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LET'S TAKE BACK OUR AIRWAVES!

R

radiotower40

There has been news lately about easing the restrictions on LPFM. How about loosening the restrictions on LPAM so that we get
some real local community radio stations on the air with more than 1/10th of a watt. They should let us get at least 10 watts to cover a neighborhood because they give these licenses to TSI stations which about 80% are either repeating no traffic available
on this station at this time(some for weeks at a time might I add) and Metra and the White Sox who have TSI's on 1620 and 1630
who have not used them in 1 or 2 years and their are two TSI's that are run by The Illinois Department Of Tranportation that run
on 1610 that are still on but are not running traffic reports just dead air. This in my opinion is wrong when these frequencies could
be used by the public, which is who the public airwaves are supposed to serve! Anyone out there agree with me? I would like to
here others opinions on this.
 
I am ready to go to 10 watts in a heartbeat. 1630 was a useful frequency on the north side of Chicago until iBOC on 760 through 800 khz
took out the 800 khz airport info stations. They moved to 1630 late this summer.
Now I must use 1620, but the Village of Bensenville, 12 miles west is covering
about 5 times the area they need to serve with what is basically a phone number list.
The worst offender was a talking sign on the Kennedy expressway that was on AM 1550.
For a while it was a 90-second loop for Old Navy, then it was a 90-second loop for "radio Cadillac", selling the Escapade.
Both sounded awful. The 1610 traffic stations are only known to radio geeks. No regular people know about them, or use them.
They get traffic info from anything but Illinois IDOT stations.
10 watts could be a problem with getting into neighbor's equipment, which is one reason CB was only authorized to 4 watts out.
I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for this to happen.

AM IBOC causes much, much more destructive interference than even a poorly operated AM in full splat overmodulation.

The FCC doesn't seem to care much anymore about regulating the AM band, given their acceptance of
a mode which is to most radios nothing but purest interference, and in direct opposition to the charter under which they were formed.

I can't find any logical reason why this shouldn't be allowed, except those of use who would like to do this can't afford to bribe the FCC and don't even know who we'd have to start with.
Do we start out with the commissioners, or low level operatives?
Do we send the money in with proposals for rulemaking (wink wink, nudge nudge) or do we send it separately to home addresses?
Is there a downloadable schedule where we can find out how much it is to buy such indulgencies?
 
Hey Tom are you still running your part 15? If you are where could I pick it up?I would like to here how a part 15 am sounds and
what kind of range you can get in the city,I am on the southwest side and I am in the process of looking for equipment to start a
part 15 AM. I have not decided what frequency to use yet because the x band might not work for me because I am only about 2 miles
from the WVON1690/WGRB1390 site,but I'm gone give it the old college try.
 
radiotower40 said:
Hey Tom are you still running your part 15? If you are where could I pick it up?I would like to here how a part 15 am sounds and
what kind of range you can get in the city,I am on the southwest side and I am in the process of looking for equipment to start a
part 15 AM. I have not decided what frequency to use yet because the x band might not work for me because I am only about 2 miles
from the WVON1690/WGRB1390 site,but I'm gone give it the old college try.
Click to expand...

I have been running it since the late 80's, at this location since 1993.

You can pick it up within 300 feet of my house. Clearly, anyway. Any farther than that is dx listening. Weak and subject to
every noise out there.
I live on the northside near where the "stream" part of the Chicago river
enters the larger, dredged, navigable part of the river. The density of 2 and 3 story brick buildings causes rapid falloff of
signal, even though it sounds quite robust here. I am only two miles from AM 1590 Evanston but 1620 is enough removed that the splatter's
not too bad, and there is an advantage to being near a frequency someone will be tuning to.

It's not worth making the drive to listen, I'm sure you'd be disheartened at the coverage of a part 15 in the city.
I have made many tweaks and tried many different ground combinations.
A city lot 30 x 125 filled mostly with a house does not offer anywhere to install a decent ground, but maybe your neighborhood
is not quite so dense, and maybe you have a yard large enough to put in good radials.

I have entertained the idea of roof-mounting the antenna to put the radiation above the average builidng height, but
then the effective ground is further removed, and I don't know if it's worth the trouble for maybe even less coverage.
My transmitter is in the basement, so I'd need to remote locate a 100mw linear amp in the attic, poke a hole in the roof peak,
run 4 corner radials out and down the corners of the house, and 4 ground rods. Maybe next year.

I have several hours of airchecks from this station on Pod-O-matic, and a picture of the xmittr.

This is what AM pt 15 can sound like with a decent grade of consumer audio equipment fed by Zara automation.
I do all the sound processing before storing the files as mp3s, so there is little need to fuss with levels and balance.
Most of the recordings are from vinyl, but some from tapes, and some from the web.
Some are from shellac (78s).
I am not terribly concerned that you can still hear some scratches.
Several passes of noise reduction have been used on the worst ones.
The records' conditions are everywhere from pristine to atrocious.

http://thomasjwells.podOmatic.com/entry/2007-10-31T21_00_04-07_00
 
Tom thanks for the info I am such a radio geek I probably will still take the drive. I listened to one of your airchecks and loved it You
play a very good mix of music and some cool drop ins between songs. Once again thank you Tom.
 
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