KHLM-LD 43 Seeks Experimental Power Increase
By Trip Ericson on Friday, March 19 2010, 04:09 - News - Permalink
An interesting filing was submitted to the FCC yesterday. Station KHLM-LD 43 in Houston, TX transitioned to digital around the same time as the full service stations did. However, it received many reception complaints and has now asked the FCC for experimental authority to operate at 60 kW rather than the 15 kW specified in their license. It will be interesting to see if the FCC approves.
Comments
A couple of things concerning KHLM's request:
1). Comparing the L-R maps of the 15 vs 60 kW facility on RF-43, 60 kW doesn't get out much farther just giving it a glance. I suppose that signal density is the motivation.
2). In the analog days, full power UHFs could run 5 mW and low power UHFs could run 150 kW, 3% of the full powers. Now with 1 mW limits for the big guys and 15 kW for the little guys, that's only 1.5%. Why wasn't a 30 kW clamp given to the low power UHFs to keep it at 3%?
Yeah, the extra power is for increased power density rather than for extending coverage. As for why it's not 30 kW, your guess is as good as mine. I've wondered that for years.
Also, mW is milliwatts, MW is megawatts. =)