To prepare for operating your community radio station, someone in your group should start by learning a bit about just what radio is and how it all works.

We almost wrote our own handbook, but decided instead to refer you to this set of references that already exist. Below is a "curriculum" which should give you enough information to get started. We've included many pirate resources- the laws of physics don't change much whether you are licensed or not, and many pirate pieces endeavor to write clearly for the layperson, while the "official sources" are designed for professional engineers.

Finding help on the FCC website is not always easy. As a huge, bureaucratic government regulatory body - it isn't really surprising. We sometimes get complaints about our own website being hard to use, but we are nowhere near as bad as the FCC website. There are some choice articles and resources on the site that may answer some important questions for LPFM stations and applicants. You might be able to answer a lot of questions about how to run your station! If you are having trouble finding that one page that you really need on the FCC site, read on for more information...

WHLD-AM Air studio close-up

One or more of our technical folks can come to your town and help you build the station - just a part or the whole thing! In order to sustain this part of our work, we charge a sliding scale fee to stations that need us to actually travel out there and help put things together. We determine the cost based on the actual resources of the group, how extensive the construction process will be, and how much local help we get to build the station.

Unlike most (though not all) radio professionals, we like working with volunteers. The whole point is to teach the skills as we go, and we see no benefit to hoarding knowledge. Of course, if you just want to have us arrive and take care of everything ourselves, we can do that too. We try and meet your needs as best we can. To schedule our team to come help set up your station, contact andy(at)prometheusradio.org.

Not a good example

So you have all of your equipment, the studio is set up, the transmitter is ready to fire up - but the antenna... Where does it go? You can't very well hold it above your head - that would get really tiring even if station volunteers took shifts. Those fancy-pants commercial broadcasters have towers, why can't you? Well, you can! Building a simple mast or tower isn't as hard as it looks, even if it looks intimidating at the start. We have a few tips and tricks that will hopefully help get your antenna as high as possible, without breaking the bank.

First things first: many stations have a hard time because they try to build the tallest thing possible right out of the gates. In many cases, a short pole on the roof of your studio building is the best way to start - its cheap and you don't need a studio transmitter link (see Sound Around Town for more info on that). You can wait for the big tall tower until some more funds come in, and you want to try and go for a little more broadcast radius. A very tall tower built from scratch can cost many thousands of dollars and cause many zoning delays, so it might be a good choice to wait a little on that.

For whatever reason, you need to bring high quality audio from one place in town (where your studio is) to another place (where your transmitter is). Maybe this is because Congress forced you to locate your transmitter in a weird place to meet bizarre distance standards between radio stations. Or maybe because you got a nice site on top of the mountain, but you want your studio to be in the middle of town. Whatever your needs, you were probably surprised to discover that just moving a signal from one point to another can easily cost you twice what your broadcast transmitter (which will reach everybody in your town) is costing. Below is a compendium of the options we have found over the years, ranging from crackpot to industry standard.

Q. Why do I need audio processing for my station? Do I need a compressor? Or a limiter? Or a clipper? Or a Multiband audio processor? Or something with Automatic Gain Control? And does a $2000 audio processor sound 10 times better than a $200 compressor?

One of your most important duties as a low power fm operator is making sure that the sound that you send from your studio into the transmitter is within the limits of volume set by the FCC.  Your transmitter will set up a “carrier” signal that runs at your frequency. The carrier, running on your frequency, is what makes you distinct from other radio stations. You may have a carrier signal that is 91.3, while your nearest neighbor on the dial may be 91.7.   You will add audio on top of that from your mixing board. Then the listener can hear your audio by tuning to your carrier frequency at 91.3 on the dial, and they can listen to your neighbor by tuning to 91.7.

SETTLEMENT PERIOD ANNOUNCED FOR CLOSED GROUPS OF PENDING LOW POWER FM MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE APPLICATIONS FILED IN WINDOWS I, II, AND III

We have scanned the pages of the NRG instruction kit . They are in PDF format for easy printability. If you do not have the program you need to read PDFs, go here to download it.

Creating a community-based low-power radio station takes more than engineering expertise, it takes grassroots and political organizing. Prometheus Alumni Amanda Huron gives some helpful tips on organizing your station, and getting community support for your effort.