Day Brown wrote: > [...] Drive up US 65 from Little Rock to Branson. Halfway up, when > you get to Leslie, if you still have a signal, hit the 'scan'. If it > is on the FM band, it'll pull in *1* station [...]
Day, what does this have to do with unlicensed products that exist, and can communicate at 11Mbps+ at distances over 10 miles *without* infringing on licensed spectrum such as AM or FM? > [...] But in the Ozarks, between the mountains and the fringe > signals, just about everyone has switched from broadcast to satellite > dish, and get the Little Rock stations off the dish. I expect it's because they get more variety, and quality is better. No big mystery! Then again, is satellite free? If not, it sort of argues against the backwoods innovator image. I'm more impressed with the Alaskan guys who rigged up those AM antennas that could suck in signals from the lower 48 states (yes, while still sticking to established rules.) > No doubt, the station managers have figured this out, and dont get > all worked up if their signal dont go so far any more. I'm sure they focus on profix in their market first. The distance the signal travels may help sell advertising time, but not as much as the size and demographics of the potential listener population. > Do you spoze the car manufacturers are installing weaker FM tuners so > as to encourage their customers to buy the new Satellite radio > stuff? Wouldnt the cable and satellite outfits like to *disempower* > the broadcast outlets? No. I doubt they car mfrs even talk to the satellite radio group, other than negotiating good deals on a bundle consumers seem willing to pay for. I'm sure cable and satellite groups WOULD like the broadcast market, but I can't follow your logic of that relating to the conspiracy of broadcasters to weaken their signals. > If the stations have found it too expensive to hire a local disk > jockey, and as we see, get their audio from a national feed, then > they'd be interested in saving 50$ a day in the cost of wattage to > the transmitter. But of course, they aint interested in talking about > it. They save money by using a national feed, then need another $50 to reduce the potential size of their audience for the new feed? I'm lost! > [...] The news from the 2.4 gig people about going 15 miles on 15 > miliwatts suggests that tuners might be designed for lower > frequencies that could do the same on the FM band, where 250 > milliwatts is *already legal*. But still NARROWBAND, with all the inherent limitations! That's why unlicensed uses SPREAD SPECTRUM! > [...] But now, back to the Yagi software. tell it how many watts, and > what the db is of the antenna, and it'll tell you the range... using > ordinary FM tuners, I'd expect an 8 foot boom with a tuned Yagi to > go 15 miles to an appropriately aimed tuned Yagi for the receiver. So you go through all this effort and violations of regulation to achieve something already perfectly doable for a fraction of the price using existing, unlicensed technologies that are less susceptible to interference? Using much smaller antennas requiring a fraction of the space and support required by your 8 foot monster-dish? Why? That $70 Linksys device can be paired up with a $20 antenna and some additional cabling and mounting hardware to do what you're talking about. Now. Legally. - Bob
