rock95seven

It’s true!

It’s true!
I decided after struggling with programming the station was sounding stale and repetitive. After some serious thought I decided it would be better to offer up something this area has never heard before.

Classical Music!
Sure there are a few translators for the London,Ky area and I am sure people listen to the NPR stations served up by the folks at WEKU Eastern Kentucky University.
But NPR is a bit stuffy and they are not especially fond of Part 15 radio stations carrying their programming even though they are non-commercial.

WCPE on the other hand allows anyone to re-transmit their signals over cable, internet, satellite and terrestrial radio stations.

WCNE receives the signal from WCPE’s online streaming and re-transmits the signal over 1680 am & 106.7 fm using light processing to preserve the great sound quality offered by WCPE.

Some of the shows we offer on WCNE will remain however the times they are aired will change to accommodate the new format. Shows affected by the format change are Electromaticradio, Pirates Week and The Shortwave Report.

The programs mentioned above will be moved to the over-night hours or early mornings before 5 am.

I hope listeners will enjoy this new format and take the time to thank WCPE for doing such a great job. This is classical radio without the stuffy feel of NPR.

WPCE Link: http://theclassicalstation.org

Enjoy!

Sort of…

Sort of…

With all the talk lately about saving the enviroment, solar power, recycling and hybrid cars it might make sense to try our hand at alternative power sources for part 15 radio stations.

Some full time FM radio stations are thinking about making the move to alternative power sources. One station has been “Green” for years, K-Taos or KTAO 101.9 fm New Mexico. KTAO transmits with 50.000 watts and feeding power to the station is solar arrays and banks of batteries that generate as much as 32 kilowatts per day.

While my setup isn’t as elaborate as KTAO by any stretch of the imagination we are after all experimental so I started small. I have installed a small solar cell on the back of the Scoche FMT 4 and loaded the battery compartment with two fully charged AAA Nimh rechargeable batteries.

I measured close to 2 volts coming from the solar cell and the (2) AAA batteries are slightly over 3 volts. This might be just enough to keep the batteries charge for more than three days. The batteries alone offer 3 1/2 days of juice for the FMT 4 by themselves. (i got the solar cell from a small dual powered calculator for a $1.00)
The FMT 4 does not offer a way to power it from AC but even if it did, that would defeat the purpose of this experiment.

I plugged the transmitter into a portable am/fm radio set to am 1680 and the transmitter is set to transmit on 87.9 fm. Then I placed the transmitter/radio in a kitchen window that gets exposure to the sun for most of the day. (there are no mods to the antenna)

One thing i did notice was even though the little radio i am using is mono, when i was feeding the audio of 106.7 fm into the fmt 4 there was the effect of a overly sensitive AGC. The sound was rising and dropping as if i was overdriving the audio or riding the controls.

I couldn’t stand that so i turned down the volume on the radio wich seemed to limit this problem but after listening to it more it was still there just not as bad. After messing with the Ramsey 25b i decided to change the small radio to am 1680 and the trouble cleared up.

It might be the FMT was trying to process the stereo information taken from 106.7 fm but didnt have all the information and it responded to it the best way it could. The constant up and down levels were the result of stereo being fed into a mono radio then attempting to make it stereo again. ( that was my best guess anyways)

Basically i want to see how long the Nimh battery’s will last before they would actually need to be placed back in the charger.

Now time will tell if this little mod will fail or not. I’ll offer pictures later.

Im pleased to see that this little transmitter has offered us something to work with for so little and from the looks of it, this has to be the longest running thread ive seen for awhile.

As always, keep rockin!

As you know from my last blog post the Sstran is on the fritz but that has been added to a list of things to be fixed soon.

Today i added another transmitter to my collection.

As you know from my last blog post the Sstran is on the fritz but that has been added to a list of things to be fixed soon.

Today i added another transmitter to my collection.

Walmart has Scosche FMT4 Fm Transmitters for about $10 bucks.
You might find them in the automotive section around the car stereos.

It’s not much bigger than a pocket sized box of wooden matches.

The FCC ID :RLQAT100
In the package you’ll get the transmitter, instructions and a customer satisfaction survey. Once you get it out of the tough plastic you may feel as though it wasn’t worth the $10 you spent.

It does not include batteries so if you get one of these don’t forget to pick up some AAA batteries too. It takes 2 AAA.

The transmitter is black in color with a silver face around the power button and a super bright blue l.e.d indicating the transmitter is operating.

On the top is a short 5″ stereo plug, on the right side is a frequency range switch to select channels around 87.7 to 88.9 and 106.7 to 107.9 mhz.
On the left side is three toggle switches (like the ones inside the sstran) that allow you to choose the frequency your going to broadcast to.

I chose 106.7 fm, according to Radio-Locator.com this is a clear channel in my area.
After plugging the FMT4 into my computer and selecting some tunes from a shoutcast station i immediately noticed the audio was over driving a small radio i was using to listen on.

I lowered the audio to 50 % and turned off the processing.
It sounded pretty good in stereo and static free at a distance of 1 foot away. Good bass and treble response.

So I turned processing back on and listened again, but this time i walked from one end of the house to the other.
So far so good. The signal stayed right in there without dropping out or static of any kind.

Now for the real test, i drove around the park here which would be a real test of range considering part of the park is in a valley while the rest of it is on higher ground.

Despite some drop outs and several dead places, the FMT4 covered at least 80 to 150 feet but was mostly line of sight.
(roughly 8 homes would have good reception)

I am guessing that part of the antenna is inside the FMT4 while the rest of it is built into the 3.5 mm plug. My home is roughly 4 1/2 feet above ground with aluminum siding and the desk adds maybe 2 feet at the most.

Really this test wasn’t bad considering all the things we have going against us. Maybe tomorrow I will raise the FMT4 up into the air on a pole or something outside and try another range test.

But so far, so good for no more than what it is.

From the manual:
Available Distance 3 Meters
14 Available channels
Powered by 2 AAA batteries
Run Times: In Use 15 hours
Standby : 45 days (1 hour per day)
FCC ID :RLQAT100

As you all know storms have been popping up all over the U.S. in the past 2 weeks. Kentucky alone has had three or four days of rain/thunderstorms with cloud to ground lightening.

As you all know storms have been popping up all over the U.S. in the past 2 weeks. Kentucky alone has had three or four days of rain/thunderstorms with cloud to ground lightening.

Well ive been running the sstran on the short wire antenna that came with the kit and the range was limited to the inside of the house and about 20 feet outside.
It was not intended to cover more than that since i wasn’t ready to mount it outside. I was just using it to listen to different programming provided by a mp3 player set on shuffle.

When i pulled in i noticed a carrier with no modulation on 1520 khz.
I just figured the battery had died in the mp3 player and would replace the battery next time i wanted to listen to something different than what i play on 1700 khz. I just shut off the sstran and went about my business.

Today i fired up the sstran and the mp3 player and noticed the modulation was low, really low. I checked the player and the controls on the sstran, i even plug in a patch cord from 1700 khz to see if the problem was the player or the audio cable.

Unfortunately that didn’t fix the problem. I have the same carrier i had before I lost modulation. So something must have popped while i was away from home.
I am wondering if lightening might have had something to do with the sudden loss in modulation or perhaps something i did, maybe bad soldering on my part.
Anyways, ill be tearing into that when i find the time, it couldn’t be much. Could it?

Before i go, the modulation is just barely audible and if you crank up the gain, modulation you get a fuzzy sounding noise.
With all the controls turned off i get a clear hum free carrier.

I say off topic because im sure this has nothing to do with part 15.

Can anyone tell me where the time signal on 610 am ? comes from?

I say off topic because im sure this has nothing to do with part 15.

Can anyone tell me where the time signal on 610 am ? comes from?
I have heard this station for years and i tried to google the station but turned up nothing.

Sounds like WWV but i dont recall them having a transmitter on the bcb.
Ive started dx’ing the am bcb again using my car stereo as the interference in my house makes for bad reception on any band.

Any ideas?

I am pleased to announce that 1700 am is covering 1 mile with a reasonable signal and good modulation.

I am pleased to announce that 1700 am is covering 1 mile with a reasonable signal and good modulation.

The transmitter making all this possible is one of the TH2’s i bought last month with the unit still in my mobile home!

With the antenna in a L-shape and adding extra ground I was shocked and amazed that I could copy my signal at greater than fifty feet from the house. (using the factory stereo in my minivan)

Now the modulation could be louder but it is listenable at 1/2 a mile from the house and a bit noisy at 1 mile out. I believe it could easily cover 1 1/2 miles but several factors play a role in limiting the stations coverage.

The metal siding, the antenna being inside, low modulation and grounding.

As for the grounding, I used a F- connector by itself (no cable connected) and soldered a short length of copper wire to it.
Connecting this wire to a grounding screw on the outlet the TH2 was plugged into.
I have plans to add yet another ground to a rod outside of the house but for now this seems to do the trick.

One more thing too, i was on a road that runs behind walmart which is just about 1 mile from the house. This road is higher than walmart, in fact you can see the roof of the store and count the AC units on top.
From there you can also see the mobile home park i live in too, my station of course got louder there.
If I would have thought to do this i could have gone back to the automotive dept. of walmart and tried to pick up 1700 AM on the car stereo’s they have on display.

Anyway a small victory for my flea powered radio station.