There are hills but...

[gr229]

Question, does 88.1 get out a little farther than a station with the same erp and haat at 107.9?

FM band is V.H.F. from 30mhz to 300mhz..so no not by much. Below 30mhz is considered am..?
One is the kilohertz (kHz), which is equal to 1000 cycles per second, megahertz (MHz), which is equal to 1,000,000 cycles per second----or 1000 kHz.
The distance between the peaks of two consecutive cycles is measured in meters. Between these 2 peaks is where you can bend the signal. The length or height of various types of antennas must often be a fraction (usually one-quarter or one-half) of the wavelength of the signal to be transmitted or received. So on the fm band the peaks are shorter in length, the higher the freq the closer the peaks and the shorter the antenna.

So again no and if it does it would be so minor you wouldn't notice.
.
Back in the 1930's the fm band was from 45mhz to 60mhz..?They had serious dx problems then because of there wasn't much out there.
Then around I think WW2 or the Koren "stay" it became FM as we know today.

 

[gr229]

Well!!..I guess I'm wrong!! Wouldn't think there would be a noticeable change.I would think the erp would be contingent to the height of the antenna above sea level. Like I said it's been awhile!

 

[Bongwater]

Question, does 88.1 get out a little farther than a station with the same erp and haat at 107.9?

There is some very modest improvement in the lower end of FM. But not by much. The same power/HAAT at say, 55.7 MHz would have nearly 1 1/2 times the range. Only trouble is, other stations at the same frequency would tend to interfere via tropo/e-skip at the distant/fringe areas far worse than in the current FM band, which is part of the reason why FM was moved up to 88-108 MHz from 42-50 MHz after WWII.

 

[MisterGort]

So -- if you owned an AM station -- on 790 khz -- 1 KW Daytime -- non-directional -- and the FCC offered you -- a Class A or B-1/C-3 channel on 76.3 Mhz -- which frequency would you want to operate on ??

 

[Bongwater]

So -- if you owned an AM station -- on 790 khz -- 1 KW Daytime -- non-directional -- and the FCC offered you -- a Class A or B-1/C-3 channel on 76.3 Mhz -- which frequency would you want to operate on ??

For now, I'd stick to AM. When radios that tune down that far become standard, I'll flip to FM.

 

[gr229]

A last comment, on the 76.3 fm idea,

Japan has fm radio's are in the 70mhz-90mhz range for fm broadcast. Very easy to import.
Some of those cheap China transmitters will tune and transmit from 70.6mhz-98.0mhz, 2, I tried will go from 70mhz- 110mhz and with help produce a good clean signal.
I was told some eastern European countries may still broadcast in the 65-75mhz range for fm, but I think my friend was b/s-ing me on that. It's the QTIR ?? He says.


Love the "theory" of radio waves, I appreciate the chance to pitch in!! Thanks!

 

[crainbebo]

Yes, some Russian and Eastern European countries still do 65-75 mhz. It's called the OIRT band.

My radio goes down to 76.0 mhz (Japanese FM). I could get a perfect KING audio signal on 81.750 mhz, and perfect KING video on 77.250. Also could get video and audio from any TV6 (helps to get XETV Tijuana during E-skip conditions, I've logged it many times on 87.75)

-crainbebo

 

[mimo]

The Grundig G8's can tune down to 64 MHZ to take in the OIRT band and when set to that mode, it will tune continuously from 64.00 to 108.00 MHZ.

 

[boombox]

This discussion reminds me of a pic I saw of a 4 band Sanyo boombox made for the Russian market -- it looked just like the 4 band Sanyos that were sold here in the U.S. during the 1980's, except it has the 66-75 Mhz FM band right below the regular FM band, and LW band instead of SW2. Really cool looking.