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Another 87.7?
- Thread starter Mrtejano
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Who cares man it's sunday. Pretty clear they have a religious block.
I care!
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robertsez
Guest
A religious block, or a religious exemption? There are many broadcasters, legal or otherwise, who hide behind God (or their god) in order to justify their activities.
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purpledevil
Guest
Several of them here in Houston alone.
Yes, and they keep adding LPFMs like a Branch Bank in order to make more money and the Love of IT (Money).
Churches in general, that is.......
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On their Facebook page they say they will be of air a couple of days till they fix some issues but wait for a stronger signal.
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robertsez
Guest
That remains to be seen. My guess is that as soon as the move is approved, they will hop it to Houston. An FM station, even one on 87.7, in a major market is worth money. A flea-powered FM station on one of the Devers sticks is worthless. Cows don't count in the Neilsons, and then there's the obstacle of actually lighting up the tower, which would be a challenge.
A city-grade covering (most of) Houston? Doubtful, at that power point. The 100KW stations only cover Houston with a rimshot.
City Grade in FM is a 70 dbu contour. With 3 KW from Devers they will not have a 70 dbu anywhere in Harris County and won't have even a 60 dbu in most of the 11 county metro.
While the Devers location is just inside the metro, this is still a 3 kw operation. We know how the 100 kw stations near Winnie perform, and this one will be significantly less than them.
Those are TV contours, and represent, for the blue, about a 45 dbu signal. You need 65 dbu no matter what the height, to penetrate buildings.
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robertsez
Guest
Looks like a 100,000-watt plot to me, and and not quite representative of the terrain of Southeast Texas. Typically, you would see more signal over the water, and more shading in the directions of trees and buildings. I just don't see that sort of coverage from a 3,0000-watt signal, regardless of co-channel interference (or lack thereof), Joe.
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rbrucecarter5
Guest
Not even the super 3kW with beam tilt station WPOZ had coverage like that off of a 1600 foot tower. It took almost 100kW to get coverage over their entire metro area - and they still don't have the radius shown here.
As far as building penetration - when I had access to a really good spectrum analyzer at TI, penetration of the locals from Cedar hill was about ten feet into the building before they dropped below 65dBu. Big deal - one row of cubicles. If they build cubicles right by the windows. They don't. The outer aisles are about ten feet wide, meaning no reception of local FM inside the building. Radio listening inside buildings is streaming - assuming the IT department doesn't block it. TI did. I don't know what the heck business allows people to listen to the radio in cubicles - it disturbs neighbors. And there have been rules against radios most places I work. Building penetration in businesses is a moot point because most people I know are actually WORKING and don't have the attention span or time to do it.
Bruce, those are standard TV contours and not radio contours as this sucker is a TV station.
Inner contour is 43 dbu and outer is 36 dbu.
For FM, primary is 70 dbu (city grade) and secondary is 60 dbu; the cutoff for indoor listening is around 65 dbu.
So the map is irrelevant for audio service and vastly exaggerated.
Most at work listening is not in offices and cubicles. It is in the stockroom, the auto repair shop, the loading dock, in the delivery or service truck or at the construction site.
In office listening is often restricted, while folks at other jobs... particularly blue collar ones, have more opportunity and a broader array of stations used.
It is the 36 dbu and 43 dbu set of standard TV contours since this is a TV station, not a radio station.
Yes, but the contours are TV contours. See the label. They are the equivalent of 43 dbu and 36 dbu, the standard contours for TV primary and secondary.
FCCdata.org has made an error as they are listing the station as digital when it has an STA to operate in analog mode, so the digital contours of 28 and 35 dbu are shown... totally irrelevant for analog TV and even more irrelevant for the aural service alone which we have to look at as if it were an actual FM station where the standards are 70 dbu for primary (city grade) and 60 dbu for secondary.
So shrink those maps by about 2/3 and you have an idea of what might happen if there is a grant and they actually use that site before doing the frog thing into Houston.
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The other rimshots in the vicinity are 100,000 watts at the same height. At 3 kw, this one will have very limited coverage of the 11 county Houston MSA, and will not put a city grade over any part of Harris County.
Again, you are using a Longley-Rice predicted coverage map for a TV station where much lower signal strength is considered "viewable".
Then there is the fact that a very large percentage of FM radios do not go down to 87.7.
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robertsez
Guest
Perhaps. But a 3KW transmitter located on top of Chase Tower operating on a frequency with no co-channel interference will easily cover Katy to Baytown, Woodlands to LaMarque, and that is where the vast majority of listeners reside. Joe was running far less power from 250 feet, and he easily covered that territory.
Unless you rewrite the laws of physics, you can not get any significant in-building reception beyond the 65 dbu contour with today's average radios.
Folks with better car radios will get it out to perhaps the 45 dbu contour, and even in cheaper car radios with shark fins you will get reception in cars beyond the 54 dbu contour. But in home and at work listening is limited by the attenuation of walls. In fact, historically 95% of indoor listening takes place inside the 65 dbu contour irrespective of co-channel interference and such.
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