NPR Transmitter Tower Locations

somewhere in the fcc that should be availiable i guess i just got a nuvi 660 live in nyc and having hard time because no station really works wotrth a dam

dan

That is what I thought too. I have not been able to locate those data yet though. Maybe someone can give us some pointers in the right direction.

BB3

If you want to spend the time, you can find the station list here:

http://www.bsu.edu/ipr/nprstations2006.pdf

Then you can go here:

http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/cgi-bin/ws.exe/genmen/index.hts

and search by callsign to get the lat/lon of each transmitter.

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/924 - it appears to be transmitter locations.

I believe a method to handle this would be to gather the data from the site listed i.e. http://www.bsu.edu/ipr/nprstations2006.pdf and enter it as the fourth column of the existing fm station POI on this website. The excel data could be sorted by station name and words "NPR" entered into the fourth column. If this makes sense, I could do the entry.

Update (1/16/2007): checked the listings and about 10% are AM stations and not in the current file. I plan on just skipping those stations.

I tried to use the FM stations POI on this site(http://www.poi-factory.com/node/924)as a source for the transmission towers for the NPR stations. From the listing of NPR stations, there are 742 FM NPR stations in the US and 56 AM stations. Using a lookup in the FM station POI, there were only 10 matches. I guess this means that the FM stations POI is not a complete listing.

I did the same thing but in a quick and unstructured way. I looked in the FM POI list for the NPR stations nearest me and found none of them. So where do we go from here? I would be happy to help with data entry if someone can guide me in the right direction. This sure would be handy when on a long road trip as I really don't enjoy listening to many stations other than NPR. I do have the FM station POIs stored in my C340 though and I am sure that will be handy too.

While searching the net for a list of NPR stations other than the pdf I ran across a really neat site for NPR fans. Check out http://www.publicradiofan.com/ .

BB3

I have an NPR Stations list sucked into Excell and am cleaning it up right now - will run through a geocoder and post the results ASAP.

That is EXCELLENT. Thanks for that work I for one appreciate it very much. Let me know if I can be of any help in any way.

BB3

Done with it - and uploaded it to the "other" category.

I derived the coordinates from just the city & state provided in the NPR station list...I more or less sucked it into Excel, tweaked a few things, and then geocoded them by city & state. The POI when uploaded to my Garmin 350 shows up in the list as "Call Letters-AM/FM Freq" and when you select it from the list, shows "Call Letters-AM/FM Frequency' on one line, and City & state on the second line.

Enjoy my first stab at uploading a file after messing around with the data.

Keith

Great. Thanks so much for that. I am going to download it now. That is really great and much appreciated.

I've moved it out of the moderation area, and it's posted under "other".

JM

That's great. I'm going to download it now.

I had been working at it from a tower site angle, but with limited Excel knowledge.
I started with this FCC site:
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/fmq.html and got a list by making these choices:
State: All states
Service: Educational FM only
Record Types: Licensed stations
OK to "all frequencies"
Choose: "Text fire (pipe delimited - no links)"
It's a list of a few thousand stations, and it includes religious stations as well as NPR, with stations listed by callsign in order of frequency, and showing tower coordinates in DD MM SS. I deleted a lot of extraneous columns, perhaps unfortunately including the owner, but including the "facility ID" which I hoped might match with translators.

Separately, I have the NPR list by state, then callsign, but I don't know how to suck out the coordinates from the larger list by matching callsigns, (and, using a Mac, I don't have access to a POI edit program).

The FCC maintains a separate file of FM translator stations, on the same hierarchical level as FM Educational stations. As far as I've been able to tell, NPR does not publish a list of stations which includes the stations' translators. But the translator list doesn't key to the station callsign or the facility ID of the station which feeds it. The only way I can think of to match translator tower location with the base station is by comparing owners.

When I drive long distance, I find I'm listening to translator stations a lot of the time, so it's irritating that neither the FCC nor NPR make it a simple task.

Anyway, what I have is in two Excel worksheets (on a Mac, shouldn't make much difference), one with the NPR list -- which you've already put to use -- the other with all FM "educational" tower sites and tower coordinates in DD.DDDD format. I'll send the latter to anyone interested. I'm at the user name at chartermi dot net.

Bob Ball

After looking at http://www.poi-factory.com/node/924 it looks like I was trying to reinvent the wheel. But I didn't examine it to see why it wouldn't have matched the other table.

Nevertheless, if anyone wants to take a whack at my table, it's available.

Besides shipping the XLS files to two of you on the site, I emailed NPR to tell them what people are trying to do FOR them, asked for help with the translators and suggested they might make a story out of the effort for one of their news programs.

I suggested something similar to NPR several years ago. I don't think I received a reply.

Good idea on contacting NPR Bob. Thanks also to mkahn who made some improvements to the file and who had some great suggestions for improvement. I think we have made a good start on this project and with everyone's help it will only get better. Many thanks to kch50428 who authored the original NPR list which was a great foundation for this work. That one is very good and we are only trying to refine it a bit. So, any suggestions or ideas are welcomed. I made some edits to the description to include some of the suggestions for improvement so the file may not reappear for a bit.

BB3

I thought it would be a good idea to move this thread to the organized project area. I see that we now have two NPR files, which one should we take out of the database now?

Miss Poi

It is as complete as the list on the PDF file that I sucked into Excell and geocoded by city & state...Anyone should be able to find at least one NPR station with a good enough quality signal anywhere in the country based on that listing.

I now see that one file has tower locations and the other has station locations. So both will stay, sorry for my confusion.

Miss Poi

While we are working on the NPR and Educational stations, it might be a good idea to work on them under a specific project. Others may have ideas on denoting stations in the FM listing by genre. Suggest a large project called Radio Stations with multiple sub projects.

Miss POI thanks. Yes, you are right. One has the station locations and the latest one we are working has accurate tower locations.

Maury....great idea on the radio stations project. I like the idea of a large project called Radio Stations with listings by genre. That sounds great but I have no idea how to procede on sorting out the "by genre." I am sure you guys can come up with a good approach.

BB3

The FCC does not bother to track such things as it can change on a moment's notice, and any database would be out of date all the time. That said, if someone still wants make a go of it - more power to 'em.

Yes, I agree that it would be difficult. Perhaps the broader categories we are now working, NPR, EDU, and Other would be sufficient. Also, I agree that your station POIs should be more than sufficient to determine if a station is in range or not while traveling. I guess some of us are just enjoying the fun of locating those towers as precisely as we can.

BB3

I'm sorry for my ignorance, but how does this POI work exactly? Will it tell me what radio station to turn to?

By selecting this file on your GPS, you will see the nearest NPR stations located to your position. It will show you the distance, the name of the station, and the frequency to tune into.

I would suggest that we remove the .csv file "NPR and Educational Radio Station Tower Locations" as the new, separate files NPR and EDU cover these stations. The data for the EDU stations is the same and the NPR data now includes AM stations that were not in the list before.

I was never an athlete, but I spent a lot of my adult life enjoying playing on a team. In a career in journalism, it was working with other reporters on a breaking story, or working with a copy desk to get a paper with breaking news out on time. Nearing retirement, it was a couple of opportunities to run a 320-mile relay race with several other people, all of them thankfully younger than I.
This was the first time I've worked on a team at a distance, and as confusing as it became at times -- I count 127 messages in my Eudora "NPR Project" folder just since Sunday -- it was a grand experience.
Thanks Bob! Thanks Maury!

I have put the file in moderation for now and would like to hear from everyone on the team to make sure that it is indeed a file that is no longer needed.

Miss Poi

I have no objection to removing the file you've put in moderation. It turned out to be somewhat of a waypoint.

It is great fun to work on a project as a virtual team. It has always been a special interest of mine. Bob and Maury, you guys are great to work with. I spend a lot of time working on virtual teams. I am the admin of a site called Freeflow that creates flight simulator scenery with developers working together as a virtual team. It is a very powerful concept because it allows people to participate, because of the Internet, without having to be in close proximity in a geographic sense. We just finished creating scenery for all of the islands in the Bahamas. That was a one year long very complex project. It was a pleasure to work on something smaller for a change and one where the other members of the team did all of the work. Thanks guys.
Oh, to see the Freeflow project go to http://www.fs-freeflow.com/

I was never an athlete, but I spent a lot of my adult life enjoying playing on a team. In a career in journalism, it was working with other reporters on a breaking story, or working with a copy desk to get a paper with breaking news out on time. Nearing retirement, it was a couple of opportunities to run a 320-mile relay race with several other people, all of them thankfully younger than I.
This was the first time I've worked on a team at a distance, and as confusing as it became at times -- I count 127 messages in my Eudora "NPR Project" folder just since Sunday -- it was a grand experience.
Thanks Bob! Thanks Maury!

Yes, working together enabled us all to learn a lot and also spurred us on to completing the project. It continues to be a lot of fun.

I also wanted to thank Miss POI and JM for all the work they have done in creating this site. The number of POI files seems to be increasing rapidly. I hope others will band together to work on different files going forward. As for the Radio Files, we intend to keep them up to date. As with the Red Light files, if others find errors or ommissions, we would like to hear from you.

I would like to thank all of your for your hard work and your time spent on this. It'll come in handy when I can't find a good station to listen to.

Glad to hear you are using the files. We are in the process of updating the files (i.e. eliminating some duplicates) and possibly adding a few more genres i.e. Jazz stations. Should be posting changes within the next few weeks.

I can't wait! Thanks again!

At the risk of stating the obvious, becoming unpopular, and/or going against the grain of the POI hobby, I have to say that if I were a big fan of NPR, and happened to be driving around the country a lot, I would have to consider satellite radio. It's not free, of course, but Sirius has two NPR stations (NPR Now, and NPR Talk) that effectively canvas the North American continent.

Without satellite radio in my car, on drives from MI to AZ and MI to NY, I'm constantly tuning and scanning for NPR stations. I get frustrated, especially on I-80 in hilly Pennsylvania and on I-40 in Texas and New Mexico, when I can't find one or lock in for more than a few minutes.

So on this latest trip to Arizona, I put Sirius in the car. It's fine, a steady locked-in source with the two NPR channels and several others I find entertaining.

But the NPR channels, as far as I could tell from listening and the guides, lack Morning Edition and All Things Considered. They lack local weather and any local flavor. The channels have a short cycle before they start repeating.

I typically tune for NPR stations from 88.1-91.7mhz, because tuning the rest of the FM band means a lot of time searching and fewer hits.

The POIs should prevent a lot of searching for local stations and local flavor. And I'll continue to use Sirius when nothing else is available, or when I don't care for the local NPR programming.

Excellent points, Bob! I guess my lack of experience (with things like traveling) was making me a little short-sighted in my opinion. Thanks for helping me to see a little better. Siriusly! =)

I just finished creating a google map that shows NPR station location and transmission power. It's available here:

http://www.broofa.com/Toys/NPRStations/

Be aware that slower/older computers might have trouble rendering this page, since it plots over 800 station locations.

There's more information about the what/where/how of the information available on the page.

broofa
FYI, the NPR file we have posted includes the booster and translator stations for the 800 locations, totaling 1350 towers in the US. You might want to look at that file and add the additional locations.

We will be posting a new set of updated files over the next week.

Also, the site: http://www.amfm2go.com/ provides maps by state or groups of states for all am and fm stations in the US.

We are continuing the project to break down the FM stations in separate files by Genre. Over the next week, we will be posting new files (in addition to the NPR, EDU, Christian, and all FM stations) for Classical and JAZZ.

I have developed up a database of the FM stations with location. If anyone has additional information, such as a listing of the call letters for a group of stations and the genre, i.e., country, etc. I would be happy to add that to the list and update or add new .csv files.

Miss POI, we could work this like the red-light file you maintain. Let me know if that makes sense and if there is any interest. Also, is it possible to check the interest in these files by number of downloads?

Thanks for all the links! the amfm2go seems like it'll come in handy.

Great job Broofa. It is really neat to see these data in Google Maps. It is especially informative to pick a location and then be able to see signal strengths for various locations. Very clever application. Thanks very much.

Recently d/ld this file and ran POI Verfier on it.
It list a multitude of errors and ask me if I want to change them. Should I???

The file is okay, although you might want to accept the change in title.
Explanation:
1. Title has a date in it and POI Verifier wants to remove that as it could set a proximity alarm. The date has been adjusted so it doesn't set off the alarm, however it will not cause a problem to remove it.
2. The Long and Latitude in line 1389 that POI Verifier alerts as being incorrect is actually for an NPR station in Saipan. It will not cause any problem for it to be deleted.
3. The locations which appear as duplicates are for different call stations using the same or near towers. This is correct.

Conclusion: It is okay to use as is. If you follow POI Verifier and remove the suggestions, it will not cause any problems.

Thank you for the help. I am new to auto GPS. Have GPx 12, handheld. This site is great for us newbies!! Don't have the necessary software as yet, but plan on getting them. When that happens, plan on developing a file on boat ramps for the Connecticutt river.
Again thanks for all the work!!!

Man, it was so nice to not have to go up and down and listen for a minute or so to see if the station was a NPR station. I went in the GPSr and it told me which one was the closest. That was nice. Actually, the first one wasn't a NPR station, but the second one was.

I forgot who created it, but thanks a million.

Thanks
Three of us got together and created it under the name "The Radio Guys". I didn't want to mention it on the top 10 discussion group, but I find it very handy when traveling and, of course, it isn't in the built in pois.

Oh ok, so it was u (and others). Thanks again. Now I just need to get back out of the office and keep looking for new ones...lol.

Thanks for the list. It has helped me considerably. I did find a few NPR stations that are not on this list. I will probably be assigning at least the city's lat & long for them unless someone can point me to an up-to-date link in the FCC. How should I provide updates?

Missing NPR Stations:

KXGA at Glennallen, ALASKA
KRNN at Juneau, ALASKA
KXLL at Juneau, ALASKA
KRBD at Ketchikan, ALASKA
KFSK at Petersburg, ALASKA
KUHB at St. Paul, ALASKA
KQNC at Quincy, CALIFORNIA
KFPR at Redding, CALIFORNIA
KNHT at Rio Dell, CALIFORNIA
KFAC at Santa Barbara, CALIFORNIA
WMUM at Macon, GEORGIA
WGPB at Rome, GEORGIA
WECC at St. Marys, GEORGIA
WFSL at Thomasville, GEORGIA
KPRG at Agana, GUAM
KBSK at McCall, IDAHO
WCKZ at Orland, INDIANA
WVUB at Vincennes, INDIANA
KCCK at Cedar Rapids, IOWA
KDUB at Dubuque, IOWA
KSLU at Hammond, LOUISIANA
KFUO at Clayton, MARYLAND
WYPF at Frederick, MARYLAND
WGMS at Hagerstown, MARYLAND
WYPO at Ocean City, MARYLAND
WTMD at Towson, MARYLAND
WNNZ at Amherst, MASSACHUSETTS
WZAI at Brewster, MASSACHUSETTS
WNAF at Newburyport, MASSACHUSETTS
WNNZ at Westfield, MASSACHUSETTS
WVXM at Manistee, MICHIGAN
WVXA at Rogers City, MICHIGAN
KBPN at Brainerd, MINNESOTA
KCMF at Fergus Falls, MINNESOTA
WMAO at Greenwood, MISSISSIPPI
KMST at Rolla, MISSOURI
WEXT at Amsterdam, NEW YORK
WSUC at Cortland, NEW YORK
WRCU at Hamilton, NEW YORK
WOXR at Schuyler Falls, NEW YORK
WZPE at Bath, NORTH CAROLINA
WAPS at Akron, OHIO
KLBR at Bend, OREGON
KCPB at Warrenton, OREGON
WXLV at Schnecksville, PENNSYLVANIA