a long wire antenna that I'm sure didn't conform to Part 15 standards... anyway the coverage area didn't stretch more than a block or two... three at the most. When I first read about this station I figured they might get better results considering all the salt water, etc. If their transmitter is located up on top of a tall building right next to the antenna, AND they had a superb grounding system... I can see them getting out better than one would expect. I'm going to have to drive around there this weekend and see what their coverage area is.
I sent an email to someone at the station last night inquiring about their coverage area... We'll see if I get a response. I have to say I admire their effort, if nothing else.
I ran a Part 15 for about a year when I was in my junior year of high school in Hagerstown, Maryland. This would have been 1960. I ran a Knight Kit "phono oscillator" which didn't cover the block. But a group of us got smart. A bunch of guys from the school who lived in the same area of town all bought those same Knight Kits and we ran an audio line, stapled from one house to another, to hook up all of them. It didn't sound pretty but it worked. We got the frequencies as close to each other as we could with that little screw-driver adjustment and played rock'n'roll all afternoon and evening. At the time, there were only two commercial stations in town and both were mired in the 40s. It didn't take long for us to attract attention. Somebody complained to the FCC and they sent an inspector out of the Baltimore field office to see what was going on. As it happened, he found me first. I showed him the operation and he checked everything. My "transmitter" was unmodified, he was happy enough with the antenna but opined that, while it was choppy and "in and out" there should be no way I was being heard in places that were just too far away. I showed him the audio wire and explained what we were doing. And, of course, each of us individually was absolutely legal. He literally laughed out loud and drove back to Baltimore.
Yep. The WISP tower was constructed in a storage unit facility, the transmitter and audio chain...such as it was...was in one of the climate-controlled storage units. The entire programming consisted of a CD changer and some kind of automated ID. The license was applied for just to be sold. The original licensee never built a real studio and the station never had one until it was sold off to its first real operator.
There was a guy in Bradenton who built most of the towers erected in Georgia and Florida between about 1950 and 1990. He could climb like a monkey. That tower amongst the storage units is the last one he built.
We covered this one long ago here. Here's the archival on my Florida Low Power Radio Stations. BTW there's a similar one just reported to me (also on 1700 kc/s) from Flagler Beach, east coast where there's real waves.
1700 (LPR) "WAMi", Anna Maria Island; this Pt. 15 station was featured in the local press in late 2011. They reportedly serve the island community from studios in Holmes Beach on 1700 AM and via streaming at http://wamiradio.com/. According to the Anna Maria Island Sun, Vol. 12, No. 11 (December 28, 2011), "WAMi Radio, [is] a project of Casey and Robert Herman, [and went on the air] at 1700 on the AM band at 10 p.m. Dec. 31 (2011)." The format is commercial-free music from local musicians and information. The editor drove down to Anna Maria Island mid-morning Saturday, March 10, 2012 to confirm this one is in fact active. The signal range is puny and low on modulation. Surely he's Part 15 or at least close enough. The weakest trace of the signal is audible on Manatee Avenue (SR 64) at Village Green Parkway, as a near zero-beat carrier against the otherwise inaudible and presumed Miami station on 1700, guessing WAMi is the one very slightly off but impossible to confirm on a crappy Hyundai car radio. The signal is long-gone by the time one drives to the northern half of the island. In fact, signal seems to peak just south of the Manatee apex on Gulf Dr. N. (heading toward Bradenton Beach). I didn't bother DFing (too much traffic with events in progress) nor did I bother to call the listed number on the website. Format was auto-pilot nonstop local musicians' soft vocals and blues, no announcements during my 2.5 hours on the island. Pleased to catch this one, as there's no way it would make it to my occasional Ft. DeSoto listening site, much less Clearwater.
Actually the old / original WISP tower was one of the oldest towers in the area.. It was initially ( late 1950's to early 1960's) used as a 2 way radio service for doctors and funeral homes who also used to run all the ambulances locally and a few other local businesses.. Harold Bische owned it and he was also one of those who put the original 102.5 WYAK FM on the air in the either late 1950's or early 1960's... In fact THAT tower from downtown Sarasota is now and has been for decades being used on City Island for 1450, 1280 AM and used to be used for 106.3 FM as well, until they upgraded...I can also remember climbing that Cortez Road tower with the owner's son WITHOUT belts or any safety equipment when we were barely 13 or so...318' at the time with a 3' flashing light on top...Ironically, the owners son fell out of a palm tree in his front yard in 1969 (the summer between our Jr & Sr years of High School ) and has been a paraplegic ever since...talk about irony...
The newer Talking House transmitters are actually pretty decent. They can be modified to go up to almost 120% modulation and still sound clean. Out of the box they actually push a little bit more power than Part 15 permits... something like 150mW. I sent an email and offered to give them some technical help, but I guess they weren't interested.... oh well.
As for WISP 98.7, I actually kind of liked that station. I remember listening to it for awhile after WHVE 102.5 went off the air. I remember being really happy just to hear some light jazz on the air again. I'll never forget the day they flipped to Wild... I started getting frantic calls from my teenage friends. "DUDE YOU GOTTA FLIP ON 98.7 IT'S A PIRATE STATION NOW!!!"
The newer Talking House transmitters are actually pretty decent. They can be modified to go up to almost 120% modulation and still sound clean. Out of the box they actually push a little bit more power than Part 15 permits... something like 150mW. I sent an email and offered to give them some technical help, but I guess they weren't interested.... oh well.
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yes the one TH they are shipping for 99 bucks is V5.