My "Kinda" legal station

[kindalegal]

Hello everyone.  I wasn't sure what part of the site to post this on, so I'll just put it in the General section.

I'm new to this site, and glad I found it, I've been reading valuable information all morning.  I wanted to tell you guys about my setup and get some feedback and see if there are any flaws in my evil plan. 

A couple months ago I was reading about legal low power am transmitters.  I used to be a morning show DJ years and years ago but got out of it because the pay was pretty low.  Fast forward 10 years, I've got a great career, make an excellent salary, but still miss broadcasting.  Well the town I live in does not have a radio station.  So I decided to start a low power am station.  From what I read I could get 1-2 miles range which would be perfect.  To cover my entire town from my house I would only need 1 mile range.  So I started ordering equipment, started my own LLC company, joined the local chamber of commerce, and started getting things in order.

I make the mistake of telling a couple friends that I was starting a station.  I didn't think it was a mistake at that time, because after all I had already decided 100% to do it.  Well they told a few people, then they told a few people, then pretty soon the entire town knew.  Everyone was excited, they damn near acted like they were going to throw me a parade.

So all this was before the equipment arrive and I was set up.  Once I was set up I found that I did get a little over 1 mile range legally.  But that was only in a VEHICLE!!  Had I done my research a little better I would have found out this 1-2 mile range doesn't do anything for me as far as getting inside homes and businesses.  My town is 16 blocks long.  I can get inside a home as far as about 2 blocks from me.  I screwed up and didn't research it enough to find out the range I was reading about was only talking about vehicles.  My mistake.

So I have ordered a second transmitter from Greece, it's a 20 watt transmitter.  Here is my plan, keep the legal transmitter hooked to the brand new 600 square foot studio building I just built.  Yes, I have some serious cash invested in this to run it as a legitimate business.  I will use a splitter to run 2 audio signals from my mixing board.  1 line will go to my legal transmitter, the second will travel underground to my house about 50ft away.  Inside my house I will run the 20 watt transmitter with a discreet antenna on the side of my house.  The illegal transmitter power outlet will be wired to a switch by my front door.  I will send a signal and broadcast on both of them, and where they are getting the same audio signal at the same time perhaps they won't interfere with each other???  Hopefully......

Then if I ever get a knock at the door by some guys in suits I can cheerfully tell them of course they can look at my setup, I'll be happy to meet them around back and show it to them.  Then as I close the front door and walk towards the back door I'll hit the power switch to turn off the 20 watt transmitter.  Then I can meet them out back and show them my legal setup.  I know I'm starting to sound all James Bond and stuff, but I have no experience breaking the law and I'm doing the best I can with my limited knowledge of illegal activities.

I really am trying to run a legitimate business here and I don't want to break the law, and I honestly do feel terrible about it.  Never in my life have I ever done anything to where I would even have to worry about a knock at the door.

But I think I have a few things going for me.  First of all I live in a small podunk town in the middle of nowhere.  I don't have a FCC office near me for probably 600 miles or more.  The nearest radio station from me is 60 miles, so I won't really be stepping on their toes and most likely I won't be in their way to where they would want to report me and shut me down.  I have the support of the town and up till now have been operating as a legitimate business as well as promoting local events and businesses, so chances are slim that someone from my town would report me.

At the top and bottom of every hour I will broadcast a station id, saying something like this:  "You're listening to ___________ broadcasting on ________ AM.  We are privately owned and operated by __________ LLC and broadcast on a FCC certified transmitter licensed under Part 15.219.  It's license number is _________.  This station fully complies with the technical requirements of FCC rules and regulations Part 15.219.  You can reach us at (XXX) XXX-XXXX or _________."   

The reason is, I was told that 99% of the time, the only way you get caught is if someone reports you.  If people hear this and realize I'm not a pirate radio then it dramatically reduces my chances of being reported.

On the downside though we do have a local LPFM station that just started up.  I am stepping on his toes.  I haven't talked to the guy yet but his morning show totally sucked ass and nobody liked it.  It's on my list of things to do though, contact him and try and build a friendly relationship.  If anyone was going to report me I would imagine it would be this guy.

I really don't want to go the illegal route, but I'm going to anyways.  I have an entire town that was excited they were getting a radio station, and while not disappointed yet, if I'm not able to do what everyone was hoping I will be disappointing people.  I am not planning on being power hungry or drawing attention to myself.  I haven't hooked up the new transmitter yet, so I don't know how many watts I'll be using.  But I'll use just barely enough power to get inside the homes and businesses within a 1 mile radius of me.  Maybe it will be 1 watt, maybe 10??  But just enough that the town can listen to me.  And if an inspector looks at my legal setup and is happy with it, but notices a second antenna on the side of my house?  Well maybe I can tell him I had originally broadcast my station from my house.  But when I built the new studio I relocated the transmitter to the new building.  And I just haven't gotten around to going up in my attic, tearing out the old cables, and taking down the old antenna, but it was on my list of things to do???

Because I live in a rural community I have a lot of farms and ranches in the area.  I am streaming online so that those people can tune in also if they want.  But anyways, that's my plan.  Have the 2 transmitters going and if I ever get a visit, quickly shut the power off on the 20watt one and hopefully not get in any kind of trouble as we go out and inspect my legal, legitimate business.  On a moral note, I justify my actions to myself by saying, "hey, I'm not asking for much.  It's not like I want to get a 30 mile range.  I only want 1 mile inside homes and businesses so people can tune in.  After all, it's what they want."  I know that kind of reasoning is horse crap, but it does give me a little comfort! So that's my evil plan.  First time in my life I've ever broken a serious law.

[Pigmeat]

Do some digging around the web for info on Carrier Current AM broadcasting. You should be able to easily cover most of your town with 20 watts of AM via carrier current.

BTW, it's legal.

[kindalegal]

Thanks for the reply Pigmeat.  Yes, I did some research on carrier currant over the last several weeks before I decided to get the larger transmitter.  I could not find anything that would explain it to a dummy!!  I have no kind of engineering or technical background and everything I was reading might as well have been written in Chinese.  From what I could understand, it wouldn't work in my town because even if I hooked up to the neutral wire, I would still have to call the power company and talk them into putting in some kinds of bypass systems all over town.  Trust me, if I could ever get my hands on some kind of Plug & Play system and get bypasses installed I'd much rather do it the legal way.  But for now it's looking slim.  I was talking to a guy who runs a successful carrier currant system in Casper WY I think, and bless him he did his best to dumb down the conversation to explain it to me, but even then I wasn't sure what the heck he was talking about.  I mentioned the fact that there's not really a lot online about carrier currant and he said he agreed with that statement, because nobody ever uses it.

[redhat]

If you knew someone at the power company, and if your power distribution is above ground, you could probably couple the RF directly into the overhead HV line through a 1000pF or so 40 KV capacitor.  That would in essence give you an antenna system that is as large as your town.

In regards to carrier current, I was once told that in tall buildings at least, you wanted to choose a frequency that was close to the wavelength of your wiring network.  Tall building were better for low frequencies, short buildings, higher frequencies.  With a 16 block "antenna system"  you would probably do quite well on 540 KHz.

+-RH

[BoomboxDX]

Just curious as to what sort of processing you're using in your modulation.

Maybe boosting the mod could improve readability of your legal AM signal a bit.

[Andrew Yoder]

With this type of operation (24/7, fixed location, in expensive facilities), you want to be as squeaky clean as possible. You're risking a lot of money and resources when there are legal ways to get what you need.

The carrier-current suggestion is a good idea. Chances are good that you could cover the town this way.

Another suggestion, if carrier current doesn't work or if you still aren't covering all of the town. If you're putting this much into the station, you should be able to upload the audio to the Internet, have a second part-15 transmitter on the same frequency on the opposite side of town and feed both transmitters from the Internet audio feed so that the audio is synched. So long as the transmitters are on exactly the same frequency, the listening transition from the one transmitter to the next should be seamless.

I heard a part-15 station running a small network of transmitters (3, I think) with this general method. I think I heard it across about 10 miles. Also (for those thinking "sure, it was legal . . ."), I talked to a radio engineer who knows this guy. He said he's neurotic about being legal and has requested that FCC agents inspect everything numerous times. They've checked it at least a couple of times & it's always within legal limits.

It sounds like you're off to a great start (and community support for) to your station. Hope it continues to go well!

[atrainradio]

Kindalegal- I fully support your operation!! As long as you, as Yoder said, keep it clean as can be, you'll probably never get the knock of doom as I call it. I do have my own FM station I run. Not to divulge too much, but I've been on for 3 years. Still no knock:)

Good luck dude, and best wishes on the success of the station!

[kindalegal]

Just curious as to what sort of processing you're using in your modulation.

Maybe boosting the mod could improve readability of your legal AM signal a bit.

I am using the Invotronics 222.  I'm thinking about upgrading to a more expensive processor to see if I can get some extra household range.  As I said before, extra range in a car or truck is fine, but what I really need is to get into houses.

[kindalegal]

With this type of operation (24/7, fixed location, in expensive facilities), you want to be as squeaky clean as possible. You're risking a lot of money and resources when there are legal ways to get what you need.

The carrier-current suggestion is a good idea. Chances are good that you could cover the town this way.

Another suggestion, if carrier current doesn't work or if you still aren't covering all of the town. If you're putting this much into the station, you should be able to upload the audio to the Internet, have a second part-15 transmitter on the same frequency on the opposite side of town and feed both transmitters from the Internet audio feed so that the audio is synched. So long as the transmitters are on exactly the same frequency, the listening transition from the one transmitter to the next should be seamless.

I heard a part-15 station running a small network of transmitters (3, I think) with this general method. I think I heard it across about 10 miles. Also (for those thinking "sure, it was legal . . ."), I talked to a radio engineer who knows this guy. He said he's neurotic about being legal and has requested that FCC agents inspect everything numerous times. They've checked it at least a couple of times & it's always within legal limits.

It sounds like you're off to a great start (and community support for) to your station. Hope it continues to go well!

I'm trying to be as squeeky clean as possible.  And if I can't be 100% squeeky clean, I'll put whatever resources I can into at least "appearing" squeeky clean.  I really like your idea though.  I wondered how to use more than 1 transmitter without having the transition area sound horrible, because in my town I would have about 3/4 mile of overlap if I put one at my brothers house on the other side of town.  But if both transmitters are getting the feed from the internet, they should be synced, one would think.  I know multiple transmitters are legal as long as you follow 15.219 for both of them, and I will be ordering a second legal transmitter in the next couple months to see if I can get my range legal.

The only problem I see in this scenario is this....with my legal transmitter I can get inside a home within about 2 blocks from me.  So I would assume if I wanted to catch all blocks (about 16 X 10) I would need 5-10 transmitters.  Money isn't the issue, I could save up for them and probably have 10 transmitters within 12-15 months.  But finding 5-10 houses where people would let me put in a transmitter and use their internet might prove difficult.  While everyone is ecstatic about having a local station in town, you know how it goes, they loose their enthusiasm if anything is required of  them to make it work.

I was also told on another forum if I could have 2 transmitters synced at my house, and 2 transmitters synced at my brothers house, penetration into homes should be perfect.  So for the time being, my plan is to use this illegal transmitter when it arrives to get the 1 mile range into houses, using the minimum power needed to achieve this.  I'll cross my fingers that I don't get the "knock of doom", and buy 3 more legal transmitters in the next 3-6 months and try and get 2 synced on each property and see how it goes. 

As far as carrier current goes, because it is my best hope of getting a legal range that I'm looking for, I have been trying my best to research the heck out of it over the last couple of days.  Either it's a complicated technology or I'm the dumbest mother****** around because I still can't figure it out.  Everything and anything I read about it seems like it's in Greek.  My wifes grandfather is a lineman for a different power company several hundred miles away, but the next opportunity I have to speak with him, I will ask him about HV lines, 1000pF and 40 KV capacitors and see if I can get him to dumb the conversation down for me.  After I try buying 3 more transmitters and running them synced, if that doesn't work then next I will save up for a Carrier Current transmitter, order it, invite gramps down for the weekend and see if he can make any sense out of it for me.

Thanks everyone for the advice so far, it is greatly appreciated.  I have a renewed hope that sometime in the future it might be possible to achieve my goals and still be 100% legal.  I really don't want to do this any other way, but at the moment I feel backed into a corner!!

[kindalegal]

Kindalegal- I fully support your operation!! As long as you, as Yoder said, keep it clean as can be, you'll probably never get the knock of doom as I call it. I do have my own FM station I run. Not to divulge too much, but I've been on for 3 years. Still no knock:)

Good luck dude, and best wishes on the success of the station!

If I can't keep it clean, how about "almost" clean?  LOL   Here's wishing you another 3 years of no knock success!!!

[audiokaos]

I was also told on another forum if I could have 2 transmitters synced at my house, and 2 transmitters synced at my brothers house, penetration into homes should be perfect.  So for the time being, my plan is to use this illegal transmitter when it arrives to get the 1 mile range into houses, using the minimum power needed to achieve this.  I'll cross my fingers that I don't get the "knock of doom", and buy 3 more legal transmitters in the next 3-6 months and try and get 2 synced on each property and see how it goes. 

Syncing the audio is one thing, to eliminate phase cancellation, but all the transmitter's carrier freq would need to be in phase as well. Without doing this, you'd just make a mess of your station, canceling your own signal out in parts & there being a terrible beat frequency oscillation at places where you can get it. You will get a 'knock of doom' doing this as it would just be a real mess of rf with no real signal intelligence.

Best bet is to go the carrier current route & stay legal, or just toss that to the wind & go with just a single transmitter.