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Upgrading from night flea-power status

G

gr8oldies

Question for any who may know...I work for a station on 1600 with 1000 watts daytime (non-directional), and when the nighttime flea powers were dished out, ended up with 34 watts at night (pre-sunrise 272). What would we have to do to be considered for an upgrade in night power. We really need this for high school sports, it's really hard for our sports guy to sell a signal that dissapears. A nearby 1570 has 250 at night.

I'm looking for an answer as to what it would take, what steps we would have to go through, and the costs involved in getting this done. We need this done yesterday.
 
The situation you describe is a difficult one to improve. The station started as a daytimer. Night broadcasting with a non-directional pattern was excluded completely until the FCC came along and doled out the 34 Watt authorization, which is low to prevent interference to other stations. Somewhere in the station's history an engineer did the original interference study. Improvement...if it's possible at all...will involve a consulting engineer's fresh look at the situation. Expect considerable legal and engineering expense just getting basic answers. Then if it's possible, more to get an application approved, and perhaps far more building a directional array. Most small owners wouldn't go there for the minimal dollar return.

Here's where creative people might find benefits from aggressive audio processing to improve the night signal, or working a deal with the local cable company to carry the station's audio on a local channel.
 
I know some AM daytimers and AM stations will very low night power---- stream audio on the internet. I hear daytimers want the FCC to allow them to have a low power FM translator to simulcast on day and remain on at night. any chance that will happen? 250 watts on FM I hear. is that right?
 
gr8oldies said:
Question for any who may know...I work for a station on 1600 with 1000 watts daytime (non-directional), and when the nighttime flea powers were dished out, ended up with 34 watts at night (pre-sunrise 272). What would we have to do to be considered for an upgrade in night power.
Click to expand...

That could be rough. Case and point is the AM I use to engineer (the fomrer WMMM-AM/WCFS-AM, Westport, CT) which was a 1Kw daytimer directional with two towers. Power levels went from 500 to 1kw to 50 watts pre-6pm all the way to a whopping 9 watts for nighttime via a little LPB unit! Just about enough power to entertain the small woodland creatures around the tower and that's about all. I discovered at least one engineering study in the files from the mid 70's/early 80's that would have allowed the station to move to 5kw with anywhere from 250 to 1kw nighttime, but it required a 5 tower array with at least one pattern change. Neither available land or funding could be realized to make it happen.

I can't tell you if it's worth the owner's expense to perform an engineering study to see how feasible something like this can be, but there's one thing for sure - it won't be cheap.
 
There are stations that run with more power than they are allowed to at night. I know of one that is alloted 26 watts at night but runs 260 watts. They figure if they get caught they can play the misplaced decimal point trump card. I must hand it to them, they been doing it for well over 6 years and haven't been caught yet. I know of some other stations that have tested the limits as well. Seems like the FCC is more concerned with directional pattern compliance and EAS compliance than they are concerned with Power output and modulation. I think just about every station in this area violated the modulation limit to some degree. There is this one particular station with a Killer 25 Kilowatt signal, that is so badly overmodulated, I don't know how they haven't been fined yet. Their pattern is also way out of whack!

Running with more power than you are supposed to may give you better coverage, but the downside is that if you get caught, you can be fined, and can even potentially lose your license. Still, a lot of "pea-shooters" or "flea-powered" stations choose to operate in this manner and have gotten away with it for a long time. Proceed with caution...
 
Thanks all..I'm aware of lots of stations not powering down (often on Friday nights in September)! We have people saying that they'll pay for an upgrade (though I'm not sure they had building a new array in mind, as well as thousands in engineering and legal fees. Yes, the idea of keeping the power up during games has been brought up..I don't know how many stations have been fined for it.
 
My guess is your competitor MIGHT be the likely one to turn you in if you keep it on after your allowed to. It's also possible the station you're interfering with may also be one to complain, although less likely. One thought, if you're wanting to playing games, might be to kick it down to just enough to cover the area poorly, then turn it wayy down after the game or so. If you just did it on Fridays, you might get away with it. The fact of the matter is they should have NEVER created daytimers to begin with. Everyone should have been dealt 5k days/ 1k nights except for about 5 staitons nationwide that were given 50k, all omni. Twenty years from now we'll still have daytimers around, still wanting to stay on at night for local sports. What they SHOULD have done is give every AM an equal below 88MHz slot after channel 6 transisions off for IBUZ and called it a day. Instead we'll have to put up with AM inferiority at lower powers from now on. Thank you NAB, FCC, IBUZ and all the corporate suits that are afraid the little guys will get an equal slice. The big guys are soooooo worried about that factor they overlooked what would have been a total, logical fix to the whole daytimer/ sorry signal directionals problem.
 
We have many AM Daytimers around here taking advantage of non-complient night time broadcasting. It seems to happen more often these days.
 
gr8, I seem to recall that the power level at night is basically tagged to how big the actual COL is. We have a station here on 960 that gets 32 watts at night, due to the size of the COL.

That's probably how you guys get the low level you do...
 
gr8oldies said:
Question for any who may know...I work for a station on 1600 with 1000 watts daytime (non-directional), and when the nighttime flea powers were dished out, ended up with 34 watts at night (pre-sunrise 272). What would we have to do to be considered for an upgrade in night power. We really need this for high school sports, it's really hard for our sports guy to sell a signal that dissapears. A nearby 1570 has 250 at night.

I'm looking for an answer as to what it would take, what steps we would have to go through, and the costs involved in getting this done. We need this done yesterday.
Click to expand...


You will need an attorney and do an engineering study. Neither are overly cheap!
 
Probably wouldn't be able to get more at night, except maybe with a directional. Could even get stuck with less on a facilities change due to different interference rules as opposed to when the original flea power authorizations were handed out.

I'm sure it'll be real fun if someone on your adjacent lights up IB(A)C at night should it be authorized in the future.
 
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