Especially post 2008, when the Commission closed many of their local field offices. But this whole; because one alleged X-operator in Y-community doesn't operate within the rules, means nothing to the rest of the country. There is always going to be someone who chooses to operate outside the rules. That doesn't mean it's okay for everyone to do it, or that if you get caught there won't be costly penalties.
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FM Translators - Directionality - Power
- Thread starter kfbkfb
- Start date
Just because you've anecdotally determined there's unused spectrum in the FM band, doesn't mean that unused spectrum is part of the allocation table for that market/community. If there's no allocation for use as a translator, then you can't just stick one there.
For 250 watts, many translators for commercial AM stations get out "Very well", as they are often located 1000-2000 Feet. Like on the Northern Oregon Coast, I am 50 miles from Longview WA, yet several come in "local-like" Much stronger than their AMs running more power. KEDO 99.1 Longview (Country) pounds into the Astoria/Warrenton area. They are 250 watts, but above 1,000 feet. If they ran 100 KW, the set up would be directional, with Eugene on 99.1, Seattle on 98.9, Elma (Aberdeen) on 99.3.
@MWDXER 99.1 is a translator for KBAM 1270, its listed as 250 watts. KEDO's translator is on 99.9 and its only 70 watts. Theyre not at 1000 feet, they're on the AM tower 150-200 feet up.
Translators for AMs are not most often 1000-2000 feet up. On the west coast, yes thats a bit more likely because of mountains and stuff.. but more often than not, in my expierience.. AM translators are on the AM towers.
Keeping interference with existing stations to a given low level would outline these (probably weird shaped) unused FM spectrum portions (in a given radio market), the shapes could likely be determined w/computer analysis.
The FCC could make this weird shaped unused FM spectrum available for translators.
I don't know if multiple FM signals on the same frequency in a given radio market can be set up in a synchronous manner (similar to the way KNHN 1340 AM was set up here in KC about 30 years ago):
KDTD - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Kirk Bayne
But you didn't hear what I said. The Commission established a thing called a Table of Allocations for the FM band. There is a table for each and every city/county/market in the U.S. The FCC would not be interested in completely altering the table in order to just cram-in more translators. There is a way to recommend a revision to the Table of Allocations for full class stations on a case by case basis, but nothing across the board, as you're describing. Translators are not full class stations, and wouldn't be accepted for making changes to a market's TOA.
What you're describing in a synchronous on-channel booster. Boosters are used for filling in coverage for a full-class station within the principal contour of that station. Just like translators, boosters are not intended (or allowed) to extend coverage, but to fill in because of terrain..
That's a huge over-generalization.
AM towers are rarely the best place to put an FM signal, and most of the translators I've designed have been at a better location than the sister AM station's tower.
And i dont think translators can have boosters, if they can.. ive never seen any that do. I worked for a full power commercial outlet that had one and turned in the license after a dozen years. it was more headache then it was worth.
Once again kirk is looking for a solution to a problem that doesnt exist and not understanding what hes being told. Seems to be a pattern for him.,
Translators aren't licensed based on the table of allocations. That's just for full-power stations in the commercial part of the band.
As someone who's been applying for translators for many years, it's more similar to the contour-based method used in the NCE part of FM. You find a channel that fits, even if it takes a complex DA pattern, you make the showings that there's no contour overlap to anything requiring protection, and if there's a filing window open, you apply.
What kfb is suggesting isn't really a technical impossibility - you'd be maintaining all the same protection of existing stations' contours, just removing the arbitrary 250-watt ERP limitation (which already has the unusual loophole of lacking any height limit, unlike any other FM service.) It would still be secondary service and still subject to displacement as it is now.
Yes, remove the 250W limit, just using the existing interference spec. (which here in KC has caused the 106.1 FM translator to have a non-omni broadcast pattern and less than 250W).
It seems to me that a computer program could provide a map for 87.5 to 107.9 in a given radio market that shows the area(s) where a new FM signal could be placed that wouldn't exceed the existing FM interference spec.
It could be, in a given radio market, that there's a swath of unused FM spectrum that's narrow in the north/south direction but wide in the east/west direction, several FM translators (on-channel & synchronized) could have ease/west oval radiation patterns that would cover the area and wouldn't interfere with existing FM stations (whatever their class).
All I'm saying is sort of work backwards - figure out what the existing interference limit spec. allows and then allow any power level/radiation pattern/multiple synchronized on-channel FM signal(s) to occupy the spectrum.
Kirk Bayne
It seems to me that a computer program could provide a map for 87.5 to 107.9 in a given radio market that shows the area(s) where a new FM signal could be placed that wouldn't exceed the existing FM interference spec.
It could be, in a given radio market, that there's a swath of unused FM spectrum that's narrow in the north/south direction but wide in the east/west direction, several FM translators (on-channel & synchronized) could have ease/west oval radiation patterns that would cover the area and wouldn't interfere with existing FM stations (whatever their class).
All I'm saying is sort of work backwards - figure out what the existing interference limit spec. allows and then allow any power level/radiation pattern/multiple synchronized on-channel FM signal(s) to occupy the spectrum.
Kirk Bayne
Good Lord! šµ
Is there a preferred antenna manufacturer for a directional array that does not break the bank? ERI is not a feasible option.
No No and no.
Do you not listen to anything youve been told?
If ytou raise translators above 250 watts in 49 out of our 50 states, they become something they werent intended to be.
And what youre saying already is done.. thats what is done to figure out where and how translators fit as they are.
Once again, ;looking for a solution to a problem that doesnt exist while refusing to understand what youre being told.
Actually, Paul...
There's nothing that Kirk is suggesting that's technically infeasible. It's entirely a political question, and it's one that's been brought up and reworked many times before in the history of the translator service. (This is where if I were you, I'd probably be typing out something insulting like "if you knew anything about...," but I like to play nicer than that here.)
Very little about today's translator service is "what they were intended to be" when FM translators started fifty-ish years ago. In the first few decades of translators, they were limited to 10 watts in the West and 1 watt east of the Mississippi, and that restriction wasn't lifted until (IIRC) the late 1980s.
The distinction between "fill-in" and "non-fill-in" service isn't original to the translator rules, either. That came later, as did the incremental increase in power levels to today's 250 watts. There's nothing at all sacred about that power level. It's just the result of the FCC rulemaking process over the years, and there's no reason it couldn't be modified further if someone can craft a persuasive petition to again alter it.
Kirk is actually entirely sensible to ask why the rules allow for an Albuquerque-style translator that has a bigger service contour than a standard C3 full-service FM, but why a similar contour wouldn't be allowed at a higher power/lower height level. It doesn't actually make any sense, especially in the context of every other set of FCC FM rules that all uniformly height derate for power above a certain HAAT. It's a loophole I don't think the FCC ever intended (though I've happily used it for clients.)
I'm thinking of one particular big-city client for whom I did a translator a few years ago. There's a pretty big envelope he could fill with that translator if he wanted to spend lavishly on rent at the top of one of the big downtown rooftops. I could have given him 250 watts up there with a funky DA to protect a co-channel translator out in the suburbs, and he'd have perfectly legally reached a much larger area than he ended up serving from the facility we built on his (much shorter) AM tower. There are maybe a half-million people who don't get anything useful on his frequency now because he was still limited to 250 watts on the shorter site instead of the kilowatt or so that would have matched the (very legal) pattern from the skyscraper.
What's the public service argument against further rule modifications that would allow him to reach those other half-million people on a frequency that's otherwise unusuable for anything else? "It's always been that way" doesn't apply here, because it hasn't always been this way. These are relatively recent, relatively arbitrary rules that diverge rather dramatically from the rest of the rulebook - my class A that I engineer, for instance, has the ability to be 3 kW at 100 meters or (as it actually is) 800 watts at 165 meters, and we'd cover the same area either way.
I'd even entertain at least some of Kirk's argument about using synchronous signals to fill a proposed coverage area with multiple smaller/lower facilities instead of one larger one. There are already a few operators using multiple translators on the same frequency to try to do just that. I can think of two off the top of my head in Denver.
TL;DR: All these rules are ultimately arbitrary and political and there's a good argument to be made for further modifying some of them, if it's politically viable.
There's nothing that Kirk is suggesting that's technically infeasible. It's entirely a political question, and it's one that's been brought up and reworked many times before in the history of the translator service. (This is where if I were you, I'd probably be typing out something insulting like "if you knew anything about...," but I like to play nicer than that here.)
Very little about today's translator service is "what they were intended to be" when FM translators started fifty-ish years ago. In the first few decades of translators, they were limited to 10 watts in the West and 1 watt east of the Mississippi, and that restriction wasn't lifted until (IIRC) the late 1980s.
The distinction between "fill-in" and "non-fill-in" service isn't original to the translator rules, either. That came later, as did the incremental increase in power levels to today's 250 watts. There's nothing at all sacred about that power level. It's just the result of the FCC rulemaking process over the years, and there's no reason it couldn't be modified further if someone can craft a persuasive petition to again alter it.
Kirk is actually entirely sensible to ask why the rules allow for an Albuquerque-style translator that has a bigger service contour than a standard C3 full-service FM, but why a similar contour wouldn't be allowed at a higher power/lower height level. It doesn't actually make any sense, especially in the context of every other set of FCC FM rules that all uniformly height derate for power above a certain HAAT. It's a loophole I don't think the FCC ever intended (though I've happily used it for clients.)
I'm thinking of one particular big-city client for whom I did a translator a few years ago. There's a pretty big envelope he could fill with that translator if he wanted to spend lavishly on rent at the top of one of the big downtown rooftops. I could have given him 250 watts up there with a funky DA to protect a co-channel translator out in the suburbs, and he'd have perfectly legally reached a much larger area than he ended up serving from the facility we built on his (much shorter) AM tower. There are maybe a half-million people who don't get anything useful on his frequency now because he was still limited to 250 watts on the shorter site instead of the kilowatt or so that would have matched the (very legal) pattern from the skyscraper.
What's the public service argument against further rule modifications that would allow him to reach those other half-million people on a frequency that's otherwise unusuable for anything else? "It's always been that way" doesn't apply here, because it hasn't always been this way. These are relatively recent, relatively arbitrary rules that diverge rather dramatically from the rest of the rulebook - my class A that I engineer, for instance, has the ability to be 3 kW at 100 meters or (as it actually is) 800 watts at 165 meters, and we'd cover the same area either way.
I'd even entertain at least some of Kirk's argument about using synchronous signals to fill a proposed coverage area with multiple smaller/lower facilities instead of one larger one. There are already a few operators using multiple translators on the same frequency to try to do just that. I can think of two off the top of my head in Denver.
TL;DR: All these rules are ultimately arbitrary and political and there's a good argument to be made for further modifying some of them, if it's politically viable.
But to add into that point; it currently involves established rules. Is the NAB, RAB, or other broadcast lobbyist group interested in rejiggering the FM band to add more translators? What Kirk said is technically feasible, but in reality, not practical nor of interest mainly because paving that path would cost mucho dinero.
Denver is probably the easiest examples of making synchronous boosters work, mainly because there's some big hills and mountains to keep the main and booster zones out of each other (intentional multipath). That same geographic model won't work in Nebraska, or most other states. That's a big reason why FM synchronous boosters are such a pain in the a$$, because designing them doesn't always correlate to what a listener, especially in a mobile environment, actually encounters.
Sure, I think you and Kirk should get right on that Scott.
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