[BC] lpfm question

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

That is simply not true. Observe a worse-case example. Suppose that we
have developed an extremely high-gain antenna that puts a pencil beam
into the window of a nearby college dormitory. If the dormitory has
great attenuation, nobody else in town will hear the signal.

It has always been that a broad lobe that floods the intended receiving
area will out perform some pancake pattern from a high-gain array that
goes mostly over the heads of the intended receivers, the receivers then
receiving mostly scatter, rather than a direct signal. Peter Onegan,
the founder of Jampro, used to talk about this quite a bit when potential
customers were designing their sites. Peter certainly wanted to sell
"more antenna," and Paul Gregg of Cetec/Sparta certainly wanted to sell
"more transmitter." The two, working together usually provided what the
customer really needed. However, there was a case I clearly remember,
a station in LA, that had Jampro design a single-bay antenna into which
the customer fed 70 kW. This was to fill the whole LA basin --and it did.

ERP is a calculated value, based upon a theoretical measurement within the
main lobe. It seldom corresponds to any real-world scenarios. However, it
is a necessary value used for regulatory purposes, much like the EPA MPG
rating of automobiles.

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Website http://AbominableFirebug.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Fry" <rfry at adams.net>

RichardBJohnson wrote:
> It has always been that power is everything.  I would
> much rather use a high power into a single-bay (designed
> for high power),than a lower power into a multiple-bay
> antenna if energy costs and hardware costs were not
> factored in.
_______________

RADIATED power in every direction is important, but for a given ERP in any 
of those directions, the means used to produce that radiated power is not.