Calling for church radio advice

Hello Russell Davies:

Almost qualified to answer the question, I have been involved in religious broadcasting and currently operated a part 15 AM station.

Here is what I predict in your case. If you wish to reach automobiles parked in a lot adjacent to the church a part 15 AM station might do the job.

If you wish to reach the surrounding community with one part 15 transmitter, give up.

When you write back, please tell us what you would like to achieve. There might be more ideas to suggest to you.

The thought is to have multiple transmitters around town so that most of the community could tune in. We would also stream broadcast on the internet for those outside the coverage area. We are on a major avenue and have a great sign to promote the station, 30,000 cars pass us by daily (according to the city planners). There are two small college campuses with in 1.5 miles one of which lets us host a bible study there. We don't expect to rule the air over night but hope that over a few years we could develop a base listenership and be able to have our services available via radio to a number of retirement facilities near by. We have some enthusiastic people and have an few opportunities to fund the multiple transmitters and internet radio. Also have some space for a small studio here at the church for recording, possible call-in shows etc.

I operate a Part 15 microstation in Friday Harbor, WA.

Here's an idea of the town's size.

The transmitter is on my boat located in the marina, towards the West (left in the pic) end and close to the shore, and is grounded to the sea. With exceptions for some local electrical interference in certain spots, and close to buildings with lots of florescent lights and such, it reaches the downtown area OK on reasonably sensitive radios ... car radios are a good example.

But it doesn't do well on most home stereo system receivers because they have poor antennas, are inside by a room wall, and are almost always improperly oriented. Virtually all modern home AM receivers use some type of ferrite loopstick antenna for AM reception ... e.g., vertical telescoping antennas and average dipoles are for FM, not AM. The loopstick (often inside the receiver) MUST be oriented broadside to the direction of the transmitter.

The guys at the Port Maintenance office couldn't receive a Canadian college station, nor even my signal 200 yards away, until I told them to turn the radio so the back was pointed North.

These are few of the repercussions of Part 15 AM radio transmission, mostly caused by the restrictions of final power (.1w) and antenna/transmission line length (3m) imposed by the regulations.

Otherwise experiment and have fun 😉

Hello Russell Davies:

My first post, when I said I had more ideas, is exactly in tune with your described "network" of inter-linked part15 stations. Excellent.

I believe the "building out" of more and more affiliates is the ultimate way of putting part15 to work doing a bigger job than one station alone.

Then you can have the joy of driving the streets to see which stations are active.

When you build this system I hope you will file reports for us to follow.

Assuming the multiple transmitters are carrying the same program on the same freq, they must be sync'd. A base station with satellites connected by wireless microwave can go inline or constellation as long as they can 'see' each other, i.e., line-of-sight to the base station.

I'm looking at beams, i.e., p2p wifi dish <a href=" http://www.ccrane.com/antennas/wifi-antennas/point-to-point-wifi-antenna.aspx"antenna with a <a href=" http://www.ubnt.com/bullet"bullet and a Barix <a href=" http://www.barix.com/Exstreamer_100/431/"Exstreamer at each remote TX.

I'm also on the internet, of course.

html codes didn't work this time. Anyway the links are:

http://www.ccrane.com/antennas/wifi-antennas/point-to-point-wifi-antenna.aspx

http://www.ubnt.com/bullet

http://www.barix.com/Exstreamer_100/431/

The WiFi inter-connects mentioned by Ken (audio+video links) can be used to daisey chain the audio and sync signals on Hamilton Rangemasters. The same function is mentioned on the Hamilton site, but the example is hardwired. The WiFi connection could accomplish the same thing.

Thanks for your post about the wifi solutions. I am also very interested in your experience with listeners; how do you measure "success", are you getting callers?request, in short how is it as a ministry tool?

It would be fair to define "ministry" as a.) being heard; b.) building a loyal following that will not drift away; c.) being funded so as to sustain; d.) being funded so as to grow. The radio signal is an extension of the lectern/pulpit.

Measuring the audience is alchemy, in that it's not a sure science. Internet listeners are a sure measure, because your software picks up their IP address and length of connection, however if they walk away from the stream or have it turned down, or take a phone call, they won't actually hear you. You will know that your outlying repeater transmitters are linked in, but the host may or may not listen, and you may never know whether the part 15 AM signal gets heard by neighbors. For "big" radio the so-called ratings services are magic acts, where they create an "artificial" batch of "homes" and generate average numbers that may or may not reflect the larger reality. I've noticed that stations that do not hold paid subscriptions have no ratings at all. That's magical.

It was very good to mention the Barix Ex-streamer, and I'll build a few details. The Barix connects direct to the internetwork, is controlled by computer for setting it up, but once it links to the audio stream and converts to audio for the AM transmitter, it completely frees the computer so that the homeowner cannot accidentally interfere with streaming software.

Even though I have been in broadcasting and ministry for some time, the world around me had changed to the point nothing was making much sense anymore with respect the way I had learned the two skill sets. It happens that the world around us constantly changes.

A Christian friend of mine suggested reading "Tribes". by Seth Godin and "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. I have checked their research and my response is, Wow. These guys understand the current culture and its trends. They understand the influence the internet has had and where we are likely headed. Premise: Denominations are slowly fading, in the world and the U.S., because they don't speak to peoples needs or cultural biases anymore. Over 51% of the churches in America are now NON-denominational. The most common response I get it is, "I like your Jesus, but I don't care much for your church." What kind of broadcast product will your ministry offer that will establish a new normal for the potential listeners?

Bill Graham uses a simple process to evangelize not proselytize. To win the lost, you must ENGAGE AND TRANSCEND. In short, if your going to win over the Babylonians you have to learn their language and speak it. Then you can talk to them about Jesus. That's ministry.

Measuring the success of ministry is simple. How many new faces do you see in service on Sunday morning? Bishop TD Jakes likens being a minister to a bus driver. The driver runs the route and people get on and get off. The bus just needs to keep moving. Love 'em while they are along for the ride.

Modern day audience sampling is less and less about filling out a daily listening diary. Especially with the advent of PPM. With the "Personal People Meter", Arbitron is electronically and passively measuring what people do and their habits. PMM is the first broadcast measurement service to indicate levels of online radio listening. But for your purposes, new faces in church is what your looking for.

Remote transmitter placement needs to be purposeful. Locate them is areas you want to evangelize. Speak to their hearts, not their heads. I have learned, people don't care what you know until they know you care. Focus your programming to these people specifically and directly; then see what happens.

Synchronizing transmitters only matters if 1.) two or more transmitters are on the same channel, 2.) Two or more transmitted signals overlap with each other.

If there are un-reached territories between transmitters on the same channel the signals will not interfere with each other and can be un-synchronized.

An alternative to synchronizing over-lapping transmitters is to stagger frequencies, i.e., Transmitter # 1 at 1670kHz & Transmitter # 2 on 1680kHz. For listeners in the middle, equidistant from both transmitters, it will appear that your station has one wide chunk of dial space.

"An alternative to synchronizing over-lapping transmitters is to stagger frequencies, i.e., Transmitter # 1 at 1670kHz & Transmitter # 2 on 1680kHz. For listeners in the middle, equidistant from both transmitters, it will appear that your station has one wide chunk of dial space."

Very puzzling how that could possibly work. I played with it a bit and got a beat with echo and phase distortion so bad it was unlistenable.

Can you provide a recording between two such station freq's with unsync'd audio, i.e., playing the same unsync'd material?

Yes, Ken Norris, how can it work?

I made a logical error with the part about "listeners in the middle will think you have a large swath of frequency space (paraphrasing myself)."

The mistake is in overlooking the probability of different latencies between the two computers feeding the audio signals.

But that same problem would arise if synced transmitters were fed audio from different computers.

What we're talking about is the fact that audio streamed on the internet does NOT move instantaneously. There is a delay from the time the audio leaves the originating studio and the time it arrives at the listeners home. Furthermore, the delay may be different on different computers along the line.

But that only wipes out my "wide swath of space on the dial" argument.

Otherwise the staggered frequencies would work, each channel being a distinct listening point. Because the signals come from different locations in space, the "listener in the middle", between the two stations, could tune to either of two week signals, no different than DX listening where you might tune between Chicago and Minneapolis on two adjacent channels.

"Otherwise the staggered frequencies would work, each channel being a distinct listening point. Because the signals come from different locations in space, the "listener in the middle", between the two stations, could tune to either of two week signals, no different than DX listening where you might tune between Chicago and Minneapolis on two adjacent channels."

I still question the practical validity of your proposal. I.e., yes, assuming the audio source is the same at both TX', you could tune to either adjacent frequency, but there are several problems:

1) The signal improvement on one of the freqs will not be significantly improved by whatever fragment is left on the sideband of the adjacent one. You essentially gain nothing, unless you are daisy-chaining down the road, meaning the listener would have to keep changing freqs as one fades out.

2) None of the receivers I've seen e.g., in cars, have the ability to tune 'between' two adjacent channels.

3) How do you get the same audio feed to all the TX'?

In #3, you're back to MW feeds (or longwire balanced cables), whether or not you have crystal controlled synced TX' ... and so back to square one with coverage issues.