Michael Bracy <mbracy@bracywilliams.com> wrote:
>
>
>   Date: Fri, 07 Apr 2000 10:57:03 -0400
>   Subject: House of Reps vote on LPFM?
>
>
>   In January, the FCC voted to create a new class
>   of community based, non-commercial Low Power FM
>   radio stations.
>
>   Now, at the behest of the National Association of
>   Broadcasters and National Public Radio, the House
>   of Representatives is preparing next week to
>   overturn the FCC's decision by passing HR 3439.
>   This bill would require a year of "testing" LPFM
>   in 9 markets, and a positive vote by Congress
>   before full implementation of LPFM by the FCC.
>   Given the obvious strength of the broadcast
>   lobby, this bill would essentially kill Low Power
>   radio in all but the most rural communities.
>
>   If you care a whit about Low Power Radio, you
>   must call or email your Congressional
>   representative between today and Monday, April
>   10. You must make your friends call or email your
>   Congressional representatives. You must make the
>   people who aren't your friends but you sortof
>   know call or email your Congressional
>   representatives. Tell them to oppose HR 3439.
>   Tell them community radio needs to be expanded,
>   not subject to further regulations. And tell them
>   that you will not stand for caving in to the
>   broadcast lobby.
>
>   All members of Congress can be reached through
>   the main Capitol switchboard, 202 224-3121. If
>   you need to know the name of your Congressman, go
>   to politics.yahoo.com and enter your zip code.
>
>   This is for real - without a pushback from Low
>   Power Radio supporters this bill will pass the
>   House next week. We've got three days to generate
>   20,000 emails and phone calls. We all need your
>   support.
>
>   Best,
>   Michael Bracy
>   Low Power Radio Coalition
>   202 661-2065
>   mbracy@bracywilliams.com
>
>



The Low Power Radio Coalition
http://www.lowpowerradio.org/      

41 responses total.

Winter Agora item 80 now linked as Music item 247.

        Was anything operating locally around the Ann Arbor area yet?

        I have thought that Ann Arbor would have been granted more
commercial FM licenses (for its size) if it was not overshadowd
by all of Detroit radio.

I hear that the university already broadcasts in the dorms, at very very low
power.  Where are there free spots in the frequency spectrum?  91.1?

91.1 is WUOM Flint. There are, of course, no "free spots" in the FM
broadcast band overall, but the same "spots" are used again and again so
long as they are sufficiently separated. FM is very good about this as the
mode really suppresses weak interference, unlike AM. WUOM Ann Arbor is at
91.7, but so is WCMU in Alpena, etc. There is, consequently, lots of local
free spots for low power stations. You isn't an audible station now at
every step of 0.2 Mhz. 

I have linked this to cyberpunk. Thanks for the tip.  I have been interested
in "pirate radio" since the days Stephen Dunifer was getting harrased about
his micro transmitter in Berkeley.

In #4: s/isn't/don't find/  (don't know how that happened... 8^{ )

Why step in .2 Mhz?  I've always wondered if wouldn't be better to step 
in .1 MHz so you can get more stations.  Somebody correct me, I'm 
probalby wrong, there's probably something that i don't know about.

I seem to remember hearing that some areas have odd decimals and some areas
have even decimals, and that the two alternate, and this reduces interference.

That would hardly reduce interference. The reason for 0.2 Mhz is the
bandwidth of FM signals for hi-fi music transmission, which is
significantly greater than that of an AM signal. That's why FM is only
found at high frequencies where there is more "cycles". 

Is there some way to reduce FM bandwidth before adding more weak stations?
As things are, WUOM/91.7 already interferes with listening to Toledo and
adding a station in between the two would wipe out Toledo.
I think I am getting 89.9 (CBC), 90.3 (WKAR), 90.5 (WDTR), 91.3 (Toledo WGTE)
and 91.7 (WUOM).    90.3 extends from 90.2 to 90.4.    89.9 from 89.8 to 90.0.
This leave 90.1 free.  There is some weak station at 90.9, leaving 90.7 free.
91.0, 91.1.   You could fit in four weak stations that broadcast very
narrowly.   Why does WUOM take up so much bandwidth?

Put an antenna on your roof and you'll be able to pull distant stations in
better.

the wider bandwidth for FM is inherent , isn't it?  FM stands for "frequency
modulation" so i would think that a certain frequency range minimum around
the carrier frequency would be required for analog transmission.  Digital
would be a different story.

The stronger a signal, the more bandwidth it can appear to occupy if the
receiver is not properly shielded.  That is why I only get three stations on
my stereo: WCBN (88.3); WUOM (91.7) and; WKQL (107.1).  WUOM comes in staticky
with interference from WKQL, and all the rest of the band all the way up to
108 is nothing but WKQL.  Oh, and I can get WIQB, but i don't distinguish it
much from WKQL, as i seem to have equal desire to hear it.

#10 sounds like a cheap FM receiver, with poor station separation. 

If you reduce FM bandwidth, fidelity goes out the window. 

FM is different from AM in that the stronger signal easily overwhelms
the weaker signal - much more so than with AM. WUOM is a strong signal
so its sidebands are stronger and hence extend further to each side
of the central (carrier) frequency as received. 

I don't have immediately at hand the number for broadcast FM, but the way
it works is that a low frequency oscillator, say 10 Mhz, is frequency
modulated with a bandpass of, say, +/- 10 Khz. This signal is then
frequency multiplied up to, say, 100 Mhz, or by a factor of 10.  This same
factor also multiplies the sidebands, so they become +/- 100 Khz. This is
a great oversimplification, but there you have that required 200 Khz
station separation.

I'm nowhere near a signal processing engineer, and i even understood most 
of that.  :)

RE#2 -- No, the rules were not yet put into place (although they'd been
aprroved by the FCC)  the NAB is trying to use it's influence in congress to
prevent the enacing of these already FCC approved rules.

My receiver is not a cheap receiver.  It gets Toledo much better than most,
but you have to tune carefully so as not to get too much WUOM with it.

(Oh come, Cindi.  Are you going to tell me spent a lot of money on this
receiver?  ;)  ;)  ;)

I get no interference from WUOM (91.7) on Toledo (91.3) on my home
tuner. (I am using a indoor but powered antenna.)

Am I the only one who is extremely disappointed to see NPR lobbying
*against* something that would promote freedom of expression?

WHAT!?  NPR is actively lobbying against low power radio?  <stunned>
 -This- I'm going to have to look into. Dave, where did you find out about
this?

Yeah, please fill us in on this. 

Here's their offical comments as reported to the FCC in rgards to the (then)
proposed rulemaking:

http://www.npr.org/inside/981207.legal.html

I was going by #0, which indicated the NPR was part of the opposition.  The
web page confirms this, though I can understand some of their reasoning.

It'd also undermine their "If NPR doesn't do it, who will?" slogan. ;>

Heh..whoops, I skimmed over the first paragraph.

NPR seems to me to have become more interested in stocks than people or
the environment or progressive causes in the past couple years.  It has
come to the point where I listen only to our local NPRs
special speakers series where they will sometimes have on speakers such
as Noam Chomsky.  Perhaps they have swung to the right to keep the
GOP from pulling the plud on them?

Oops...I missed that in #0 as well. I don't have access to NPR like I did with
community radio WMNF 88.5 down in Tampa. The public radio station in
Gainesville has a bit of NPR in the morning and a bit in the evening, but is
mainly 'classical' music all day long. I miss Alan Watts.

Scott, who says receivers have to be bought new to be any good.  I have a nice
Pioneer SX-580.  SOme of the Kiwanis receivers were close to $1000 new.
Toledo is completely drowned out on poorer quality receivers.

That NPR page explained why their stations are "below the salt", as a friend's
T-shirt put it.  I knew they were all at the low end of the band, but I 
never knew why.  Now I do. :)

Driving north on US-23, WKQL starts to get interference from a Flint station.
When the interference clears, the Flint station is on the air.  Going south,
the process is (of course) reversed.  I don't think there is really much
space left for even low-power stations.

Even my car radio hears 91.3 without any interference from 91.7. It does
have PLL tuning (digital). Your receiver IF is out-of-whack, Sindi.

IF bandpass filter?

Yes, the IF filter. That is where the receiver selectivety is obtained. 

I don't think it's necessarily true that new FM receivers are better than
old ones.  An *expensive* new receiver will probably be better -- it'll have
more sophisticated tuning, and carefully aligned filters.  An expensive
*old* receiver probably started out good, but its alignment may have
drifted, causing it to perform more poorly.  A cheap new receiver probably
is not aligned well to begin with.  (Before you get any ideas, you shouldn't
attempt to re-align a radio without the proper procedure and test gear. 
You're almost certain to make things worse, not better.)

My Fisher 400, which is a very old (1960's) FM receiver, does a credible
job, but it's not up to the newer digital receivers.  It's not as sensitive,
for one thing -- you need a reasonably long antenna -- four or five feet is
good -- connected to the antenna terminals for good reception.  Also,
there's no automatic frequency tracking, so if you tune a station before
it's had a chance to warm up, it'll eventually drift away from it.  Once
it's been on for an hour or so, it stays put pretty well, though.

Rusty realigned my other receiver using only a screwdriver.  He kept setting
it to different spots on the dial and changing the pots or whatever until I
could again get more than three stations.  It suddenly lost most of its
stations.  There were lots of things to adjust.  One receiver just needed
cleaning of the variable capacitor.

It won't be optimally adjusted that way. But, if you're happy, that's all
that matters...

It gets all the stations that I wanted - that is my definition of optimal.
I told him not to bother with the rightmost 3/4 of the dial.
He explained that things drift with age.

The National Association of Broadcasters went straight to Congress to get 
the low-power FM proposal killed.  I have not heard anything recently,
but massive numbers of congresspeople signed up to sponsor legislation
to overturn the FCC low-power proposal.  It's not clear if Clinton would 
stand by the FCC and veto such legislation.
 
I've come to the conclusion that, at least in terms of music, and possibly 
in terms of community groups, that the growth in Internet radio is going 
to make the low-power FM proposal somewhat irrelevant.

I dunno. On the one hand, I agree, on the other hand, the only time I
personally listen to the radio is in the car, so Net radio won't be an issue
for me until cars come equipped with laptops with net access as a reasonably
priced option, which should be, oh, five years or so.

Low power FM is of somewhat limited utility in the car as well, due to its
short range (at least assuming you use your car for going places, rather than
just as a place to sit in the driveway and listen to music).

My commute is five miles. There's a low power FM station that I get in for
about 95% of that drive (at least, I think it's low power).

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