Poking around on the internet is known to turn up interesting discoveries. This one comes from Radio World, which gives occasional voice to the Part 15 life style:
Poking around on the internet is known to turn up interesting discoveries. This one comes from Radio World, which gives occasional voice to the Part 15 life style:
http://www.rwonline.com/article/72138
Terrific Unlicensed Story
A harmonic of a given frequency is an integral multiple of that frequency, that is: 2X, 3X… etc.
So despite the statement in this story, the second (secondary) harmonic of a 1610 kHz transmitter would occur at 3,220 kHz, which certainly could not interfere with any signal on 1070 kHz as is stated in the story.
Also an antenna that could radiate 20 watts even with 1 watt of applied power [more than a legal phono (phone) oscillator can produce] would have 13 decibels of gain, which is much higher than that of any directional antenna array used for licensed AM broadcasting.
Was this writeup intended to be taken literally? Unfortunately it could be a source of misunderstanding to those who read it, unless they have a good technical background.
RF
Highly Improbable Story!
I read this, and although it made for a good story, I did not find it believable. It’s a little surprising that Radio World would publish something that fanciful, given their technical readership. I suppose there is a possibility that a very “dirty” phono oscillator could put out a signal on several frequencies in the band at one time, but the efficiency wouldn’t be very high under those circumstances. And it has been my observation that people who don’t know what they’re talking about refer to any sort of spurious emission as a “harmonic”. But Rich has it pegged with the antenna gain– you’re going to have to work pretty hard to erect an AM antenna in your back yard that actually has 13 dB of gain. If somebody knows how to do that for real, they should apply for a patent!
The story was most likely
The story was most likely true, the FCC Guy was a dumbass. It happens guys!
Kid Busted Story
Nice story.
Obviously, the technical facts don’t add up but I have seen this sort of thing before when law enforcement folks deal with kids. They want to make an impression so they exaggerate the effects of what the kid did to dissuade further activity by the kid. I don’t think the FCC guy was out of line at all. It would be interesting to know what actually caught his attention though. My guess would be the publicity and someone probably ratted him out.
Glad the author shared his adventure.
Neil