Some 70 participants took part in this weekend’s Public Radio Conference. This was the ninth year for the meeting, previously run by NPR and now handled by APRE.

Mike Starling of NPR Labs discussed the planned additional testing for elevated FM IBOC levels recently funded by CPB.

In its reports, expected in September, NPR will also address other ways of increasing FM digital coverage that don’t involve a power increase such as asymmetrical sidebands, single frequency networks and IBOC directional transmission.

At its annual engineering dinner on Saturday night, APRE honored two engineers with its 2009 Engineering Achievement Awards. NPR Labs Senior Technologist John Kean was honored for his digital coverage prediction studies, using new methods to study the effects of possible increases in the digital signal levels. Don Danko, vice president for engineering of Cincinnati Public Radio, was selected for his ongoing work with IBOC such as surround sound. Now, he’s working with Harris to experiment with increased power levels for the HD channels.