rock95seven

Happy Fathers Day !
I hope everyone has had a great day today.

Happy Fathers Day !
I hope everyone has had a great day today.
It was 101.4 degrees today in London,Ky , but a steak and a baked potato with a cold cold drink made the hot weather seem to melt away.

Enjoy!

You all know I have been broadcasting on Fm for quite a while now.

You all know I have been broadcasting on Fm for quite a while now.

I have loved every minute of it, but with all the recent Nouo’s issued nearly every month I am re-thinking my broadcasting options.

My choice to use Fm for my part 15 operations was basically out of necessity and convenience. The main reasons : Fm is plug n play, the antenna if you use any at all is easier to setup and just about every listener out there prefers FM over Am.

I actually like both am & fm, heck i like silly sideband too. USB or LSB it does not matter to me. Anyways, back to the subject at hand.
FM is getting way too much bad publicity lately, mostly with the FCC.
As we all know most of the NOUO’s issued have been for FM operators running anywhere from 1 mW to 100’s of watts.

The 1 mW NOUO is a shocker to me, but hey there it is in black and white.
My funds are squeezed to the point my wallet looks like it was run over by a Steamroller, so a fine or NOUO just won’t do. Even if i had thousand’s of dollars in the bank, i still would not want trouble with the fcc.
So to avoid taking anymore risks I will be working on switching out the SStran fed into reversed coax for a bottom loaded antenna and placing the fm on the reversed coax or just shortening the whip antenna that came with my Ramsey FM 25b.

I have had trouble with one of the Talking House transmitters so I am thinking about placing the SSTran in a watertight tupperware container and using the motor driven ferrite coils from the old TH to help tune the antenna to my frequency.

This should eliminate any chance of a NOUO etc.
Limiting the FM to the house and just a few feet from my Faraday cage home should do the trick nicely. I could have used the Scosche transmitter for FM, but unfortunetly it doesn’t have any open frequencies I could transmit on and replacing the batteries every other day is a real pain in the neck.

At any rate, I will keep everyone posted on my progress.
Until then, Keep Rockin’

We all love them and hate them, yet computers are slowly becoming the center of the known universe.

We all love them and hate them, yet computers are slowly becoming the center of the known universe.

No doubt most of us use a computer as the central nervous system of our part 15 operations. It can be a real pain when they give us trouble as this has been outlined by Neil – Radio8z http://part15.us/node/2253
it is very important to back up everything up.
Thankfully I did back-up most of the files needed to keep my station running smooth.

Until now:
I have encountered a major computer failure with my station computer.
A Dell 280 with Windows Professional and Zararadio software for play out.

Recently this computer had shown signs there was a problem.
In my efforts to track down the problem the computer started to really take a turn for the worse.
Restarts were slow, occasionally it would freeze up for become slow.

I decided to wipe the hard drive clean and install Unbuntu Linux since I was not able to find the Win XP Pro disc.
This was a big mistake, now the computer will partially load Linux, but by the time i get to the log in screen it soon forgets what to do after i have entered the username and password.

To confirm the software installed onto the hard drive i pull it out of the Dell 280 and placed it into another computer I knew was working.
Sure enough, Linux was running perfectly.

So my question is, why won’t the Dell 280 load Linux completely?
Am I missing something important? I have Unbuntu on another Dell and it runs great, i think it even runs faster than Windows.

I checked the battery and memory sticks, the only other thing I didn’t cover was the hard drive but since it loads fine on another computer I don’t think that is the trouble.

Help! lol

Oh yeah!! Happy Mothers Day to all the mom’s out there.

As if life wasn’t hard enough these day’s, with lay off’s, the high cost of living and economic turmoil on the rampage. Along comes another devastating blow to the American way of life.

As if life wasn’t hard enough these day’s, with lay off’s, the high cost of living and economic turmoil on the rampage. Along comes another devastating blow to the American way of life.

The loss of radio stations across the United States.
Suddenly station owners are faced with the daunting task of firing, laying off and yes even lying to their employees just to keep the station’s on-the-air while others are forced to sign-off for a few months just to off-set the operating cost’s. A few have already turned their licenses back over to the federal communications commission because in today’s economy, no one can afford to take a risk of operating a business that is already destine to fail.

Not all the blame can go on management or the sales team’s but it is after all just a cog in a much larger machine. This machine is hell-bent on harvesting the very soul of radio.

The lack of advertisers have forced many station’s to take these drastic measure’s.
Radio stations in major markets have gone dark, some of which have been on the air for 40 + years.

Example:
http://www.rwonline.com/article/76478 (i will add more examples later)

I have witnessed this first hand and it was not a pretty sight.
The last time i worked in radio was back around 1995-96 and i had fun doing it too.
So after that job fell through i never returned to commercial radio but as my readers know i have been very active in part 15 broadcasting on AM/FM. Lucky for me, I have a very understanding wife and together we kept radio alive in our own special way.

Enter Fall 2009, a knock on the door and a conversation with a friend whom i worked with in 96 landed me another job in broadcasting. I was excited to get back into radio again.
But after a month of working then three months off-work, it became clear to me that i no longer had a job and would have to wait-and-see if things would improve. So far things have not improved.

I am no longer waiting and will return to broadcasting the only way I know how, through the services of Live365.com and “low power” radio.

Radio is not only a companion, a beacon of hope, entertainment or a medium it is the life blood of America and it should no be allowed to die like this. Not this way. Not now, not ever.
People who work in radio do it for the rush and the love of radio ( and being able to pay bills is good too) but most know the history of radio and would not want to see radio fade away.

Just my two cent’s worth, which we all know buy’s nothing these days. What is your take on the subject? Do you think part 15 could be next? Perhaps a push towards all digital radio?

It’s times like these that almost makes me want to shut my stations down and pretend i don’t have a lifelong friend called radio.

Then again, no. 🙂

I feel a few things need to be addressed for part 15 am to work effectively in today’s harsh environment.

I feel a few things need to be addressed for part 15 am to work effectively in today’s harsh environment.

While i agree there needs to be a change of the rules for part 15 antenna length and possibly grounding, these changes may or may not help our cause if the problem of interference on the am bcb is not addressed as well.

Not only addressed but handled with extreme prejudice.
Today and for the past 10+ years advancements in technology has brought with it more and more interference on the am and sw bands.

In some areas even Fm is affected by noise from several sources.
For example: I subscribe to Road Runner High Speed as well as Time Warner Cable t.v. but with these conveniences come sacrifices, not only my money(lol) but interference on am/fm radio’s.

I know this because we have turned off our services before and the noise was almost non-existent unless you step outside with a walkman or boombox and maybe walk across the street to where the lines go from the pole into the conduits underground.

This noise is everywhere the power lines or cable tv lines follow the roads or is following the property lines of home owners up and down the roads of London,ky.
Also noise from fluorescent lights, digital gas pumps, street lights, leaky cable lines, power lines and much more. These things mentioned above are everywhere. Have you ever tried to to listen to any radio station while parked at a gas station?

Those pumps and lights put off so much hash , listening to a radio is pointless unless you are close to a high powered radio station.
6 years ago when I was heavy into CB Radio i had this complaint about gas stations and dollar stores, the noise blanker on my Grant Xl was worthless, i could transmit but forget receiving.

Something needs to be done to limit or even eliminate this noise now before it get’s so bad that radio is considered useless.

I can remember back when i was in vocational school towards the end of the 80’s and early 90’s i had a 35-in-1 Heathkit setup as a AM Broadcast Station and was transmitting 1/4 mile clearly.
It was on 1610 khz and I listened to it at as a friend of mine let me hear it over his phone, noise back then was limited to the usual suspects, mother nature and the occasional noisy light switch.

The point is, I could hear the signal 1/4 mile away and all i was using was a ground wire attached to the outlet in my room and a Buick car antenna (telescopic kind) on battery power.
My audio source was a tube type Webcor Reel – to – Reel and a make-shift matching transformer.

Just try that in the city these days and see how far it gets you.
I’m not against re-vamping the part 15 rules for am antennas or sorting out the grounding issues, but in order for low powered am to work, the noise needs to be removed or controlled more closely.

I would think this would fall under Spurious Emissions and if not, then it should be considered that from now on.

As most of you know, i have never claimed to be a licensed broadcast engineer. In fact any electronics knowledge I possess is self taught.

As most of you know, i have never claimed to be a licensed broadcast engineer. In fact any electronics knowledge I possess is self taught.

For years I have kicked my self in the butt for not changing courses in vocational school from broadcasting arts to the electronics course offered across the hall. If i had take that course instead, then yes I probably would have gone to college and studied broadcast engineering.

So any post’s I make on this or any other part 15 related forums are based on either real-world experience or hypothetical.

Sometimes the greatest inventions of all time are born from the craziest notions. The Wright Brothers, Henry Ford, Edison, Nicola Tesla etc all these names started off their careers with silly notions.
Where do silly notions come from? Obviously not from a Silly Notions Fairy.

Imagination! That’s where! And humanity has prospered from these imaginations working over time to make life on Earth more interesting.

The reason I post this is I received an email the other day in response to my post on this thread http://part15.us/node/2142

The email was not offensive nor was it an attack on my post, rather it was sent to point out that my theory on the ground plane would not be compliant. The ground wire I mentioned would radiate and the groud plane would not benefit the antenna system.

Again, my post was a theory.
I wrote: But if i was able to do something like KENC has here, i would probably go with a ground plane made up of copper or stainless steel rods…. (probably was the key word) though i guess it was too vague.

Next post i make will have the word “Theory” in the body somewhere.
LOL BTW this email I mentioned was not even from a member of this forum and I have the utmost respect for our members here at part15.us