[BC] Modulation measurement

[Tom Bosscher]

Remember when the FCC started nailing stations for the pilot bouncing 
outside the 8-10% limit?
    A little history on that. The FCC used to have a fully staffed 
monitoring station at Allegan (actually Dunnyville), Michigan, about 30 
miles SW of Grand Rapids. I knew two of the engineers very well, and I 
would visit the station from time to time. The staffers liked us coming 
down (I usually went with a couple of radio engineers), as they pointed 
out that less than 1% of their time was spent of broadcast monitoring, 
and they were rather interested in knowing how the radio stations 
actually worked. I was down there once, and the one engineer complained 
about how one FM station sounded really bad. I stated that was because 
they where using composite clipping. I got blank looks, I then explained 
it, I was asked a few questions. One of the engineers turned around and 
plugged in a low frequency spectrum analyzer to a composite output of a 
FM tuner. He dialed in 19 kHz, and there was the pilot jumping around. 
He then tuned to my station, and the pilot stood still. Every engineer 
came over to look, including the EIC. They asked more questions. Two 
weeks later the word started coming out that stations were being nailed 
if the pilot bounced out of specs. A few months later, I ran into one of 
my FCC buddies, and he told me that what I told them was passed on to 
all the FCC monitoring stations, and somewhere in the ranks of FCCdom, 
it was decided that the pilot always had to stay within the 8-10% area. 
It could not bounce out.
    And that's my story, and I'm ssssticking to it!

    tom bosscher

Broadcast List USER wrote:
 >If you recall, Composite clipping got to be WAY out of hand, and the 
FCC ruled that you can use them,