Total posts : 45366
I’ll add a couple of comments here.
You could have a really good sounding AM or FM station and the cost is next to nothing. There are a number of plug ins for Win amp that pump up the sound and make it sound like the pros.
You have a number of options beyond Part 15, find a nearby small radio station and see if they offer a brokered time slot. You can sell advertising and have your own radio show and the music licenses are already paid by the radio station. I think there might be some shortwave stations like WBCQ in Maine that offer time slots.
Internet broadcasting might be a idea, but recent reports have made this really expensive as they just jacked up the royalties. Its a option.
Get a ham license, of course you cannot broadcast…but it will give you additional training on how antennas work and how far legally you can get out for a a given frequency with a certain power. Its just good training ground, they recently made it possible to get a ham license to communicate on the HF ham bands without having to learn morse code.
Having a Part 15 station has its advantages, you can rebroadcast anything from your computer, MP3 player, cassette, whatever throughout the house.
Regarding music licenses, the consensus seems to be that if you broadcast for your house and entertainment only. That licenses are not needed.
It is possible to have several part 15 stations all with the same frequency spaced a certain distance apart. With this set up, although complicated and expensive , you can get your music licenses (BMI costs like $200 a year) and sell advertising and become a microbroadcaster for profit.
What transmitter to buy? If you want range, go part 15 AM. SSTran sounds far better than Ramsey’s AM25. Both are around $100 and only available as a kit. Although you can find companies that sell them as assembled for $160 to $180.
I have both the Ramsey and SSTRAN, the Ramsey seems to have more distance than the SSTRAN, but my SSTRAN was soldered using the supplied wire antenna. There is another option than you can do using a outside antenna with a loaded coil antenna for the SSTRAN.
The Ramsey I have uses the loaded coil outside and I get several blocks during the day to only 150 feet at night. The SSTRAN with the wire soldered to the board option fades away as soon as I leave the house.
Go with the SSTRAN for sound quality and get the option for having that surface mount IC already installed…its only $3.00 more..its worth the small added expense.
If you want the best, most say the Rangemaster is the best at nearly $1000, but that unit is FCC approved. That is beyond my budget, but some have used those units to make a go with it as a for profit operation.
I do not have much advice for FM, those store bought MP3 FM transmitters seem to have very poor range for the money that they cost. For just $50 – $60 more you would be better off with a SSTRAN AM transmitter.
What I have read is that the FCC regulations seem to limit FM to 300 feet and 25 milliwatts ( 1/4 of the power of part 15 AM) . Thing is , it seems you could buy a transmitter with slightly more than legal power and run it through a lot of coax (150 feet or more) and the result would be the same as if you got a 25 milliwatt FM transmitter at the end of the coax due to the power loss of the long coax.
One could in theory have several Part 15 FM transmitters all spaced 250 to 300 apart in a line and they could be connected all together with a audio and power line. That could get expensive and impractical, and then it comes back to recommending the SSTRAN as the best way to go.
There of course is the experimental LF band where you can legally use 1 watt and a 50 foot antenna on 160 – 190 khz.
