I realize there are special rules that make an application for CP become a "minor change". But WCAI licensed to Woods Hole, MA is boosting its output from 1.3 KW vertical only to 12.5 K circularly polarized. It operates on 90.1, the same channel as WYRP out in Wellfleet. WCAI will wind up infringing on WRYP's coverage, that's for sure!
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"Minor Change" For WCAI
- Thread starter Shellanswerman
- Start date
No, it won't - at least not by the FCC's rules.
For noncommercial stations below 92 MHz, everything is determined by the overlap of protected signal contours. As a class A station, WRYP's signal is protected only within its 60 dBu contour (the innermost one that shows up on radio-locator's "for entertainment only" maps). WRYP's 60 dBu signal doesn't even get to the southern town line of Wellfleet.
"Interference," according to the FCC's rules, happens when the interfering station's 40 dBu contour (the outermost line R-L shows on its maps) overlaps with the desired station's 60 dBu contour. WCAI and its engineering consultants were careful to prepare an application showing that WCAI's new 40 dBu contour will just touch WRYP's 60 at the bay edges of Wellfleet and the tip of P-town, but will not overlap anywhere on land. (Water overlap is OK.)
WRYP may well lose some potential audience down toward Orleans, but that's an area where its signal was never protected from interference to begin with, so the FCC will not consider it - which is why WCAI's application was approved in the first place three years ago.
As for "minor change," the words the FCC uses don't always mean the same thing they do in colloquial usage. A "minor change" in FCC parlance is any change on the same frequency, or changes to a channel 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 10.6 or 10.8 MHz away. A station could be going from a 100-watt minimal class A to a 50 kW class B and it would still be a "minor change" to the FCC.
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