M
Mike O
Guest
This is part of an article from The Times of India about increasing the number of FM stations in cities. What they are proposing is nothing new and is in effect in many other countries. I would think that the auction hungry FCC would be jumping on this big time and Houston is in a postion to cash in on the 400kHz spacing plan for FM with the antenna farm in Missouri City. It would also allow the rim-shot stations to move into the city and those that listen to the stations would not have to string wire in bizarre shapes across a room to receive the station."The present allocation of the FM frequency band (87 - 108) has 100 to 108 mHz reserved for All Air India Radio expansion plans and 87 - 100 mHz for private broadcasters.However the private broadcasters share the spectrum with other non-broadcasting users of the spectrum (like walkie-talkie users).Now, official sources say that these bands could be freed by the Government any time, thus releasing many more frequencies.However, the key driver to having more frequencies in each city has been achieved by mandating co-location.Normally FM radio stations can be located on the spectrum at a separation of 800kHz to avoid any interference with each other.This means that in the band 87 - 100 mHz, 17 frequencies can be accommodated. Of these, three frequencies have been reserved for educational institutions; this means that at 800kHz separation, Mumbai could have 14 frequencies.Now consider the scenario if a Christmas tree (industry jargon for multiple-use radio communication tower) was built to host all radio stations at the same place.The separation required halves to 400kHz and voila! There is space for 28 radio stations, up from the present lot of 10 stations."Not sure why this hasn't already been done in cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas and Houston where there is a common tower or area that nearly all stations broadcast from. Toronto, Ontario is using 400kHz spacing and not from the same tower, just as long as the tower is downtown where the other FM stations broadcast. The majority of Toronto's stations broadcast from the worlds tallest building, the CN Tower in downtown Toronto at a height around 1850 feet. One hell of a view of from the observation deck, I can tell you that. You can easily pick out the CN Tower from the American side of Lake Ontario some thirty miles away.If Houston were to go to 400kHz spacing on FM, it would involve moving some stations in other cities, but it would open up the FM band to so many more stations and all the stations would be clear and strong. I would like to see the time come. When it comes to communications, the US is so far behind much of the world. RDS has been around for nearly twenty years and many people in the US have yet to see RDS on a radio. I have no idea of what we are missing out on because we do not hear about it in the US by the manufacturers of radios that for the most part want to turn out cheap crap, while it would not cost that much more to turn out decent receivers. Wanting $299 for an HD Radio is pure BS, it likely cost no more than a few dollars more to make the receiver.