Building out an FM Station

For all you kids out there, building an FM station can be easy, fun and cheap! 

 Step 1 -  We bought a FM license in FCC Auction 93 (2012) for 106.5FM. This process alone is worth its own post, but I won't bore you to death about the Federal Government red tape involved in participating in the auction. This license gave us the authority to construct a station with a power of 50 kilowatts maximum in the Bend, OR market. Then, after a couple of years, we started to build out the station. I knew the market because we had previously  bought a license for 92.7FM (now 94.1FM POWER 94!).

Step 2 - Tower Site: lucky for us, we had a couple options for the actual tower. My friends at American Tower took care of me; we agreed on  the monthly fee, (that's the tower above, with the antenna being installed by a two man crew on the tower). Things to know about a tower and site: a) enough vertical apeture (tower speak for actual space), at the right height, for the antenna and STL dish plus anything else, to go on, b) structural capacity ($1,500 for a structural analysis, which the tower did pass), c) Electrical Capacity (there was enough 3 phase power, but we are still working through the issues, more in part 3), c) physical building space  (duh, but it can be an issue), d) other things, including rack space, deicers for the antenna, internet access (more in part 2 of this), STL path clarity, intermodulation (see my post about getting kicked off the air).

Step 3: Diagram the tower site: This includes the transmitter (in my case it is a Nautel VS 2.5), equipment (STL, EBS, remote control, remote programming, internet capabilities including router, hub access and streaming hardware).

Step 4: Order Equipment, watch budget get shot. ERI Antenna, Transmitter, audio and monitoring/control equipment, EBS, power conditioning.

Step 5: Harass Equipment vendors as the ship date is missed.

Step 6: Repeat Step 5.

Step 7 Get Engineers and Antenna crews scheduled.

Step 8: Repeat Step 5 again - stress over late shipments and delay crew.

Step 9: Arrange with tower company, other tenants who have to power down, and crew to run transmission line and lift and assemble antenna in the air. 

Step 10: File for Program Test Authority with the FCC and then light it up - thank goodness nothing caught on fire. 

Next: Part 2 - Studio side.