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Question about the power increase

J

jras20

So heres my question about the power increase, will this make any differences at my place 84 miles from Houston? As of now the HD signal drops in and out with my radio as the analog shines on a good FM stereo. Will I be able to get the HD signal full time or non noticeable? I'm also DX'n to San antonio from my place near Austin. I can get a good FM stereo from San antonio but still like going to Houston it drops in and out.
Lastly when will this change take effect?
 
jras20 said:
So heres my question about the power increase, will this make any differences at my place 84 miles from Houston? As of now the HD signal drops in and out with my radio as the analog shines on a good FM stereo. Will I be able to get the HD signal full time or non noticeable? I'm also DX'n to San antonio from my place near Austin. I can get a good FM stereo from San antonio but still like going to Houston it drops in and out.
Lastly when will this change take effect?
Click to expand...

I may be incorrect, but it my understanding that when power increases by a factor of 10, the distance received is approximately doubled. But other factors could come into play, such as terrain, and co and first adjacent channels. If you believe the NPR report, the dependable digital signal for mobile devices should cover about 117% of the population the is currently served by the 60 dbu analog signal.
 
Is there a database where I can look up the power of a station's digital output or see if a particular station has increased their digital output?
 
Up until the power increase, all stations (talking FM here) ran 1% digital power. So a 50 kW station would run 500 watts digital and so on. To get a 6 dB increase the example would go to 2000 watts and 10 dB to 5000 watts. There may be a few stations that have some headroom in their digital system that have increased power, but probably not many and probably not to the maximum. In most cases increasing to the maximum will cause some necessity for new equipment. The way a high level HD system works, a station actually transmitting 5 kW digital will have to generate 50 kW and suffer a 90% reject load. Imagine the expense and trouble involved in changing out all that stuff. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, as I know about the systems but have no actual working experience on them. The granted increases vary on a case by case basis.
 
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