Most people don't know what ducting is. Therefore people don't have favorite stations they want to tune in to when ducting occurs. Unless they are sitting there by the radio 24/7 witing for something to happen they will never know. You are wasting your time fretting about it.
Full power stations don't power down during skip, neither will I. Thats crazy, I understand the concern but thats going too far. If that 96.3 skips in every night pick a different frequency, obviously thats not a good frequency to use. Not because your part 15 is going to cause interference but because it will ruin your own coverage! In radio the last thing you want to do is dump carrier, thats good engineering. There are NO stations that skip and gain audience doing so, not on FM. No one is going to miss a station they otherwise normally do not get. Regular orginary Joe listener has no idea what skip is or why his favorite stations sometimes get static. Case in point: In the last week or so there was a HUGE and I mean HUGE troposhpheric opening, I couldn't get our own local Class C FM it was completely blown away by another station. In Dallas-Ft. Worth radio listeners and television viewers complained they couldn't see or hear their favorite stations. Did these stations sign off so the other stations could be recieved instead? No. We are doing no harm keeping the stations on air during skip. With that logic all of our AM stations should be daytimers.
Even people in their 50s and 60s who really don't know about Radio figure that stations come in better at night or on a clear day.
Some people still associate TV with the fact that night time is less interference and their station will come in better. They don't know about skip or ducting this is true. The case with my Wife Debra's doctor who asked me on one day I forgot about the inversion to not transmit in his station when it comes in. Now I don't know if the Doctor knew about what a temperature inversion will do to FM or even if he cares. He probably only cares about the fact he was listening and when he got in range of my station which was right in front of the library he could no longer listen to his favorite station.
This is why everyone should take note.
Tuesday through Friday mornings I sign on late in the morning and get to hear what's on my channel prior to turning on.
One morning last year I heard an FM station from 150 miles away, but haven't heard it before or since.
I figure that a station that almost never comes in here is not worth thinking about, since no one is going to be sitting at home waiting month after month for it to finally come in.
In your case, TheLegacy, you've had a special experience which is different from mine and I understand your caution.
But for me, I do it more the way Retro Radio does it... I'm not in such a rare situation that I need to provide special protection.
Thelegacy wrote: The case with my Wife Debra's doctor who asked me on one day I forgot about the inversion to not transmit in his station when it comes in. ... He probably only cares about the fact he was listening and when he got in range of my station which was right in front of the library he could no longer listen to his favorite station.
From your post it appears that the favorite station of this doctor could only be received by him during "inversions," which aren't all that frequent or reliable even for licensed FM broadcast stations. Is that what you wanted to convey?
But in any case, an atmospheric inversion produces NO difference in the locally receivable fields produced by an unlicensed system compliant with FCC §15.239.