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I may have discovered what everybody else already knows, but maybe
there is someone else out there who has not explored the new FCC
database interface on the web. That's "new" compared to the old,
though just how new it is I don't know.
The main menu is at http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/reports/index.cfm
It has a wide range of choices for searching. The one I found
interesting was the "Location" option. There may be similar
surprises buried in the other options as well.
The ability to enter initial coordinates and either a radius or
another set of coordinates to form a search box allow finding all the
stations in a given area. The type of service -- AM, FM, TV, etc.
-- can be selected, as well as a frequency range. As an aside,
there are choices for AM Digital and FM Digital, though on my search
there were no entires found. No doubt intended for future use,
unfortunately.
All this is pretty "so what", but the ability to create PDF and MS
Excel downloads of search results is potentially very useful.
Adding to the flexibility of this facility is the results "Search"
option. When selected, you can choose which fields from the found
data of the last station search, that you wish to have presented, and
download in comma or tab delimited, or MS Excel format. This can
produce a data file that can be easily incorporated into local
programs.
This will not produce the complete results of an "AMQ AM Radio
Database Query" search, but it can save a lot of work if a
straightforward list of stations in a given region is the goal.
For example, I chose my location coordinates and a 300 mile radius,
to cover most of Florida, and a range of frequencies 540-1710.
This produced a rather unwieldy result, but it had all the AM stations
-- in call sign order -- with info including distance and direction from
my location, all in a PDF file. Using the results search option I
then selected from all that data, a subset of frequency, call sign,
location, distance, and direction, and downloaded this in comma
delimited format. This produced a compact 40k file that I can now
manipulate locally. I don't have Excel, but suspect this would be
a very convenient local searching tool. My spread sheet program is
too old to deal with this format, so this may spur me to move into the
21st century.
There are a lot of possibilities, what I've described is only
one. It would probably be worth most DXer's time to take a look at
this interface into the FCC database.
W. Curt Deegan
Boca Raton, (Southeast) Florida
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