Archive for June, 2008

 alt=Radio Currents reports that the first two Mexican stations have started broadcasting in HD Radio.

XEEZ 970 Radio Palacios is broadcasting an AM HD Radio signal from the U.S./Mexico border town of Caborca, Sonora, using a Broadcast Electronics transmission system.

XHTY-FM 94.5 in Tijuana on the FM Side has installed a Nautel V10 HD Radio transmitter. The station is operated by Uniradio.

The FCC released a new “Public and Broadcasting” manual that is
required to be in your station’s Public Inspection File.

Here is the link to the manual.  It can be downloaded below.
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/decdoc/public_and_broadcasting.pdf

Courtesy of Jim Pollock, PE

I have received a lot of questions about the contours shown on the Radio-Locator maps. For AM they are:

  • Red – 3.0 mV/m – Generally the Sellable area of the station
  • Purple – 0.5 mV/m – Rural protected service area, but nobody would buy ads.
  • Blue – 0.1 mV/m – You might still get it on a car radio

For FM they are:

  • Red – 60 db/uV or 1.0 mV/m – Protected service area for Class A and C stations
  • Purple – 50 db/uv or 0.316 mV/m – A pretty weak Signal, nobody would buy ads.
  • Blue – 40 db/uv or 0.1 mV/m – You won’t pick it up, except in rural areas

I determined this by comparing the plots of sample stations in Radiosoft’s Comstudy with their Radio-Locator maps. Hopefully this clears a few things up!