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Many people are drawn to the supposedly lower cost of a manual correction exciter. For a 1-Watt exciter you are looking at $4,295.00. But a manual correction exciter requires an engineer with more than $100,000.00 in test equipment to align it. This engineer, on average, cost $3,500.00 per trip plus expenses to not only set it up but every time something breaks or even weather changes. Another factor is the transmitters Modulation Error Ratio or MER. This is the sum of several factors that decides if a TV can decode the digital stream or not, and can be more important than output power. You can have a million watt transmitter one mile away but if the MER is below the threshold, the TV cannot decode the signal. As soon as the signal leaves the antenna, the MER begins to drop due to multiple signals, ground reflections, etc. The higher the MER, the greater the chance the TV can decode the stream. A 1-db drop may be the difference between decoding and not decoding a digital stream. A manual correction exciter after several hours of alignment by a well- qualified engineer can hope to achieve an MER of 32db. This is due to manual correction only offering a few points of correction. But an auto correcting exciter has hundreds of points and can achieve an MER of 35 db or more. Thus you can see the advantage of an auto correcting exciter. It will cost a little more on the front but will save you money the first time something breaks or the antenna characteristics change due to mother nature. When calculating power, figure 25-35% of the analog power to give you plenty of headroom. Thus, a 1000-Watt analog transmitter will give you 250 - 350 watts digital. Since this is automatic, a local, competent engineer should be able to install it. Below are some package prices for an auto correcting exciter, stringent mask filter, directional couplers for the exciter test points, and a digital power detector.
500 Watt Conversion Package: $12,995.00 |
