michaelmuller wrote:

Just because there's a station at the third adjacent doesn't mean the
station will be overpowered or lost in the "muck". And who are you to
care? If it doesn't work out, then they'll eventually shut down due to
lack of audience.

See, the whole purpose of the FCC is to allocate channels, so we don't have
the sort of zoo you propose. Someone HAS to care. Good examples of what
happens when nobody does are the CB band and the Italian broadcast bands
in the seventies.

Who am I to care? I'm a member of the general population, a taxpaying citizen,
and that is precisely who the FCC was originally established to serve.

In our neighborhood we have a very tall hill (a short mountain, really)
that has a tower on it already. If we could broadcast from there we'd
cover the entire county.

What else would you cover?

What would we do with it? In the evening hours, when the local PEG
station broadcasts selectboard meetings or school committee meetings
(once or twice a week) or the Town Meetings, we could simulcast them.
We could broadcast local musicians. We would do the community thing,
because the station would be owned by the local PEG station.

This would classify in Europe as a "special event station." The FCC currently
has no license class for this sort of station. Maybe they should. It would
not be a bad idea.

But if you think this is a good idea, and you think there is space for it
on the band, get out a field strength meter and walk the contours. These
days there is some automated software out there that will simulate the process
given a terrain database, but what you basically want to do can be done by
hand. You first want to estimate the station contours, then you want to
walk the contours with a meter and make sure you won't be interfering with
other stations. The alternative is to contact all the local stations and
ask for their contour plots from the public inspection file, put them down,
and see if you can shoehorn something in.

Definitely NOT another fifties station, and really... is that what all
LPFM stations do?

No, most of the LPFM stations are broadcasting satellite-provided Christian
programming.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."