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It's pretty cool to see a licensed, authorized LPFM station being set up by hobbyists!
Prior to the PIRATE act of 2020, running a pirate FM station was effectively legal until the second time you were busted. Prior to 2020, if you shut the station down after getting your NOUO, there wasn't any real penalty. Teenage me loved this, and my buddies and I had a little irregularly-broadcasting pirate radio station, using a cheap CZH-7C transmitter purchased on eBay. One time we went on air from our high school's cafeteria during a study hall, and surprisingly, nobody questioned anything! We did have Microsoft Sam narrate our broadcast so that we weren't making a ton of noise.
We never did get our NOUO; instead, we ran into the much bigger reality, which was that none of us had anything of interest to say. After the novelty of hearing our voices on the radio wore off, the transmitter ended up in a closet, where it probably still sits today. Good times!
If this is completely non-commercial and you have an amateur license you could probably use AREDN as a backhaul instead of HaLow. We've gotten wifi going from a panel in Elysian up to Wilson on AREDN.
100w from the Verdugos should be pretty substantial. I regularly make 70cm FM contacts on 446.500 from Elysian Park down to San Diego at 5w.
Right — that's why LPFM exists. We looked at amateur for backhaul at one point but the non-commercial restriction kills it for most actual radio use cases. Even if you're not running ads, playing copyrighted music counts as commercial activity under Part 97.
Clandestine radio stations would make for a nice counter culture. Judging by the website style I think I receive an appreciation for keeping it simple. In that spirit I'd say ditch the internet stream. Stick to FM.
I wonder if more European pirates will appear on medium wave as commercial and state broadcasters abandon the band. Many countries have exited entirely already, meaning it's sometimes possible to hear these pirates at great distance. Most are from the Netherlands but I'm fairly sure every country has these 'hobby' pirates which broadcast sporadically.
You essentially have to be in the right place at the right time. The FCC releases LPFM channels every year all over over the country. If you have a 501c3 non-profit within the designated broadcast area you can apply for the channel. They tend to award the channels to more established non-profits. There are no filing fees.
In our case we created the non-profit in anticipation of applying for this license. We got really lucky and no one else applied for the license and it was awarded to us.
When Lorenzo Milam died, i heard about his book "Sex and Broadcasting" that describes this process (as well as other details about running a community radio station). As an avid HAM, i was very interested in the technical side of it, but the political side was interesting as well. I highly recommend reading it.
Thats awesome. I'm a huge fan of KEXP and WFMU. I love radio stations like this. I just signed up for your newsletter. I have it on my listen list and will stay tuned here on the East Coast.
WFMU is fantastic. That was where you heard all the fun weird stuff and WSOU was right next to it playing (back in the day at least) the latest hard core, punk, and metal.
Fun fact, the Go Gopher drawn by Renee French was originally drawn for a WFMU tee shirt given out at a fun raiser they hosted.
We have one of these in my town, Denton TX.
KUZU FM. I think it was one of the first.
It was originally a pirate radio station, that went legit with LPFM.
I'll have to see if I can pick that up. KNTU is my go to for music while in the car while hoping to not hit dead spots. It's also a favorite joke on why UNT can't have its station call letters updated when they rebranded from NTSU.
KPBJ should have co-channel interference from KAIA and KCAQ, but the first adjacents are pretty clear. an LPFM has no protected contour. How is the local signal?
Great question, sadly we haven't gotten to the point of operating our transmitter yet so we don't know if co-channel interference is going to be a significant issue or not. I can say tho that neither KAIA or KCAQ come through clearly within our contour.
Test it ASAP -- I'm an 80s/90s kid, I loved Pump Up The Volume and I did a little umm broadcasting of my own (so I love your vision) but I would have concerns that even if the larger FM stations aren't coming through there can still be enough power there (you should be able to test that though) to nix out your low-power signal.
Also:
> Stations authorized in the LPFM service will operate with effective radiated
> powers (ERP) between 1 watt (0.001 kW) and 100 watts (0.100 kW). In any case,
> the distance to the 1 mV/m (60 dBu) contour from an LPFM station or
> application will not be permitted to exceed a reference distance of 5.6 km.
At the moment we are only airing a few new shows per day and filling the rest of our airtime with content from archive.org and other free sources (chosen by all our hosts), but over time more of the schedule will fill with original content.
They just pay into ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. The royalty groups disburse on estimated airplay. Non-coms pay a reduced rate. I can go mch deeper if you want. I used to work in that field.
At KPFT I endured the transition a number of years ago where we had to log every song played and nothing like that had ever been required since the beginning.
For terrestrial broadcast or online? You go through a handful of music industry organizations such as ASCAP and BMI. For terrestrial broadcast the costs are scaled to approximate listenership.
Wait until you're explaining to a judge why your broadcast logs say 10 listeners but the ASCAP audit found you streaming to 10,000. They cross-reference everything now.
We handle it through SoundExchange for online streaming plus ASCAP/BMI/SESAC for broadcast. The tricky part is keeping logs accurate—we use Spinitron to track every song we play since the royalty orgs actually audit those records. Budget maybe $500-1000/year for a small LPFM station depending on your power.
I disagree that LPFM needs to go hyper-local. The internet streaming undermines the whole point—you're just creating another podcast with FM simulcast. Real low-power FM was about geographic community, not global reach. Pick one or the other, but the hybrid model dilutes both.
Prior to the PIRATE act of 2020, running a pirate FM station was effectively legal until the second time you were busted. Prior to 2020, if you shut the station down after getting your NOUO, there wasn't any real penalty. Teenage me loved this, and my buddies and I had a little irregularly-broadcasting pirate radio station, using a cheap CZH-7C transmitter purchased on eBay. One time we went on air from our high school's cafeteria during a study hall, and surprisingly, nobody questioned anything! We did have Microsoft Sam narrate our broadcast so that we weren't making a ton of noise.
We never did get our NOUO; instead, we ran into the much bigger reality, which was that none of us had anything of interest to say. After the novelty of hearing our voices on the radio wore off, the transmitter ended up in a closet, where it probably still sits today. Good times!