Carl Blare

The editing on LPH#44 is complete, the show will be trial streamed at 8 PM CDT, in a few minutes, so I can hear the entire show and listen for errors.

The editing on LPH#44 is complete, the show will be trial streamed at 8 PM CDT, in a few minutes, so I can hear the entire show and listen for errors.

Also, it’s a little overtime, if there is a necessary time-limit…. some weeks it’s been 55-minutes, other weeks 1-hour….

Stations haven’t said anything about the length.

As soon as I approve the show it will be ready for download.

Later maybe I’ll post a Table of Contents.

The time period in question is from about 5:30 AM to 7:03 AM this Monday morning, August 27, Central Time.

The time period in question is from about 5:30 AM to 7:03 AM this Monday morning, August 27, Central Time.

I was still asleep when I began to hear very unusual sound coming from another room. Slowly awakening, it sounded the way music would sound being played by a station covered by a live carrier, so I thought perhaps I’d left my 1550kHz transmitter turned on, and that I was covering a station trying to come in during the critical hours. But I definitely turned the transmitter off last night.

When I went into the radio room and listed, I heard what seemed like the strangest electronic music I’d ever heard, as if picked out on a musical keyboard, a regular rhythm, then unusual skips and pauses. The tonality seemed like square-waves, an edgy sound, with some of the peaks seeming to contain human vocal traces, like single-sideband or some shortwave effect.

As daylight increased, the sound began fading away, then fading back, and just past 6:30 AM I was able to record enough of it to share on an upcoming Low Power Hour.

It’s 6:56 AM now, 1550 has two voice stations way in the distance, but for a few seconds, the strange signal came back just slightly.

The recent very fascinating discussion in which certification of the ATU (Antenna Tuning Unit), as found with certain iAM or T.H. transmitters, was predicated upon the ATU being “the final RF stage” as specified in 15.219, brought about use of the words “active and passive”.

At least two members hold fast to a belief that 15.219 refers to an active circuit component when it says “The total input power of the final radio frequency stage (exclusive of heater or filament power) shall not exceed 100 milliwatts”.

I am not re-staging the argument over what the rule really means, but rather, I am putting to the test the terms “active and passive” as they pertain to radio technology. I thought I knew, but as I reconsider it turns out there is room for uncertainty.

Conventionally a tube or transistor is regarded “active” because unless operating voltage is applied, it will not perform a function. The difference seems to be the power supply.

A passive component requires no external power supply, a loading coil is our example, which lays dormant until RF is passed through it and then it performs its function of resonating the antenna.

But I have two reasons for regarding a loading coil an active component:

1.) It is activated by its input;

2.) It HAS HAD an external power input in the form of design and physical construction, giving it the qualities required to perform.

Therefore the power supply is no longer the difference, because manual human input is also a form of power supply.

The difference between a transistor and a loading coil is a matter of timing: WHEN was the external power introduced.

What have I done with my argument? I have erased the difference between active and passive electronic components.

But that isn’t the real point of this inquiry…….

I would like to understand why it is that anyone would presume that the wording of 15.219 absolutely applies only to the active component, the final RF amplifier?

Is a loading coil not an RF stage?

Is it not the final RF stage in a part 15 transmitter circuit?

Why should being passive matter at all?

I may have re-staged the 15.219 argument after all

Today is National Non-Compliancy Day.

What are the possibilities?

Can’t raise power, the transmitter is fixed at 100mW.

Today is National Non-Compliancy Day.

What are the possibilities?

Can’t raise power, the transmitter is fixed at 100mW.

Can’t have a long ground lead without getting up on the roof or building a tower.

What else is there?

I know. I’ll add five feet to the antenna.

Here we go.

A lot of the world happens in the brain. If you weren’t awake, there would be no world.

My local brain saw a thought, and decided to share it here, now.

A lot of the world happens in the brain. If you weren’t awake, there would be no world.

My local brain saw a thought, and decided to share it here, now.

In a general sense sort of way, it seems to me that the majority of radio stations that get “stung” by FCC intrusion, are those who jar the norms of expected speech.

Wild, radical, crazy, anti-this-and-that kind of crazy broadcasting can get you flagged.

They have flags, and they are sticky-note type flags, that mark stations with insane programming.

I do truly believe that an unlicensed station which obeyed the rules of plain everyday normal dull uninspired programming could float on into the future without ever being bothered by anyone.

A great blog worth following is Paul Thurst’s Engineering Radio Blog, linked in a few seconds…

A great blog worth following is Paul Thurst’s Engineering Radio Blog, linked in a few seconds…

This time I point to a recent blog titled “Training Up the Younger Set” in which Mr. Thurst gives us links to a raft of technical publications and white papers.

It’s back to school time.

http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/