Part 15 Radio

[Brad]

I'm playing around with starting a hobby radio station for my neighborhood.  No money in it just fun.

The radio would be ultra low power AM with a Max range of about a mile and an effective range a good deal less than that.  Basically I could cover my neighborhood if I use an external antenna

Something like this is used as a transmitter:
http://www.talkinghouse.com/hobbyradio.php

Hook up a computer and some automation software and you can pretty much let it work unattended.  I would probably program mostly old time radio programs and then try to produce some regular podcasts with news, information of use to the hyper-local area and inject those.

Old Time Radio is generally in the public domain so I don't need to worry about royalties.  It's also pretty much General Audience stuff.  Plus their is a lot of it and personally I enjoy it.

Anyone have any experience in radio in general or ultra-low powered radio in particular?

[littleman]

I don't know much about it, but low power broadcasting is interesting stuff.  My dad is into HAM radio/shortwave.  In some ways shortwave is much like the internet before the internet existed -- like the way two people could communicate from thousands of miles away.

There is a house around here that does a really nice Christmas light show where they coordinate the lights with music.  They do a low powered FM broadcast for the show.