Show HN: I'm launching a LPFM radio station

It's pretty cool to see a licensed, authorized LPFM station being set up by hobbyists!

Prior to the PIRATE act of 2020, running a pirate FM station was effectively legal until the second time you were busted. Prior to 2020, if you shut the station down after getting your NOUO, there wasn't any real penalty. Teenage me loved this, and my buddies and I had a little irregularly-broadcasting pirate radio station, using a cheap CZH-7C transmitter purchased on eBay. One time we went on air from our high school's cafeteria during a study hall, and surprisingly, nobody questioned anything! We did have Microsoft Sam narrate our broadcast so that we weren't making a ton of noise.

We never did get our NOUO; instead, we ran into the much bigger reality, which was that none of us had anything of interest to say. After the novelty of hearing our voices on the radio wore off, the transmitter ended up in a closet, where it probably still sits today. Good times!

Why do you need a studio?

If this is completely non-commercial and you have an amateur license you could probably use AREDN as a backhaul instead of HaLow. We've gotten wifi going from a panel in Elysian up to Wilson on AREDN.

100w from the Verdugos should be pretty substantial. I regularly make 70cm FM contacts on 446.500 from Elysian Park down to San Diego at 5w.

Broadcast radio is, with caveats, prohibited on amateur radio.

I would be really surprised if we are allowed to use AREDN.

We need a studio to be able to do live radio shows. Currently our hosts have to pre-record and submit through an online dashboard. The goal is to have a live studio in Shadow Hills where hosts can do their shows, bring on guests, take calls, etc.

There are many examples of Internet radio/livestreams that do all the live studio work virtually. It would be so much cheaper and more flexible as guests just need a microphone and Internet connection. Getting good audio is not terribly difficult even with a laptop or phone's built in microphones. Positioning and some isolation do wonders for voice quality.

You are technically correct but taking that approach misses out on the purpose of community radio: community.

As a terrestrial radio station our goal is to serve and be a member of our the local San Fernando Valley community. Creating a physical space for the radio station is about creating a 3rd space for community members and hosts as much as it is for recording radio shows.

You wouldn't be "broadcasting" with it, you'd just be using it as backhaul.

AREDN users would probably be pretty happy to have a node at 1500' in the Verdugos.

You're not allowed to "broadcast" (with a few exceptions) or play music with an Amateur licence.

I think the suggestion is to use AREDN for our backhaul from the station to the transmit site instead of 802.11ah. So it wouldn't be for broadcast per se, but I am still skeptical that is an allowed use for AREDN.

one-way communication is prohibited (with a few exceptions):

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-D...

I'm not sure what's on the amateur radio exam these days, but when I got my Extra back in 1977 this was definitely covered.

LPFMs are licensed. You are responsible for everything that is broadcast and you can be held liable for FCC violations or for any criminal acts conducted on or through your station.

I would simply not feel comfortable opening the door to the station in this way. Even where we do allow remote broadcasters there is /always/ a person physically in the studio controlling the board, the automation system, and the remote host connection directly.

Finally.. one of the great joys of working in radio.. is, honestly, taking phone calls while on shift in the studio. If you're going to do a call in show it's basically required. The induced delay on digital connections is often too high to make a quality show out of. It's honestly one of the pain points of podcasts today.. watching two hosts bounce off the delay while trying to have a natural "conversation" on any level.

You can't use encryption on AREDN, which really just absolutely sucks on the modern internet.

Clandestine radio stations would make for a nice counter culture. Judging by the website style I think I receive an appreciation for keeping it simple. In that spirit I'd say ditch the internet stream. Stick to FM.

To be clear this is an FCC licensed LPFM station.

Also I am /much/ more interested in terrestrial radio but the reality is that the vast majority of listeners are online and not using a radio. : (

I'm probably looking at this a little naive, no doubt. It's just that (in my fantasy) a pure good ole radio could be a great medium for enthusiasts and odd balls (#cyberpunk). But as soon as there is an internet stream then the actual radio is going to be a gimmick. The whole experience changes if you actually _have_ to use a radio to listen. Of course, your audience is limited by design ... so, realistically there just might not be a sustainable audience in your FM radius. Anyway, cool project!

I agree that there is a strong allure to being strictly terrestrial. I actually started such a station 15 years ago under the Part 15 rules for unregulated broadcast band transmission: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KCHUNG_Radio

Almost immediately (like within the first week or so) everyone involved demanded an internet stream and now that station has two internet streams lol.

I've been thinking about setting up another part 15 station at my house as a personal project but for something like KPBJ the goal is to be a community resource. Terrestrial broadcast is super important to me and helps cement the station's place in our local community but we also want to be accessible to those who are not in this immediate area or who don't know how to use a radio (yes in 2026 that is an issue!).

How many listeners actually have a radio these days? How many people under 30 listen to radio? Under 20?

This whole thread makes me think of Pump Up the Volume. As a teen, we used to get together in one location and everyone would tune in to the same station and leave doors open or windows down so music was everywhere just like scenes in the movie. Doing that with streams makes this impossible. Even with the popularity of streaming, if there was a station with a show that catered to the teen hang out like this I can see it regaining popularity.

The biggest problem is failover configuration and the needs of programmatic advertising insertions. So most providers will have you carry at least a 60 second buffer to start, but possibly closer to 120 seconds in most observed cases. Then as you listen an ads are inserted, or removed, the amount of delay between your audio and the live edge changes.

We could solve this, however, the royalty rates on music and other content are so high, that it would be insane to pay for that as well as the bandwidth and not get programmatic revenue back from it.

Even with a smaller pool of listeners compared to 10 years ago, there are still a lot of people listening to FM.

Within your coverage area, you’re one of maybe 60 stations. That’s far better than being one out of 150,000 discoverable internet radio stations.

When you get on the air, be sure to set up RadioDNS and DTS Autostage, with service following, and Amazon Radio Skills Kit. They are great tools for converting on-air listeners into “captured” online listeners.

Thank you! I'm going to take a note about doing this.

Have you got more than a few cars within range ;)

Any of which have an FM radio?

You may be able to serve alot more of them than you are having on the internet from around the world.

If you have little or no talk or commercials during rush hours there could very well be no other choice for commuters that is anything like that.

Cool! I recommend setting up RadioDNS first. DTS Autostage will pull your initial info from there, so all their data will be from what you put in the .si file.

I wonder if more European pirates will appear on medium wave as commercial and state broadcasters abandon the band. Many countries have exited entirely already, meaning it's sometimes possible to hear these pirates at great distance. Most are from the Netherlands but I'm fairly sure every country has these 'hobby' pirates which broadcast sporadically.

Its /significantly/ more challenging to setup a medium wave station as you will need a giant antenna.

I absolutely love AM radio and would prefer to run an AM station but there is no realistic path, legally or technically, to doing it as a micro broadcaster, other then the Part 15 route which I have done.

Can you talk about the process of getting an FCC license and other legal logistics to broadcast?

The technical side, while interesting, is relatively clear to me. The legal side, including cost, is something I have no idea about.

You essentially have to be in the right place at the right time. The FCC releases LPFM channels every year all over over the country. If you have a 501c3 non-profit within the designated broadcast area you can apply for the channel. They tend to award the channels to more established non-profits. There are no filing fees.

In our case we created the non-profit in anticipation of applying for this license. We got really lucky and no one else applied for the license and it was awarded to us.

Do you have links to resources for people wanting to go through this process?

I worked with https://commonfrequency.org to acquire the license. Their mission is to help local community groups acquire LPFM licenses nationwide.

When Lorenzo Milam died, i heard about his book "Sex and Broadcasting" that describes this process (as well as other details about running a community radio station). As an avid HAM, i was very interested in the technical side of it, but the political side was interesting as well. I highly recommend reading it.

https://a.co/d/03EQ3Ouo

Congratulations to the OP for getting something like this off the ground!

Thats awesome. I'm a huge fan of KEXP and WFMU. I love radio stations like this. I just signed up for your newsletter. I have it on my listen list and will stay tuned here on the East Coast.

Thanks! We haven't been using the mailing list much, I'm afraid of coming off spammy, but I appreciate the support and hope you enjoy the station!

WFMU is fantastic. That was where you heard all the fun weird stuff and WSOU was right next to it playing (back in the day at least) the latest hard core, punk, and metal.

Fun fact, the Go Gopher drawn by Renee French was originally drawn for a WFMU tee shirt given out at a fun raiser they hosted.

We have one of these in my town, Denton TX. KUZU FM. I think it was one of the first. It was originally a pirate radio station, that went legit with LPFM.

I'll have to see if I can pick that up. KNTU is my go to for music while in the car while hoping to not hit dead spots. It's also a favorite joke on why UNT can't have its station call letters updated when they rebranded from NTSU.

Congrats on this! As a born and raised valley kid, I wish this was around when I was living there as a teen.

Thank you! The LPFM license system was started in 2000 so its pretty new.

KPBJ should have co-channel interference from KAIA and KCAQ, but the first adjacents are pretty clear. an LPFM has no protected contour. How is the local signal?

Great question, sadly we haven't gotten to the point of operating our transmitter yet so we don't know if co-channel interference is going to be a significant issue or not. I can say tho that neither KAIA or KCAQ come through clearly within our contour.

Test it ASAP -- I'm an 80s/90s kid, I loved Pump Up The Volume and I did a little umm broadcasting of my own (so I love your vision) but I would have concerns that even if the larger FM stations aren't coming through there can still be enough power there (you should be able to test that though) to nix out your low-power signal.

Also:

> Stations authorized in the LPFM service will operate with effective radiated

> powers (ERP) between 1 watt (0.001 kW) and 100 watts (0.100 kW). In any case,

> the distance to the 1 mV/m (60 dBu) contour from an LPFM station or

> application will not be permitted to exceed a reference distance of 5.6 km.

Your area map seems a little big(?)

Good luck!

As a non-tech person but lover of HN, I love this and have shared with friends. It makes me so happy to see people doing cool stuff.

Do you have a direct link to the audio stream? I'd probably add it to my go-to list of stations.

https://stream.kpbj.fm

At the moment we are only airing a few new shows per day and filling the rest of our airtime with content from archive.org and other free sources (chosen by all our hosts), but over time more of the schedule will fill with original content.

Please, please, PLEASE tell us that stands for Peanut Butter and Jelly!

More seriously, how DID you wind up with those call letters? Do applicants get some say in the selection, or is it just whatever they give you?

Managed to build a full autonomous ai radio from ground up. Let me know if need support on this. I’m also hosting community radio back in my hometown.

How does licensing work for the music you play?

For terrestrial broadcast or online? You go through a handful of music industry organizations such as ASCAP and BMI. For terrestrial broadcast the costs are scaled to approximate listenership.

Gonna be hard to prove you have 10 listeners whether that's really all you have or just downplaying the fees!

The congressionally created entity is called "Sound Exchange."

And.. don't worry! They _will_ audit you.

They just pay into ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. The royalty groups disburse on estimated airplay. Non-coms pay a reduced rate. I can go mch deeper if you want. I used to work in that field.

I think they cracked down on estimated airplay.

At KPFT I endured the transition a number of years ago where we had to log every song played and nothing like that had ever been required since the beginning.

Solar with a 100w transmitter sounds like a huge task, unless you have a gigantic field for panels.

With 15kwh of batteries and 2500w of panels you can run for 3 days on batteries and recharge in 3 hours of full sun.

Sorry i mispoke here. We can recharge the full required energy budget for the day in 3 hours of sun.

I heard art bell when I tuned in this morning - I'm in

This is so cool, congrats on launching!