Small Town Radio Station

Look for postings by Tim in Bovey, a member here who has a very succesful commercial part 15 station serving his small Minnesota town.

Also watch for End 80 Radio, run by Rich Powers at Tybee Island, Georgia, who is planning a local part 15 radio service.

Ken Norris had a super great part 15 station serving Friday Harbor, Washington, although I think he's in the process of relocating and starting a new operation.

Then stay tuned for many more members with excellent tips for you.

I think you first need to identify your target audience.  Do you want to be listened to in the car, at home, in local businesses?

Where is the audience located?  Concentrated in a few areas, or evenly spread out?

Because a single AM Part 15 transmitter gets a maximum range of about 1 mile to a sensitive car receiver.  Less to ordinary home consumer radios.  And obstructions (particularly metal-based) and interference can play havoc with your signal as well.

If you really want to cover that entire town over-the-air, you may have to consider multiple transmitters, and there are a host of problems with that.  Do a search on this site for discussions surrounding the problems there.

Have you considered that you may be able to get away with a single transmitter located near the greatest concentration of listeners, and augmenting that with an internet stream that could be picked up within homes and businesses?

Just a few thoughts.  If you're giving people what they want to hear, they'll go out of their way to listen in.  I had people actually drive across the little island I used to live on, and park their cars near my transmitter just to listen to the station (my target audience was people in their cars in the ferry lineup - anybody else except those close by listened via the internet stream).

Not want I wanted to hear, but I am sure glad you were honest about it.  The more I look into it, the more it's looking like it is just not possible.

My target audience is the entire town.  It's a small town, small town radio, the only radio that would do a local show, so everyone is the target.  And if I can't get the entire town, in cars, businesses, homes, etc there's just not much of a point doing it.

I'm not really interested in doing internet radio either.  I'm looking to do this as my primary source of income.  By selling radio ads.  It wouldn't be a good selling point if I was telling people only half of our small town would pick up the show, and the other half would have to use the internet to listen.  Not to mention we have about the same population in our town, that is out of town (farms & ranches)  These places don't have internet to listen in the first place.  That's why I was hoping to set up multiple transmitters so I could catch all of town and a majority of the farmers & ranchers out of town.  Bummer, back to the drawing board......

I should also add that I'm not looking to do this as cheap as possible.  If I have to put $20K - $30K into it in order to have very good equipment with a great range, I have no problem doing that.  So if there's equipment out there that can give me 6-10mile range, the cost is not an issue.

dcramer16, there is a less used type of license free radio known as CARRIER CURRENT. FCC 15.221

As you may already know, carrier current sends AM radio frequency on the power lines.

Tim in Bovey is able to reach his whole small Minnesota town with this method.

MRAM 1500 in Ohio is running an experimental carrier current station and is amazed how far it reaches.

I have also run experiments, but in my area the carrier current signal more or less matches my antenna transmissions using a SSTran AMT5000, which covers quite a few blocks in all directions.

I urge you to keep exploring this idea, and even start running trial testing of your own to see what can be done.

Radio Systems is the present vendor for carrier current equipment and assistance.

http://www.radiosystems.com/lowpower.html

Besides investigating their website, give them a call and see what they can suggest.

Can't add much to the excellent suggestions already except you can try contacting the FCC and see if there is a provision for getting licenced for a very low power station to cover the area you mentioned. Since no other station serves the town you may have a shot. I know in Canada such a thing exists.
A five watt FM transmitter you can get on ebay from China costs under $500 and just needs a simple 50 ohm ground plane antenna obtainable from ebay,and this would cover the whole town.

Mark

Actually, I'm not using carrier current system. Just a simple Procaster install. Just that my town is SO small.  Literally it's about 1/4 mile long and 4 blocks wide, with a couple new housing areas here and there.  Population 681, and I think that's counting dogs.  So my Part 15 transmitter has coverage to spare.  Also, being "out in the boonies" there are very few other stations, and very little interference, so on a nice day I can get nearly a mile out --sometimes more depending on how much background noise you want to put up with.

You're not going to legally get the coverage you want with any one  Part 15 transmitter. However if you want to make the investment setting up several transmitters is doable indeed.  Best case scenario then would be to strategically place them and feed them all with a stream off the internet.  It sounds like you're willing to make the investment to do that right. 

Tim in Bovey

If you feed multiple transmitters via the Internet, you'll going to get random delays and you won't be audio synched.

One alternative to the internet is some sort of proprietary wireless feed, such as that used in Trango and other equipment (which does not require a license).  With the proper directional antennas, you can get ranges that would meet the requirements here.  You would then have to synch the audio of the various multiple Part 15 transmitters.

Again, I'd recommend searching this site for the various discussions on synching multiple transmitters - it can be done, but there are a lot of considerations.

KHMB in Half Moon Bay - I was there again this past weekend, he is using a multi-hamilton rangemaster setup and getting exactly the range you are looking for.

KHMB in Half Moon Bay ... is using a multi-hamilton rangemaster setup and getting exactly the range you are looking for.

Any of those Rangemasters using 1710 kHz as shown on his website would have much less legal coverage than is possible using an unlicensed system operating legally under FCC §15.219, though.

Also... transmitters on the same frequency and installed fairly close to each other need to have their operating frequencies exactly locked together, as well as having their program audio correctly synced in timing and modulation polarity.  Even then there may be areas where they interfere with each other.

Not such good news for dcramer16, I know (sorry).

If reception of out-of-market stations is very iffy out where you are and there is available space, use two transmitters in opposite parts of town and put up the program on two different frequencies:

(PROMO) "East side 1410, west side 1600, its the same great music! Set TWO buttons on your car radio, because (Station Calls) has you covered no matter where you live!"

I really should point out that, for all Half Moon Bay Radio has going for it, 1710 kHz is legally considered out of band. I love what they're doing and their online processing sounds fantastic, but I hope they're not leaving themselves open to a nasty letter from the Framingham Candy Company.

Are you sure it not the Florida Citrus Commission?

If you don't care about mobile users in their cars, then using multiple transmitters on different frequencies would work.  But if you do, then listeners would have to remember based on their location what frequency to tune into, and it would kind of defeat what the proposed venture.

The Rangemaster does have a feature that supposedly allows you to synch multiple transmitters, but I was under the impression you had to have a dedicated line to feed each one (and not something like the Internet, which can introduce delays) - that's why I suggested some sort of proprietary wireless feed, which would not have the same sort of delays.

Legalities of using 1710 aside, how do the Half Moon Bay folks do it?

HMB uses 5 rangemaster linked together within about 25 feet of each other - give or take.  in an X pattern.. the sound when you are within a mile is very clear, very solid.  Much more so than any single part15 free radiate (non-CC) transmitter I have heard.  I think I want to try this for myself and see what its like.. I remember someone once saying that 4 ganged hamiltons didn't really yeild much more than 1 did, but its been awhile, and it seems to me that it would provide a much riched sound..