[BC] Wow, I wonder if y ou feel the same way about AM?

[Dana Puopolo]

Yep. And in some areas it's really bad-especially where many of the FMs are
super powered grandfathered stations. I was CE for the 103.1s in Santa Monica
and Newport Beach. There is a Class B station on 103.3 in Santa Barbara (KVYB)
that's 105 KW at 905 meters AAT. Their 54 dbu calculated contour almost made
it to our Culver City Transmitter site!
Now, I believe that IBOC is limited to 'normal' class B coverage contours, but
that doesn't help in places like the 103.5/105.3 in NYC and Princeton, NJ with
transmitter sites 35 miles apart. a 10 (or even a 6) db power increase will
kill about HALF of each stations' coverage!

I have a very high quality FM tuner-a Magnum Dynalab analog tuned unit with
switchable FM bandwidth. It is good enough to pull in 101.7 North of Boston
(1.7 kw at 470 feet and a 45 mile path) with a 13.5 Kw at 950 feet 101.5
located two miles away. NOW it can't get the 101.7 at my friend's house 20
miles from their tower-and the 101.7 has moved CLOSER to him! All he gets is
the IBOC hash of the 101.5. When they increase their IBOC power, it will most
certainly begin interfering with the 101.7 well within it's 60 dbu contour.
Like I said-mutually assured destruction.

-D 

From: Broadcast List USER <Broadcast at fetrow.org>

I have written about this, mostly as an aside, and ever as well as you  
did on this topic, Dana.

I was the DoE for Radio Ventures.  We were a venture trial by the  
Carlyle Group, the private investment bank often called a defense  
contractor, which it is not.

I never researched it, but I am sure NYC, Philadelphia and Boston had  
the same issues.  The entire NE US is short spaced.  The same for  
Chicago and Southern California.  Basically, most of the Class B areas  
of the country are full of short spaced stations, which is why they  
didn't get clobbered by 80-90 drop-ins.

In such an enviornment, IBOC causes a huge amount of havoc, which is  
why I lost all of the distant Reserved Band FMs of which I used to  
listen.

Jeff, you may not think this is a big deal, and from where you live it  
may not be, but in the highly populated areas, it really is a problem.

Why shouldn't I be able to listen to Baltimore FMs, many less than 40  
miles from my home?  I used to be able to hear them.  I have a great  
receiver, a Yahama T-7, mesh tuned analog tuner.

--chip