Carl Blare

A violent storm erupted here in the mid-waste, I mean, mid-west, last night, causing me to shut down KDX radio for protection from power interruptions. Tornado sirens had me positioned in the basement with emergency lighting handy, and a weather radio listening to NOAA at 162.550mHz. It was a good time for brain bending.

1. I wondered about antenna shape. The subject of fractal antennas has been well discussed and has to do with shaping an antenna. Here’s a good link

http://part15.us/node/2129

In some ways acoustics are comparable to electronics, e.g., speed of sound/light; resonant frequency; harmonics and overtones. So I thought of an interesting discovery of a few years ago I read about, regarding the shape of a bell. Traditional bells have a familiar flare-out-at-the bottom shape, which produces minor harmonics and over-tones, thus the “mournful” bell sound. But someone figured out that a bell flaring IN at the bottom produces MAJOR harmonics and overtones! A significant acoustic finding. Maybe a bell shaped antenna?

The only clue I can think of as to “what electricity looks like” is lightning, and that shape is always a fractal one, which brings us back to that.

2. In music it’s the harmonics and overtones that give each instrument its distinctive rich characteristic and therefore “high-fidelity” demands preservation of the wide-spectrum harmonics. But the opposite applies in radio transmission, where we only use the fundamental frequency and try to smother the uppers. BUT, imagine, say, a transmitter with the fundamental at 600kHz and a perfect well tuned 2nd-harmonic at 1200kHz, wouldn’t it be neat if entirely different programming could be modulated on each of the two carriers? Impossible? I wonder.

If you think your savings are well guarded, then you probably shouldn’t look at MRAM’s experimental website. It has a beautiful picture of The Comtek! If you gaze upon it, you may break down and order one today as I’m trying not to do.

http://mram.gotdns.com/

Plenty of disposable discs accumulate after awhile, CDs and DVDs which, for some reason, become junk. Are there secondary uses for these interesting bits of physical material?

Plenty of disposable discs accumulate after awhile, CDs and DVDs which, for some reason, become junk. Are there secondary uses for these interesting bits of physical material?

As a recording service over several years one of our jobs was printing labels direct-to-disc, and when printing a “sample” or “test” label, we used the junk discs so that we wouldn’t waste a good disc. During that time we learned that almost anyone we asked had a batch of useless discs.

This morning I was re-arranging stacks of pointless discs and again I began wondering, could they be used to build something or tile something or other clever application?

I bring it to the think tank for your ideas.

Paul Thurst, professional engineer blogger

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

reports about a perceived problem of birds flying into radio/tv towers much to their death.

Paul Thurst, professional engineer blogger

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

reports about a perceived problem of birds flying into radio/tv towers much to their death.

Please be concerned because even our 10-foot towers might be directly in the flight path to the birdbath.

Yet, I would be more concerned about wind-power generators whirling up where birds can’t see spinning-blades in high wind.

Safety Plan: we should paint and light our towers with those colors most visible to birds. Does anybody know what those colors are?

The opposite of “beating a dead horse” would be gently treating a live horse, so here it is.

In July 2010 this was in Broadcast Engineering Mag

The opposite of “beating a dead horse” would be gently treating a live horse, so here it is.

In July 2010 this was in Broadcast Engineering Mag

The FCC has proposed new rules that would allow legal, unlicensed operation of TV-band wireless microphones by anyone at powers below 50mW. We are not likely to see these rules adopted for several months. In the meantime, the FCC is allowing operation of wireless microphones below 50mW by anyone on an unlicensed basis, under temporary waivers.
– Mitchell Lazarus – Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, PLC

NOTE the part about “temporary waivers.” I want mine.

A wireless mic is a low power transmitter with a mic attached. Any part 15 station is a low power transmitter with a mic attached. A line input to a transmitter connects other mics to the transmitter, included recordings made from microphones in a recording studio.

All part 15 stations are wireless microphones and here’s your waiver. Have fun.

The “modern scene” is my name for the new atmosphere produced by changes being made in FCC frequency allocations and the Part 15 Rules. It seems to me that TV, which I think has been disallowed for low power, is being re-allowed for low power projects (comments welcome).

Anyway, I launched a TV station online, and also make reference to “Channel 14,” because I have a “TV Genie” which is a lovely low power UHF transmitter for Channel 14. It is discussed on this website that “Genie” was confiscated by the FCC and channel 14 has been taken out of TV service, but I think channel 14 is being put back onto a part 15 status. That doesn’t matter, because my “Genie” is turned off and serving only as a prop.

But the Online TV station is real. Maybe I’ll get a Ramsey VHF transmitter.

http://kdxradio.com/kdxtv.html

I am old so I view TV as radio with pictures. What I need next is knowledge of how to make a video playlist so that KDX-TV has more than one program at a time.

Low Powerful.