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Critical Hours Question

R

radiotower40

I am working sales now at a small AM station. We are a Class D AM, working on getting
a small night power authorization. We will most likely end up with 5 watts. Which is about
what we expected.

I am not in Engineering, I have been invited to sit in on the meetings if I wish, and I have
and like learning from it.

The question I want to ask here is one that came up while I was listening to the Engineer and
Owner speaking. I found it to be an interesting issue, and I am curious if this has ever came
up before for you, or if it is possible, or been discussed before. Again, I'm not an Engineer, I
have more knowledge than when I first started in radio, yet I'm far from being as smart as an
Engineer.

So here is the question, They are working on the CH calculations and the Engineer has stated that
while the station would have to operate with reduced power during the CH period, two hours before
sunset to not cause interference, but we would theoretically be able to operate at our full power
during the morning CH period without causing interference to the station we have to protect. We
are only .5kW during the day. He believes we would be able to also get a PSSA also. We currently
have a PSSA of either 1 or 2 watts depending on the month, we don't use it though. He thinks we
would be able to get somewhere in the 26-35 watt range, which would for work us. It's not great but
it would be plenty to get us some listeners. These two things would help me a lot in terms of morning
drive sales.

The Owner disagrees with him, I tend to trust Engineers on these issues more than owners. I'm
not being disrespectful to station owners, I just know that our Engineer is very smart and knows
his stuff, he has many, many years of experience.

So is it possible for an AM to get a CH authorization just for the afternoon period and not the
morning period? I don't know of any stations that do. That is why I wanted to ask here, I know
there is wealth of knowledge here!

I hope I placed this in the right place, and thanks in advance for any answers.
 
It's possible that you'll only need to provide Critical Hours protection in the afternoon hours if the station that you are protecting is located East of your station.
Unusual but not unheard-of.
 
frankberry said:
It's possible that you'll only need to provide Critical Hours protection in the afternoon hours if the station that you are protecting is located East of your station.
Unusual but not unheard-of.
Click to expand...
Thanks, that is exactly the case, we are in the Central Time Zone and the station
we have to protect is on the East Coast.
 
Why is there discussion about critical hours power reduction? Are you already
subject to CH and are you trying to modify it? Or if the station is now a true
daytimer with one power authorization from sunrise to sunset, how does the
afternoon CH come into play? In order to be granted minimal power at night,
is the FCC requiring you to add this extra step? That doesn't seem right.
 
We are looking into am FM translator Tom, we just can't get one now. Being an AM, we can't
build one, we have to buy one and try and re locate it. So far we haven't been able to do that.
That would be the best solution without a doubt!

oldiesfan, I should have been more clear, I'm sorry, we currently are licensed for 250w for CH.
Our daytime power is 500w, the Engineer believes we could do 500 during the morning period,
without causing interference to the protected station. During the night period, we will have to go
down to 250, we would interfere if we didn't. Another factor here is IBlock, if it wasn't hitting
us so hard we probably wouldn't be worried as much about the CH. For whatever reason it hits
us the most in the morning period, It doesn't hit us in the afternoon too bad until about 1/2 hour
before our local sunset. The station that were co-channel with doesn't run it, our neighbor over
1,000 miles towards the west does. The one blessing we have is that they shut it off at their local
sunset. I accidently mixed PSSA for PSRA in my original post, we want the 26-35, for PRSA.

Our PSSA is 42 for the first hour and 16 for the second. Which we do use.

We want to get the night authorization, so they just decided to look into everything all at once,
as long as we are at it.
 
There's a station in Dallas market, KSKY I belive, that pulled a fast-one on translators. They claimed they were getting interfered with by Mexico, I believe and asked for new translator frequencies. http://www.ksky.com/ Since they have opened that pandora box, you might want to see if you can ask for the same for Ibuz interference. They let it on the air so you should be allowed a solution IMHO. It's at least worth a try. Ask a good FCC lawyer...
 
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