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FM Station Spacing US - Europe
- Thread starter kfbkfb
- Start date
Most UK stations run a couple hundred, maybe a couple thousand watts.. none run the power some of the big boys do in the US
There are UK FMs up to 250 kw. Classic FM, a commercial network, has 9 250 kw repeaters, a couple more over 100 kw, and then a bunch under 10 kw. The BBC has a bunch of FMs over 100 kw (up to 250 kw) in big metro areas or as regional signals.
The difference is that England allocated FM for many local town stations and a few national ones. The national ones have a few dozen or less transmitters, covering the whole nation. The BBC and some independents use big transmitters for some areas and fill in with many smaller ones; a few other independents use moderate to low power, but with more transmitters.
There are also regional services, like Wales and Scotland that use nearby frequencies for part of the UK only.
And the national services are all on nearby channels. Radio 1 of the BBC is all around 98 MHz, Classic is all around 100 and so on. The US has no national or regional radio service, private or public. We have NPR, but that is a bunch of separate local stations...
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In the UK, and most of Europe too, 100 kHz is used for FM broadcast band channel spacing. This is the recommendation from the International Telecommunications Union for the FM broadcast band, in publication 412-9, last updated in 1998.
I'm not sure how they handle adjacent channel spacing.
I'm not sure how they handle adjacent channel spacing.
It's the other way around - by using 100 kHz spacing, you can fit in signals that wouldn't otherwise be able to fit. Say you have stations in a nearby city on 94.5 and 95.1. You might not be able to use 94.7 or 94.9 at a certain distance, but you might be able to make 94.8 squeeze in, depending on the spacing standards developed by your national broadcast regulator.
One good example is the way the BBC built out its national radio services to serve London and the southeast of England. There's a high-power (125 kW, if memory serves) transmitter at Wrotham in Kent, 40 km or so southeast of London, that functions as the big regional signal, and then a lower-powered (4 kW) signal spaced 300 kHz down at Crystal Palace to fill in a stronger signal for central London.
So Radio 2, for instance, is on 89.1 from Wrotham and 88.8 from Crystal Palace; Radio 1 on 91.3 from Wrotham and 91.0 from Crystal Palace; and so on.
It's a rather efficient use of spectrum in a way that wouldn't work so efficiently in areas that use 400 kHz spacing.
No, because most FM tuners sold in the United States going back decades do not tune even frequencies. If I try to tune 90.0 MHz in my car or my pocket radio, I cannot.
Well Analog Radios can
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