(meteorobs) Radio Station Info for Radiometeor observations

David Entwistle david.entwistle at dial.pipex.com
Fri Jun 10 08:11:12 EDT 2005


In message <20050610103603.58312.qmail at web60925.mail.yahoo.com>, Steven
Roberts <sroberts649 at yahoo.com> writes
>David,
> 
>I'm in North Texas approx 32 deg 46 min north, 96 deg 40 min west
> 
>Once I choose from the list appropriate stations, I plan to 
>get their transmitter coordinates for pointing purposes.
> 

Steve,

Being close to Dallas, I'd guess that it may be difficult to find a
suitable channel in the VHF Band II (88.0 - 108.0 MHz) band, but that
isn't to say it's not worth trying.

The problem is that there's just 20MHz of VHF spectrum available for
broadcast, and each station occupies something like 75KHz(?), so there
aren't a huge number of individual channels available. Given that every
large urban area will have a number of stations serving it, the
available channels get used up quickly and the spectrum becomes
congested. Unfortunately, strong local FM transmissions also have a
habit of spilling over into adjacent channels during program peaks. The
outcome is you may struggle to find a channel which is both unoccupied
and doesn't have a strong station in either of the adjacent channels.

The FCC look to be the body with regulatory authority in the USA. You
can search their database from the following links.

http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/fmq.html

The 'stations within a radius' tool looks useful, but you'll be looking
for a channel with a powerful active station, at a good distance, and no
local transmission. That'll be quite a task. It may actually be easier
to scan the band for a quiet channel and then use the database to try
and locate a distant station on that channel.

http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/prod/cdbs/pubacc/prod/cdbs_pa.htm
-- 
David Entwistle


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