Cold Coffee
Banned
I was in a Walmart and I asked my Iphone,"Where am I?" Not only did my phone show I was at Walmart. It showed where I was in the store. It's a new world.
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Some thoughts after reviewing the 3rd Window applicants
- Thread starter bturner1
- Start date
Cold Coffee
Banned
Remember how we used to find HAAT? Topo maps out to 10 miles from tower site in 8 directions. Start at 2 miles and every tenth mile write down the elevation. Do this from 2 to 10 miles and add the numbers. Then divide the sum by the number of numbers you just added. Now you have the HAAT of the site in 1 direction. Repeat this process for7 more radials. Add the sum of the 8 radials. Now divide by 8. Now you add the HAAT of the proposed tower site. But remember the center of radiation. IF it's a 3 bay? The antenna in the middle is the center. Now you find your height above ground and the HAAT of the proposed FM station.
Glad it's not this much work now days. Just click that mouse. Anyone remember applying for FM's back in the old days? No computers. Just topo maps, calculators, and rulers.
Glad it's not this much work now days. Just click that mouse. Anyone remember applying for FM's back in the old days? No computers. Just topo maps, calculators, and rulers.
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Based on what I'm hearing from the "boots on the ground" crowd, aka LPFM station owners, it's not all cakes & ale. After the initial flush of excitement, enthusiasm begins to wane, volunteers become scarce and the cost of running the station becomes a burden. If the station is owned by a nonprofit with bigger fish to fry, such as a church, they begin to question keeping the station on the air, viewing it as an unnecessary expense. LPFM is practically disadvantaged from the start. If it can be run more like a business, than a charity, it might have a chance.
I think U.K.'s Ofcom has the right idea with their Community radio stations (their equivalent to LPFM). Any company can own one, it doesn't have to be a nonprofit or educational institution. Community stations are allowed to sell advertising up to about 20K a year. The rest of the money must come from other sources. The only downside is that a Community station has a maximum life of 15 years. But it could be argued that most LPFM stations here don't last that long anyway. I think it's time to reexamine the LPFM service as it was originally legislated and reform it based on today's radio market and along the lines of what Ofcom is doing. I doubt that will happen as the U.S. is shackled with a powerful lobby group, the NAB, that has made no secret of its hatred for LPFM over the years.
www.ofcom.org.uk
I think U.K.'s Ofcom has the right idea with their Community radio stations (their equivalent to LPFM). Any company can own one, it doesn't have to be a nonprofit or educational institution. Community stations are allowed to sell advertising up to about 20K a year. The rest of the money must come from other sources. The only downside is that a Community station has a maximum life of 15 years. But it could be argued that most LPFM stations here don't last that long anyway. I think it's time to reexamine the LPFM service as it was originally legislated and reform it based on today's radio market and along the lines of what Ofcom is doing. I doubt that will happen as the U.S. is shackled with a powerful lobby group, the NAB, that has made no secret of its hatred for LPFM over the years.
Community radio
Community radio stations provide a new voice for hundreds of local communities across the UK.
www.ofcom.org.uk
From the 2021 NCE Window, see MX Group 82, DA 23-348 (Apr 25, 2023) at 2-5. (Idaho Board of Educ., Facility ID No. 768287 typoed their latitude by one degree, FCC denied the amendment to correct it because it would constitute a major change).
In both Full NCE and LPFM, any amendments of site location, regardless of error or not must be minor. In the case of LPFM, that means no more than 11.2 km or longer if there is an overlap of the old and new 60 dBu contours. If the errant location was within 11.2 km of land and a minor could be filed to bring it back on land and not create any new conflicts as well as meet distance separation, the Audio Division would have likely accepted the amendment, but when you are 120 miles north of Bermuda, that will be a little hard to move to the nearest US land (and still meet the localism requirements).
This would mean gutting portions of the Balanced Budget Act which mandates auctions for handling commercial mutual exclusivity and also because of the Telecom Act, the big names would be able to own LPFMs. Remember, opposition to the Telecom Act is why LPFM even exists. The core LPFM community (i.e. the ones who have been out there for 20+ years doing this) do not support a commercial LPFM service in any way, shape or form. The issue of commercial LPFM is a dead horse. It has already left the station.
The biggest issue for many LPFMs is they are operated by a board/volunteers that do not have radio experience or it's limited to just one aspect of radio broadcasting. Most have no clue what is involved and likely half of the stations have this anti-radio attitude. Any advice I might offer is called 'corporate agenda' when I never worked for a group owner. Non-profit stations should operate using typical business practices of living within your means, identifying sources of revenue with a plan to attain income, plan for emergencies and understand basic information on attracting listeners and making this passionate enough to open their wallets.
I have been told 'it will just happen' if we do a few things right. Nope. You have to get it all right and you had better have a plan for all aspects. If I can add a comment I say the big boys have spent huge sums on research and continue to do so. Do radio your way but at least see what they do to get and retain listeners. They've done all the work, you just have to be smart enough to see what they do and apply that to your LPFM and it's mission.
I have been told 'it will just happen' if we do a few things right. Nope. You have to get it all right and you had better have a plan for all aspects. If I can add a comment I say the big boys have spent huge sums on research and continue to do so. Do radio your way but at least see what they do to get and retain listeners. They've done all the work, you just have to be smart enough to see what they do and apply that to your LPFM and it's mission.
All with one hand tied behind their back.
Cold Coffee
Banned
Puma, mountain lion, catamount, AND panther, are different names for the same animal. Let's face it. Low power FM stations were licensed by the FCC when I was a toddler. I'm nearly 70 years old now. WYSO the poster child of the early community radio movement was licensed in the 1950's. They were called Class D back then. stations operating with 10 watts TPO.
The FCC phased out noncommercial low power FM in the 1970's. So it was the FCC long ago who created the so called LPFM movement.
Class D stations are low power FM. AM translators are low power FM. 100 watt Class A's are low power FM.
It's true that I filed an early petition that got the FCC interested in bringing a low power service back that I did not create.
The FCC phased out noncommercial low power FM in the 1970's. So it was the FCC long ago who created the so called LPFM movement.
Class D stations are low power FM. AM translators are low power FM. 100 watt Class A's are low power FM.
It's true that I filed an early petition that got the FCC interested in bringing a low power service back that I did not create.
Attachments
By power level, but not by the fcc's licensing definition.
Cold Coffee
Banned
Aren't you an Alaska Class D and low power?
Cold Coffee
Banned
The book Sex And Broadcasting was the Bible of the community radio movement. How many of you have read it?
What did the author get wrong?
What did the author get wrong?
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Yup, Class D but if were getting pedantic and nit picky, while low power, it isnt legally or in licensing terms referred to that... nor does it have -LP designation.
Were legally, for licensing purposes, a Class D Non Commercial Educational Station.
Again, i said i was being pretty pedantic and nit picky on this one.
Just like when I refer to our other signals as repeaters, as thats what our listeners know them as, but people say theyre translators. .when they arent.. theyre actual stations too.
I digress, sorry.
In the wake of that great bturner opening post, I have just a few memories to add here vis a vis that FIRST LPFM window.
For a group up this way and from elsewhere -- a clique that included many current and ex-radio jocks, engineers, medics, tower climbers, AARPers, and a few amused bystanders with no other apparent lives -- we made a go at an LPFM.
Did pretty well for a while. The owner of the shack that held up the tower (or maybe vice-versa) got added to the directors' board. The group not only got '100' on the FCC filing exam but was the only crew in the entire county to've applied. The CP arrived in three days.
The biggest expense was the Nicom transmitter (I forget the spelling ; the brand was whatever Paul Simon's camera wasn't). We broadcast from the original tower for a while, and had some fun, some underwriters, and sufficient beer and pizza money. Then we decided to bring the station 'back home', as it were. And some Class B outfit southeast of us, second-adjacent, b*tched about us moving the tower site 3300 feet inside their 42-mile contour zone. All along that move had been planned, what with the FCC's very own stipulation that moving the tower site within a certain minimal distance after the application was considered a 'minor' filing.
'Major incursion!!', we were told by the class B station. We were all set to pounce on a subsequent ruling that stated if there was minimal listenership conflict in that new, disputed, neutral convex arc, it was a dead issue. There could not have been, we figured -- since every topographical map and hobo junction we could uncover had NO ONE in that new area. It was just steep, uninhabitable woods.
Well, as I said : 'all set' to file -- when some station to our East moved their stick and opened up a new frequency. Boom. Instant filing. Boom -- new frequency granted to us.
Our LPFM was fortunate in several ways. Not the least of advantages was the station being cossetted by computer programs and equipment contributed by engineers and voices who'd had, among then, three internet stations up and running a year before that first FCC window.
Moreover, with us being the only group in the entire county to've applied, there was no 'point' business -- that process of elimination playoff between mutual applicants. That breathing room allowed us to broadcast the minimum mandated hours specified in the original rules. And THAT maneuverability also gave clearance for another venture. That was having TWO stations on the same channel -- one in the day for the adults (avg age 47.4 years) and, after a few hours of silence, signing back on with another station for youth ..... voice and DJ training and their music.
That latter agenda never came off. But for a while our daytime 'computer in some closet' coasted, with several hundred voicers from all over fed into Cool Edit and Ots Juke and distributed to effect actual, scheduled air shifts.
We had fun.
But BTurner is dead-on bullseye. The mortality rate for successful applicants is gruesome.
For a group up this way and from elsewhere -- a clique that included many current and ex-radio jocks, engineers, medics, tower climbers, AARPers, and a few amused bystanders with no other apparent lives -- we made a go at an LPFM.
Did pretty well for a while. The owner of the shack that held up the tower (or maybe vice-versa) got added to the directors' board. The group not only got '100' on the FCC filing exam but was the only crew in the entire county to've applied. The CP arrived in three days.
The biggest expense was the Nicom transmitter (I forget the spelling ; the brand was whatever Paul Simon's camera wasn't). We broadcast from the original tower for a while, and had some fun, some underwriters, and sufficient beer and pizza money. Then we decided to bring the station 'back home', as it were. And some Class B outfit southeast of us, second-adjacent, b*tched about us moving the tower site 3300 feet inside their 42-mile contour zone. All along that move had been planned, what with the FCC's very own stipulation that moving the tower site within a certain minimal distance after the application was considered a 'minor' filing.
'Major incursion!!', we were told by the class B station. We were all set to pounce on a subsequent ruling that stated if there was minimal listenership conflict in that new, disputed, neutral convex arc, it was a dead issue. There could not have been, we figured -- since every topographical map and hobo junction we could uncover had NO ONE in that new area. It was just steep, uninhabitable woods.
Well, as I said : 'all set' to file -- when some station to our East moved their stick and opened up a new frequency. Boom. Instant filing. Boom -- new frequency granted to us.
Our LPFM was fortunate in several ways. Not the least of advantages was the station being cossetted by computer programs and equipment contributed by engineers and voices who'd had, among then, three internet stations up and running a year before that first FCC window.
Moreover, with us being the only group in the entire county to've applied, there was no 'point' business -- that process of elimination playoff between mutual applicants. That breathing room allowed us to broadcast the minimum mandated hours specified in the original rules. And THAT maneuverability also gave clearance for another venture. That was having TWO stations on the same channel -- one in the day for the adults (avg age 47.4 years) and, after a few hours of silence, signing back on with another station for youth ..... voice and DJ training and their music.
That latter agenda never came off. But for a while our daytime 'computer in some closet' coasted, with several hundred voicers from all over fed into Cool Edit and Ots Juke and distributed to effect actual, scheduled air shifts.
We had fun.
But BTurner is dead-on bullseye. The mortality rate for successful applicants is gruesome.
(Begging pardons here ; this computer / page keeps taking my rants and sending them every which way submitted or not. In fact I still find myself being logged in, days after I thought I'd signed off)
Finishing the diatribe I'd begun:
>> But BTurner is dead-on bullseye. The mortality rate for successful applicants is gruesome. A group that elects to try this regulated undertaking for any sensible length of time best be either comfortably wealthy. darned lucky of have good friends with lots of jolly empathy ..........
.......................
Man oh man ....... God's truth ..... as I was just typing this rubbish I get a phone call from one of the people who gave our LPFM some terrific voice work/sounders/liners that amounted to a virtual 'air shift'. That bounty was after just some preliminary voice training done before we'd even gotten the CP. Well, seems she needs a reference for a medical position and asked if the station and I would give her one. Well of course Missy! You didn't even have to call here the first place. Radio communicators always keep the lines open.
I swear to youse that serendipitous call just came in!
Great way to start off a New Year -- being helpful to someone once associated with an LPFM from that first filing window.
Finishing the diatribe I'd begun:
>> But BTurner is dead-on bullseye. The mortality rate for successful applicants is gruesome. A group that elects to try this regulated undertaking for any sensible length of time best be either comfortably wealthy. darned lucky of have good friends with lots of jolly empathy ..........
.......................
Man oh man ....... God's truth ..... as I was just typing this rubbish I get a phone call from one of the people who gave our LPFM some terrific voice work/sounders/liners that amounted to a virtual 'air shift'. That bounty was after just some preliminary voice training done before we'd even gotten the CP. Well, seems she needs a reference for a medical position and asked if the station and I would give her one. Well of course Missy! You didn't even have to call here the first place. Radio communicators always keep the lines open.
I swear to youse that serendipitous call just came in!
Great way to start off a New Year -- being helpful to someone once associated with an LPFM from that first filing window.
And that's what I don't understand to this day. Doing an LPFM has a greater chance of being a complete failure than any chance of success. Ignorant folks have lost their life savings and retired penniless. Maybe it's just too much delusional thinking, that somehow they can make radio better than the commercial or public broadcasters. The problem is; that they don't do enough research, and end up learning the hard way.
Alert CNN, for once I agree with you.... they think they can do better and/or they think because them and their 5 friends like something, everyone else with... added to it, they go in with little to no broadcast knowledge or alot of mis understandings about formatics, expenses, etc
@SomeRadioGuy
@Kelly A
Just a reciprocal, if somewhat O/T footnote about those 'expenses' :
After careful reading of those original LPFM rules, our ploy to move the tower to the site we wanted wound up with someone else -- the seond-adjacent class B bully -- having to do some $cuffling. Around the same time that the 'dead zone' conflict came to benefit us, the Class B put on a translator on our original frequency. The devil knows how much it cost them (it's still broadcasting). Thing is, that new translator's entire main signal contour -- plus its secondary one is completely within the main contour of the Class B !! That company has been $tuck with maintaining an unnecessary simulcast facility on a second-adjacent frequency in the same market for almost 20 years now.
A little past that time, we'd spotted a new frequency anyway, applied for it (and got it).
Anyway, very well documented in this thread has addressed most conditions being prohibitive for any LPFM applicant to do the job. One aid -- Luck -- was on our side a few times. But that time we spent at the VU meters became limited, irrespective of the financials prevalent at the time. We had our fun. Many others did not .... could not.
('There will be no directional LPFM's ....' That hand-tied-behind-everyone's-towers was in that very first filing directive. Good Christmas.)
If those application filings are still free, folks, have at it if you want. But remember that bi-partisan heavyweights Kennard and Obama (D) and Feingold and McCain (R) enjoyed the idea of your local station. Yet, anyone who followed the attempted 'renaissance' of *AM* knows how THAT wound up. Be careful where you tread.
@Kelly A
Just a reciprocal, if somewhat O/T footnote about those 'expenses' :
After careful reading of those original LPFM rules, our ploy to move the tower to the site we wanted wound up with someone else -- the seond-adjacent class B bully -- having to do some $cuffling. Around the same time that the 'dead zone' conflict came to benefit us, the Class B put on a translator on our original frequency. The devil knows how much it cost them (it's still broadcasting). Thing is, that new translator's entire main signal contour -- plus its secondary one is completely within the main contour of the Class B !! That company has been $tuck with maintaining an unnecessary simulcast facility on a second-adjacent frequency in the same market for almost 20 years now.
A little past that time, we'd spotted a new frequency anyway, applied for it (and got it).
Anyway, very well documented in this thread has addressed most conditions being prohibitive for any LPFM applicant to do the job. One aid -- Luck -- was on our side a few times. But that time we spent at the VU meters became limited, irrespective of the financials prevalent at the time. We had our fun. Many others did not .... could not.
('There will be no directional LPFM's ....' That hand-tied-behind-everyone's-towers was in that very first filing directive. Good Christmas.)
If those application filings are still free, folks, have at it if you want. But remember that bi-partisan heavyweights Kennard and Obama (D) and Feingold and McCain (R) enjoyed the idea of your local station. Yet, anyone who followed the attempted 'renaissance' of *AM* knows how THAT wound up. Be careful where you tread.
Sure there are. Just like FM translators use yagi or log periodic antennas. Now, I'm sure the purchase cost of using a Yagi or log periodic antenna dissuades some budget-conscious LPFM broadcasters, but it's an effective way to make the field go where you need. Depending on allocation, it may be your only option.
Cold Coffee
Banned
Some translators are allowed to use off the shelf yagi antennas. LPFM's and full power stations are required to use type accepted antennas. In the NCE band there are some directional low powered Class A CP's. 100 watts towards the cornfields and 20 watts towards population centers 20 miles away.
There are some on here who would like to see LPFM changed from distance separation to contour protection. That way we can wormhole in even more LPFM's like the example above.
Yes! Low power radio has been around for about 90 years. What you helped create is the Podunk power movement.
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