Carl Blare

Most part 15 stations model their stations to be a lot like licensed stations. But one big difference is that we do not have “a city of license.”

Most part 15 stations model their stations to be a lot like licensed stations. But one big difference is that we do not have “a city of license.”

But licensed stations are not always in their city of license. Sometimes the transmitters are even in another state, with the “city of license” somewhere within their main signal pattern. Many studios are “out of town” in cities adjoining the city of license.

So how much liberty can we take with unlicensed radio? We are not required to specify any city at all, so could we get creative and name nearby towns that we like better than the one we’re in? There is no law prohibiting it under part 15.

For example, I am in a city that I refuse to name, about 3-blocks outside of St. Louis, Missouri, which many people would like to name because it’s a top market, but I want to minimize any association with it because the station image is more worldly and not at all typical of anything in St. Louis. One identifier I have used is to say we are in “Forest Park” because in fact this exact spot was originally part of Forest Park back in 1904 when the World’s Fair took place (the movie “Meet Me In St. Louis”). In fact now, today, Forest Park has it’s own postal code, so it is like a city in that way, except that I am not in that postal code.

The city I prefer to identify with is named Affton, Missouri, where my only surviving family member lives, and I like the small sized houses with no pretension about status. If you drew a straight line from Affton to Forest Park, KDX would be exactly in the middle.

Only in the part 15 world could such a small time question be discussed, but it’s ten times better than the stuff the candidates are saying.