I got an idea that sounds dumb at first, but hear me out...
The makers of the iAM and Talking House could jump on board wth this as well. Reason for so is that Realtors need their FM transmitter to reach the street so someone can listen on FM to announcements about homes. You may even get churches in on this too for they can use part 15 FM to transmit the service to the audience say parents who have kids. There could be headphone Radio's that pick up the FM signal. Fairs, public camp grounds, Even Bush Gardens could use an FM Transmitter to transmit their shows to an audience of potentially hard of hearing. Tour guides could use FM transmitters as well. All of these transmitters could use a better range at a huge arena or amusement park type thing. Even large electronic stores could use them for piping music and ads to the stereo's they sell. Its not just about your station yes I know we really may not want to hear a bunch of houses for sale on FM, but it would only be for a few days and after the house is sold you can go on and use the blank freuency you were using before. Carl you may have lit an idea in my head that could take off now. Good going.
Here is what you need to stay focused on for station content.
Forget music.
Focus on COMMUNITY news and events. You are trying to be a PUBLIC SERVANT to your COMMUNITY.
So any wording should commit your interest to your public listening audience's most important interest and that is community events, sports, news and weather warnings.
List music on your station as a time filler, when news and community events needs to be updated in between.
If you petition the FCC for rule change based on the need for MUSIC entertainment, your petition is going to get stuffed and forgotten.
In the eyes of the FCC and Congress, Music is NOT in the public's interest, News and community events and weather warnings are.
Yes, you can play all the music you want, but don't use that as your reason for rule change or the reason you want to operate a 1 watt FM station.
Bruce.
MrLegacy, do iAM and Talking House make FM transmitters? I thought those were AM transmitters...
MrBruce, your talk about a 1 Watt FM service doesn't match my memory of what is presently being talked about at the ALPB. Unless my memory needs a jog, the only position put forward is to seek an upgrade to Part 15 BETS level, which is not 1_Watt. Unless someone introduces a 1 Watt element into the ALPB talks, you might have to come to a meeting and get it done.
MORE --
I just paid a neighborly visit to the smarter website and had the giggle of reading our buddy Mister 5 attribute us as "magical thinkers" AND "insane"!
HI Carl, There was mention of 1 watt in other topics on this site. I covered two bases with my post, rule change for Canada's limit and 1 watt.
Here is the post I was and am now responding to made by you:
But today I have decided to go on record with another position which comes to me after listening and thinking. I believe it would appear foolish if we made our pleading to the FCC based on the need to extend such formats as "album oriented rock" or "Spanish music" or nearly any other format. After all, the Part 15 rules contain no language about content. It's a purely technical document. Therefore any case made by petitioners to upgrade the FM allowance should be made on purely technical argument without reference to "serving a particular audience in any form." The FM BETS standard works for Canada and could just as well work for the Homeland.
I am sorry I was not present at the meeting, I was given a sever address and used the proper software to log in and got a response that the server did not exist. But I did try to join in.
So therefore, I do not know what was talked about on July 4th.
The point I tried to make was in support of what you said above about music.
That is regardless of what you're asking for, music should not even be mentioned as a reason for consideration of rule change in the FM broadcast band or AM for that matter. If I stood before Congress, I would stress the importance of VLPFM for providing local news, community events of public interest, local sports and local weather alerts.
If I was asked about the broadcasting of music, I'd say, yes, we'd broadcast music, but our primary reason for being on air is to serve our community with local events of interest that best serves our community as a public servant and any music we'd broadcast would simply be a space filler in our daily broadcast schedule.
Bruce
You are correct Carl I should have made myself more clear. We should get the makers of the Talking House and iAM transmitters in on the possibility of extending range for FM for unlicensed users. One reason that the Talking House Transmitter is AM is because your legally allowed more range. A Realtor is not going to waste $500 for a transmitter that would barely get to the end of the driveway of the very house their trying to sell in a parade of homes. You'd have to invest in several FM transmitters to do this. Don't you think that if you could legally transmit for a mile to a digital boombox or average Radio that there would be a Talking House FM transmitter? Maybe Talking Sign FM Transmitter? A iFM transmitter? Again this is why they make the AM transmitter that goes the mile of distance. Music or what we are planning to do with our transmitters has nothing to do with it since there is nothing saying on AM you can't plug your talking house transmitter into your computer and have at it with a neighborhood micro broadcasting station. When it comes to part 15 all they care about is rather or not you cause interference. Does anyone know if a FM transmitter like the talking house exists in Canada? How about New Zealand. We need to think outside of what regalar does with their transmitters and think about why we'd need one so we can get the rules change. Selling a house for example is not a community event. The only thing a Realtor supports with a Talking House AM transmitter is their pocket. Community has little to do with it.
MrBruce that was good that you tried to get to the July4th Meeting, and there's no harm done by missing it because you can catch up with everything at the next meeting. You will be welcome.
TheLegacy I like your idea of involving the real estate industry in promoting higher power Part 15 FM... they have a strong lobby because the government wants to see a good housing market. That may be the biggest idea we've had.
There are very few RSS210 Industry Canada certified FM transmitters suitable for broadcasting, and RSS210 has the same field strength restrictions as the U.S. There are NO BETS (the regulation that allows 1000uv/m at 3 meters) certified transmitters - that certification just doesn't exist. It probably should, but right now it doesn't.
I also agree that serving the community is the only way to frame any sort of request for more range on FM or AM.
I only go over elsewhere when I want a laugh (or giggle). Trying to reason with the guys who frequent there (well, most of them anyway) is like talking to cement. There's no listening, and no change. Just let them go on their merry way and do what they're gonna do in their own little world.
If we do decide to move forward and petition the FCC, we may not succeed. In fact, it's likely we won't. But we'll at least have tried. And I think that we're going learn a lot in the process. I know I will.
Like I said before, it's the journey that really matters.
My original CLPFM proposal was for radio (audio), but it could be expanded as well. I think focusing on community (which was the original point), would be a good start instead of saying "hey, I just want a way to spew AC/DC over the airwaves".
I also wrote a piece about my proposal to a radio-based web site (not going to name it until it's published).
I think this is something that could get some serious traction.
At AR
Let the children play.
The reality is there are some of us who prefer to play with toys as an adult and act like children. Because they, in reality, are children.
Then there are those of us who are adults who try to take the word 'toy' out of the hobby and still act like adults.
I would rather be the adult and let the children sit in their own stink when they poo-poo themselves.
Macdev:
I think we can still keep the thought of COMMUNITY in the title of "Very Low Powered Frequency Modulation" Radio Service or VLPFM for short. I don't care either way, if it's called CLPFM or VLPFM, but it appears that the word 'very' has been used in radio and television for years now, like VHF, VLF etc. So most people will likely understand what VLPFM stands for.
Damned typos!
Bruce.
It would have to be something like a transmitter located at a high school or elementary school from my understanding of community radio. Maybe announce for free the action at a singles hang out? I was thinking of a niche regular radio does not serve. Hence talking House am but as fm version. Do we really want to turn small time Radio into the strangled music format as commercial Radio? There is a fine line here. We just need to concentrate on Canada and the classification of Transmitter called announcement Transmitter. After all that is what that is wha no matter the content.
Plus if we're not too careful we might be required to have the emergency broadcast system monitors which would cost a fortune. I like the idea of announcing the weather I don't see a problem with that but if we don't watch what we're doing they could require so much strict ruling on our stations that it would take the fun out of it to begin with. We're only talking about a quarter mile to a mile here. Even trying to use educational could have bad consequences. One would have to be very careful with that too. Would you have to consider your house as an educational institution? And if so how many students and for how many hours per student? Could you yourself be considered Could you yourself be considered as the student? Caution would need to be used if we think we're going to inject used as a reason for changing the rules. I still think we should keep the idea of having the idea of hobby broadcaster. Otherwise we're killing the whole purpose of why we started wanting more power. Anyway you throw it we could get shot down. But the most logical way is using the term announcement Transmitter along with hobby broadcaster. Now if we have to allow others to announce once in awhile just to have the higher power that we want it might not be so bad. after all KEN FM does that. And from what I can understand his programming is not choked.
Thelegacy
I agree with you on what you stated in your last post.
We do have to be careful, because I made a mention of this before, that what would we do if we were required to have an active EAS system in the audio feed to the transmitters? Those systems are out of the price range that the average small time part 15 or VLPFM station owner could ever afford.
Secondly, LPFM is required to be a local municipal agency or educational institution, I do hope that would not be a requirement of VLPFM stations, after all, that would simply place VLPFM in the same category as LPFM stations, just at a greatly reduced power output.
Also, I wanted to add, LPFM is now trying for 250 to 500 Watts and the right to do over the air advertising like commercial stations do.
Bruce.
Operating a community service radio station becomes a large round-the-clock job, no days off. For it to exist you'd need a staff to make community contacts and gather community news. It would stop being a hobby.
My opinion says that proposing community service radio is as bad an idea as proposing music radio.
Part 15 can only be an all purpose hobby if it remains an all purpose hobby without making big promises to the FCC about a level of service.
Having an FM hobby station with a little more power than allowed by 15.239 is the only reasonable objective.
I was trying to say the same thing but it just came out the wrong way. VLPFM sould be Extended Part 15. Just like EDTV is to SDTV but not HDTV. Part 15 is like SDTV and VLPFM is like EDTV. OK not te same thing, but you get my drift. It should not have the stiff requirements as LPFM. If Bose wanted to run a transmitter that went a mile from the strip mall and play music and announce the latest Bose specials they should be allowed to do so. Or better yet if you yourself wanted to drive and park at a strip mall and run part 15 and announce your favorite Cell phones for Sale and play music and maybe meet people you could do that as long as you have permission. My image of VLPFM is slightly different. Its the part 15 FM that does not allow kids or under aged folks to own a transmitter without the parents supervision. Its for Hobby, Announcing (Selling Homes, Relay For Life, High school football games, Announcing at the races, Football games, Broadcasting Rock concerts to the audience, Hobby, Special Events). Hope you get the idea of the picture. What In other words a neighborhood station would not be illegal.
If your gonna make it a stripped down LPFM there is little need to do this for most folks can't afford a multi thousand dollar transmitter.
All the comments and suggestions here are what we need.
We are being open minded and every opinion stated here, deserves a read and a serious consideration.
Although I said I would be participating a lot less here, your ideas and opinions are keeping me alive here.
No idea or suggestion is a stupid idea or suggestion in my book.
Keep 'em coming guys! This is how ideas and dreams become realities!
Also keep in mind, there is no "I" in Teamwork!
I appreciate all the feed back this topic is generating and I am reading it with the utmost interest. I like the ideas it has brought into the spotlight.
Bruce.