New Bill Passed (the Local Community Radio Act of 2009) H. R. 1147
New Bill Passed (the Local Community Radio Act of 2009) H. R. 1147
This will allow more LPFM stations on the air and cancels out the third adjacent channel rule. But i see some good and bad things coming out of all this.
More noise on the already crowded fm band while new lpfm stations small signal fighting to be heard through the iboc hash and bleed over from high powered radio stations.
Without channel guards in place the fm band will be a sea of noise, lpfm stations do not stand a snowballs chance in hell and the same can be said for part 15 fm as well. I don’t think part 15 fm will survive.
AM and shortwave look pretty good to me right now in fact there is a whole bunch of frequencies out there just waiting for experimentation.
I would like your opinions on this new development, maybe i am looking at this all wrong.
View the bill: http://www.al-ba.com/HR1147.pdf
HR 1147 question
Are you sure that this bill has actually passed? The PDF file says that it was simply introduced in the House of Representatives.
From the Library of Congress
From the Library of Congress Thomas:
Latest Major Action: 2/24/2009 Referred to House committee. Status: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The problem I see with this is pretty much in line with those raised by the original poster. I did not read the entire bill but it appears that the stations proposed are in the 250 W ERP category. This is higher than needed for “local” coverage in urban/sub-urban areas. Perhaps it is OK for rural areas where the population density is low.
We can learn something from the ham radio experience of “self regulation” of repeaters. Around 1980 the FCC empowered “co-ordination groups” in each state to assign repeater frequencies. It was a food fight with some of the established clubs grabbing frequencies in the back room before the meetings and putting ineffective repeaters on the air just to hold the frequencies. It was a “good ole boys” operation. The problem is that if a frequency is assigned, then it is not available for other use for about a 70 mile radius. Those with access to TV towers or other prime antenna sites dominated the process and locked out many small clubs and individuals. I lived through this in the early ’80s. Fortunately, my club was grandfathered having purchased a repeater just before the administrative rules changed. It was junk and I rebuilt it but the effect was the we “owned” the frequency and the equipment didn’t matter. Good for us, too bad for anyone else who wanted to find an open frequency.
I would like to see broadcast FM low power in the range of 10 to 25 watts which would serve a radius of about 3 to 8 miles. This will allow multiple use of the frequency in a given area providing for many stations on the same frequency in a typical large urban area.
The problem is that with this, as with any shared resource, there will be winners and losers. The winners will act to preserve their status and the losers will agitate to get what they do not have. In other words, we will be right back to where we are.
I would vote in favor of having the FCC assign a frequency or two in an area and letting those who want to go on the air have at it. This is how these communitycasters will learn why we regulate and license users of the airwaves.
Neil
My mistake
Ok I think i messed up.
I thought this already passed.
Anyway, it does not look good at all.
Neil, you reminded me of the string of repeaters linked between kentucky and ohio. They have a great system set up where if your part of the ham club then you have unlimited use of the repeaters, if your not a member then you may be limited to just talking on the repeater.
Thats been quite a few years back so im not sure what that club is doing now. The repeaters were so good, when the weather was right you could talk to canada.
Im getting off subject though.
Where i live here in southern kentucky, most high powered stations are spaced far enough apart that interference is minimal.
And for the most part, many channels are empty around me but are protecting the high powered stations. The spacing between stations now effectively guard each station from interference.
If this bill passes, the fm band will be hurting when these 250 watt stations move in. I dont expect to see a new lpfm station in the london ky area anytime soon but would be happy to see some of the smaller communities around me get a voice on the dial.
Look up LPFM stations in Ky and compare them to the high powered stations dotting the map. You can see the further south you go the less crowded the fm dial becomes.
If you have never been to ky or are not familiar with our terrain here, you will see we have alot of hills here. Many natives of ky will argue with me that those are mountains not hills, but i tell them i lived in Cali and know what a mountain looks like. lol
Those hills are well known for blocking radio and television signals, eastern ky has a few community stations between 88.1 to 91.1 that have several transmitters dotting the top of the hills to provide coverage to areas where the main station cannot reach.
But there are communities that arent so lucky and have unreliable coverage due to the terrain. Those communities should be the ones up for consideration for a lpfm cp , the larger towns have at least three or four stations and are not (in my opinion) a priority.
I guess we wait and see what happens, until then i will continue to broadcast on fm until the we know for sure this bill has passed.
LPFM City vs. Country
From your perspective, LPFM in the hundreds of watts class makes sense. From my suburban perspective, in my mind it doesn’t due to the band crowding. I am familiar with Ky. and the terrain and comparatively Ohio is flat. Low power VHF signals can go a long way. The repeater I had on the air had a 250 watt ERP, was on a building in Clifton (Cincinnati) at 180 feet, and covered out to 30 miles or so with a strong signal. Admittedly, this doesn’t compare directly with broadcast FM due to the difference in noise performance caused by the different audio bandwidth.
In the SW and central part of Ohio, the bands are very crowded due to the proximity of Cincinnati, Dayton, and Columbus. Even in the surrounding rural areas, open channels are scarce. If one could be found with adequate 2nd or 3rd adjacent protection and assigned to LPFM then low power operations could co-exist by virtue of the capture effect, rather similar to cell phone systems where the same frequencies are used to service small areas.
Maybe the stations could be set up to provide a certain coverage area with adjustments in height and ERP to give comparable range or population served taking into account population density and terrain. Just thinking out loud here.
Yes, I recall the area wide repeater system headquartered in Fairfield, Ohio. You may know that this system used multiple receiver/transmitter sites to gain the coverage they had. I worked on one of the remote sites on the air in Columbus for a while. The remotes were linked via microwaves and used a signal voting system which was designed and marketed by one of my former students. I built some of these units for him in my basement. I have been inactive on 2 meters for a while and don’t know the status of this system to date.
Neil
LPFM Stuff
Hi Guys!
I wonder what will really happen to the very low
end of the FM band when all analog TV operation
goes away on VHF channel 6.
I believe some stations on 88.1 Mhz (and a few
channels up from there) will be able to increase
their coverage.
Then there is 87.9 Mhz. If you go to Radio-Locator.com
you will see one station in the United States licensed
to that channel (although I thought there were two
or three.) It’s a high school station in California (I think)
with an effective radiated power of 10 watts.
I also heard a funny story about an LPTV station somewhere
in New York that thought they could sort of bend the rules
by just transmitting on their audio carrier (analog channel 6).
I don’t know if they kept the video running (they probably
did). So anyhow they were putting out “radio” programming
on 87.75 Mhz. Most radios would hear that OK.
I know somebody had a proposal to create a whole new
digital FM band on the space left over in certain markets
from TV channels 5 and 6.
In my mind it would be great to have a whole bunch of
new little FM stations all over the U.S. on 87.9 Mhz and
maybe even 87.7 (because probably most FM radios would
get that too. Of course that is just in my mind. What will
REALLY happen is anybody’s guess. Also,
I wish “250 microvolts/meter @ 3 meters” or 48 DBu (is that
right?) was legal on 87.7 and 87.9 for the part 15 crowd.