Carl Blare

We are on the Autumnal Equinox!

Day and night are of equal length.

Hereinafter each day will be 1-minute shorter.

Next stop, the Winter Solstice!

We are on the Autumnal Equinox!

Day and night are of equal length.

Hereinafter each day will be 1-minute shorter.

Next stop, the Winter Solstice!

Drinks are on the house. (part15.us’s house, not kdx).

Everyone must leave by Sunday.

The spectrum analyzer runs all the time, usually showing the range from 150kHz to 1800kHz, and today I noticed a pulsing wide-band peak centered on about 400kHz and spilling into the low AM band, with a reading of 30dBm.

I tuned the Zenith to 400kHz and there was a blasting buzz that sounded like the radio was next to a microwave oven or x-ray machine.

Yikes, I thought, must be HAARP blasting our internal organs with radiation just like Alex Jones foretold. As the day went on the analyzer reading increased to 50dBm!

So I recorded the sound for another “strange reception report” for the next Low Power Hour.

But that hidden voice that tells me secrets of existence suggested I flip off the wall switch feeding 3-LED light bulbs in the ceiling fixture. The buzz totally stopped.

How come I hadn’t noticed the buzz before? Those bulbs were put in over a month ago to replace the compact fluorescents, which produced a terrible quality of light. Originally I’d only installed two of the LED bulbs, and they seemed fine, but the other day I added a third bulb.

Either the three bulbs together are generating the noise, or the third bulb has a problem.

Let’s devote a day to figuring that out.

Bulbs that radiate the public? Is that what they’re giving us?

Are the bulbs radiating? Or, are the bulbs injecting a carrier-current buzz that travels on the AC line? Can’t have it.

Please send reports of your bulb experience.

My brain suddenly wanted a portable radio with an S-meter so I could wander around and see the relative strength of my part 15 radio signal.

My brain suddenly wanted a portable radio with an S-meter so I could wander around and see the relative strength of my part 15 radio signal.

But after scrolling many radios, only one has an S-meter, the Grundig Satellite 750 for $299.95.

It’s a beautiful radio with more bands than most, but it looks large to be carrying around. We live in a time when “suspicious packages” attract a firing squad.

There were many smaller radios in the $50 price range, but none of those have S-meters.

Maybe a tuner kit could be jury-rigged to operate a meter. Seem possible?

A build up of events and activities can result in dizzying confusion.

5 PM, the rush hour, plan to drive to the store for stock up.

A build up of events and activities can result in dizzying confusion.

5 PM, the rush hour, plan to drive to the store for stock up.

As we mounted the car and prepared to back down the drive, multiple sirens could be heard in the near distance, but it wasn’t evident where they were and what would happen next. We backed down the drive very slowly, especially watching the passenger side rear view, for the spot where the sidewalk is obscured by large privet bushes. It’s the time of day when dog and buggy walkers, as well as bicyclists, go sailing past without looking.

Success. I stopped at the street and observed emergency vehicles pulled up in the next block with red/blue lights oscillating.

I went the other way, listening to KDX 1550 until it died to background noise in two blocks. The radio was still turned up, static and far away noises fizzling, and I heard 3-beeps. I assumed the radio had intercepted something.

A few seconds later, 3-more beeps. Oh, I thought in paranoid rush to judgement, there is a tracking device on my car and the radio’s detecting it.

3-beeps.

Then some very deep part of the brain must have matched the beeps with the dash-board seat-belt warning. Viola-la-la!

Pulling to the side, I belted up.

Now there’d be no need to slide a mirror under the car.

The tracking device, had it been real, might have been a part 15 device.

Both radio and TV have their “infommercials” the nominal description of “long form commercials”.

They are heard after hours and over the weekend, pitching fish oil and exercise machines.

Both radio and TV have their “infommercials” the nominal description of “long form commercials”.

They are heard after hours and over the weekend, pitching fish oil and exercise machines.

They are done in the form of talk shows and mimic actual programs.

I myself invented the infommercial in the 1980s but mine were on cassette rather than radio. They mimicked radio.

Not knowing that I had invented infommercials, someone else invented them independently and I never wrote them a cease and desist letter.

Neither one of us knew that the world’s first infommercial was done in the 1920s, just before the FCC banned long form commercials, a ban that was lifted in the 80s.

Of course the name is a contraction of the words “information” and “commercial”.

The Low Power Hour is a non-commercial infommercial, and I try to think of a shorter contracted way of saying that.

But enough of the build up, here’s what I want to say.

Part 15 stations need to contact the companies that place infommercials. They pay for the air time. See where I’m going with this?

You can have your good programs all day, but why not sell the late hours to long vitamin programs and get rich schemes?

Don’t forget religions. Many of them buy airtime for their branded long form messages too.

Turn your radio station into a cash machine.

There are two specific opinions I presently hold regarding medium wave radials buried in the ground and fanning out from a vertical antenna.

There are two specific opinions I presently hold regarding medium wave radials buried in the ground and fanning out from a vertical antenna.

I am stating the opinions now as a way of checking them out, to see how much agreement or non that you may provide.

First, I believe radials must be done in even numbers, with a minimum of two.

“Two” in this case means that from the center-point, at the vertical, one radial points (let’s say) north, the other south.

In actuality these radials are a single long wire tapped in the dead-center by transmitter ground, thus defining a “stunted” dipole, whose two sides would be in opposite phase.

Every “set” of radials thus added to a circular area is a repeat of the stunted dipole, thus the need for even numbers of radials.

An unevenly numbered radial would extend from the vertical off toward some direction, but would have no opposite out-of-phase partner, and would thus either off-set the tuning, directionality, or possibly radiate.

My second opinion has to do with whether the radials are bare wire or insulated wire. Some writers have said that it doesn’t matter if radial wires are insulated underground, but I believe the insulation capacitively separates the bonding between dirt and wire. To say it the other way, I believe that wire to dirt contact makes a closer capacitive bonding than would occur with insulated wire.

I will appreciate your point of view on these matters.