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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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