Help?

Hi, Lenore,

This is the right place to ask. It is best to start with a summary of what can be done and get to details later. For broadcasting, the AM and the FM band are available. The FCC allows unlicensed broadcasting in these bands providing some technical limitations are met. This means that the range of the broadcast stations is very limited.

On FM, the typical range is 200 to 1000 feet depending on what kind of receiver is used.

On AM, greater range can be obtained, with many stations reporting a range of 1 mile using a good car radio as a receiver. Realistically this range will probably not work for table top or portable receivers.

Another option is to stream programming via the internet. This forum has members who do this in addition to being on the air.

There are transmitters available as kits or as complete units. Cost for kits is about $100. Cost for assembled transmitters can range from around $150 to $800. These are rough figures but they are representative of what is available.

You will need to give some thought to studio equipment. A PC is a popular means of producing programming and there is software available which is designed for broadcast stations.

This is just a start for you to consider and please ask questions and we can get more specific. We are here to help.

Neil

One thing you may want to consider, being in a younger group, is how many of your peers carry radios vrs. IPOD-SmartPhone devices?  As Neil pointed out, many of the license free low power community stream their programming to overcome the limitations imposed by radio authorities in their country.

Although I still push RADIO as I grew up with that, streaming audio is close to if not already matching in listenership.  I stream but prefer RADIO as it is FREE to listen and not subject to problems associated with streaming.  

When everything else fails, RADIO works.

In either case your program will originate the same way.  It could be nothing more than a single PC.  You may want to add an audio mixer or multi-channel sound card for multiple audio sources such as turntables for vinyl (we called 'em records), tape decks, CD players and even microphones for live announcements.

As you gather the details you'll have more questions.

Join The ALPB.

How large of an area do you want to cover? A legal part 15 FM transmitter will cover about 200’ to generic radios [such as what you can find in the electronics section at a drug store], and about 800’ to a good car stereo. There is no getting around that range limitation and keeping the unlicensed transmission legal with creative antennas or multiple co-located transmitters. The FM rules are set in stone with a field strength.

I have had really good luck with a C. Crane FM2 transmitter, it covers my yard and a bit of my court.

AM will get you more range, but people would need to know to turn to AM on their radio to hear it, and the more you tell people “hey, listen to me on XXXXkHz” the more likely someone is going to think you are a pirate and call the FCC, or take offense at your content, and call the FCC.

Assuming limited range does not bother you a decent place to start is a FCC listed FM transmitter mounted as high as you can, outside in a weather proof enclosure, and an AM transmitter. The talking house transmitter is not the best out there, but the used price on ebay is hard to beat as a place to start. You will need to find open frequencies. On the FM dial, that is getting harder and harder. On the AM dial, something is probably open between 1600 and 1700 near you.

Getting a loud sound so your signal sounds as loud as commercial broadcasters will take some processing. A program called Stereo tools can be used for that. The processing needs for FM are different from AM. If you use a FM transmitter that takes a stereo signal, some of the fancy stuff stereo tools can do will not be applicable, but stereo tools is a good program to get loudness into your audio before it goes into your transmitter.

I am going to assume you will only play music that is public domain. Licensing discussions for copyrighted material have gotten heated, so you can read threads on them if you want.

If you are going to be using a computer, especially a laptop, to provide audio to your transmitter(s), ground loops could be a problem. Monoprice sells a 4 channel ground isolator for car audio that does a good job of keeping audio from a computer from causing hum/buz into a mixer.

If you buy audio equipment, a small behringer mixer will be good for putting one or two audio sources together with a microphone. But before you buy a new behringer mixer, check if anything good is available used on craigs list or at guitar center. In the short term a behringer mixer is the best deal, but in the long term equipment from other manufacturers tends to hold up better and have more resale value.

I am 100% in favor of unlicensed broadcasting that operates with the constraints of part 15 rules. With that being said, if you feel there are underrepresented music genres in your area, if you want many media consumers to have the opportunity to hear them you could contact local small radio stations and see if any of them would do a block of the underrepresented music genres in less commercially viable air time. College radio is one type of station that may listen to your idea, a local AM that is limping along is another type of station that may listen to your idea. Also, check if any stations near you have HD-2/3/4’s that have the type of music you are looking to broadcast.

I will try to simplify it for you....first of all are you in the USA? I'm in Canada and the rules are quite different and a little more lenient than the USA so my coverage would be different than the USA but I'll assume you're in the USA.

FM, while not letting you have as much coverage is simpler. A transmitter, a simple antenna and an audio source and you're away. Don't know how much you can spend but a couple of decent transmitters are the Wholehouse 3 which for $129 on Amazon is certified, good audio, and a lot of featurs others don't have. The decade CM-10 is another good one that's certified and the price of $200 will include shipping.

AM is not as simple.....and most people here who get a mile of range have to have a house with property to install complicated antenna systems with "loading" coils and installing "radials" which require digging up the ground and laying the long wires and all this has to be installed outside...the transmitter has to be in a weatherproof box because of the restriction on "feedline" length.  Also AM is full of noise and most people can't listen in their houses....even the 50,000 watt stations have a hard time getting through the noise, especially if the radio is plugged into AC.

My set up is like this.....an MP3 player with gapless playback and custom EQ(Sandisk sansa clip) which also takes micro SD cards for unlimited space. Everything is prerecorded, the music, voice for station I'ds and other things like "you're listening oldies/classic hits on 90'7"  The voice tracks I record on a good voice recorder which on high quality makes MP3 tracks at 190  bit rate. All this with 2500 songs or so gets played at random and sounds like any commercial station and can run itself unattended! OH yes, I convert the player to work on 3AA batteries, not the internal rechargable thing so it will play for 5 days 24/7 continuous.....can't have down time recharging every 10 hours! Battery change takes 10 seconds.

In order to get to the volume of the other stations and not sound quieter all the time I have a compressor between the sound source and the transmitter. While not nessessary trying to get to the volume of the other stations will cause distortion without it.

Oh yes, the Wholehouse 3 transmitter has a built in mixer with mic and audio so you can be "live" and talk with the music like commercial stations.

Much easier to do this than it sounds.

Mark

I am really glad to see another kid my age here! I have been running a station of my own. Feel free to email me any questions to [email protected].

There have been a lot of good responses here.

I would just like to reiterate what I believe is perhaps the most important point - that Part 15 AM, while having the potential of giving you the greatest range, is also quite difficult to set up properly to achieve that range.  It is not uncommon without such a setup to get ranges equivalent to Part 15 FM (i.e., only a couple of hundred feet).

With AM, the antenna and ground is paramount, and care must be taken to ensure that you remain legal.  Obstructions also have to be taken into consideration more - an FM signal will penetrate into a building, while an AM signal may not (particularly concrete/rebar condos).  So what your neghbourhood looks like is a large factor as to how well your signal will do.  Generally, you'll want line of sight to your transmitter antenna for as many potential listeners as possible.

AM can be quite frustrating unless you get the install right.  You'll just need to experiment a lot and keep your patience.  With a Rangemaster transmitter (one of the best assembled transmitters available), an excellent ground, and decent audio processing (including a Symetrix 421 compressor/limiter and an Inovonics 222), I managed to achieve over a mile range with a decent signal, and you could hear the signal a lot further than that (with lots of noise, getting worse the farther out you went).  Prior to that I had experimented with other transmitters, including the Talking House, with poor results.  But there are others here who have achieved 1 mile + ranges with different equipment than what I used.  So it can be done.

FM is almost plug and play, but your potential range is limited (compared to AM).

And finally, a word about range and sound quality.  A Part 15 FM signal will have quieting (i.e., very little noise) almost out to the limits of where you can hear it.  A Part 15 AM signal is quite different.  With my Rangemaster setup, and listening on a sensitive car radio, I heard no noise up to about 1/4 mile or so.  I call that the Near In zone.  Noise started creeping in after that, mostly noticeable during song pauses, and got worse the further away from the antenna you got.  I call that the Decent Sound zone, and it was between 1/4 - 3/4 miles out (depending on obstructions).  Then comes the Fringe zone, where noise is there all the time, and gradually increases until your underlying signal fades out completely.  I found that I could listen to my signal comfortably out to about a mile (a bit more in some directions), and while I could still hear it after that, I really wouldn't want to listen to it for any length of time (although it was fun to see how far out it really went).