scwis

Here’s some tips about construction, site maintenance and web marketing…

Here’s some tips about construction, site maintenance and web marketing…

Once you get your URL and your Web Space, what’s next?

Sites with web site construction and maintenance tips:

wilson.howtoguide.html Web How-to Index to Quick Guides and Links for Web Authoring

tlc-systems.com Art and the Zen of web sites

amasci.com Webpage design flaws

watson.addy.com Spell check your site on-line, check links

tinaja.com/web Don Lancaster’s PDF files on web design

Free content to help perk up your pages:

www.syc.k12.pa.us A resource site with amazing quantities of stuff

davidpye.com More fun content, scripts and trivia

Marketing your site:

mikes-marketing-tools Mike the magnificent marketing maven

wilsonweb.com Ralph Wilson’s mega-marketing tome

And remember – your wild, wacky, wonderful web world is not complete without a listing in the Part15.us Station Listing, so be sure to send us feedback when you’re ready to take on the world of visitors!

I finally found my old files – here is a copy of a ground conductivity chart for the USA…

I finally found my old files – here is a copy of a ground conductivity chart for the USA…

Here’s a retouched preview copy, a reduced size GIF format file for faster loading.

Click here for a gigantous JPG that’s 970 X 650 or so, in all its ugly glory.

Click here
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/audio/m3/ for an even bigger map, and more in depth info from
the Friendly Candy Company.

Hope there’s a “30” near you!

We’ve explored this topic before, but we need to revisit it…

We’ve explored this topic before, but we need to revisit it…

I build part 15 AM antennas (as a hobby and a business) and I receive a ton of email questioning the need for a ground system.

Some of us can appreciate the need for highly technical information on these boards, but for the beginning part 15 broadcaster, some of these terms can appear to be frightening. So, here is the gist of the story regarding ground systems:

AM radio is basically a ground based radio service: people don’t realize it due to its great sky wave value. But in terms of very low power broadcasting, it is more important to concentrate on your ground wave than it is to imagine a huge, or even a mediocre sky wave. Your goal should be to serve your immediate area; we are talking in terms of 1 to 5 miles depending on your terrain and ground conductivity.

I’ve been quoted on this before, but I need to say it again; nearly 50% of your AM signal is due to your ground system; if you choose to merely pound in a ground/lightning rod, you are not building a ground system; you are merely grounding your system.

With some exceptions, nearly all LPAM kits or ready-built transmitters benefit from an AM antenna mounted in the ground.

As an example, the antenna I build is legal length; 108″ long or less after it is tuned. You can mount it on a mast pipe that is no longer than 18″ so in essence we are talking about a unit that is not much higher than 10 feet.

The ground radials are attached to the mast pipe; the transmitter ground is attached to the mast pipe so, we have a ground and we have an extension of the antenna.

What we have done is make the antenna “appear” to be 20 feet tall, instead of 10. Literally, the signal coming off the antenna will tend to dip to ground and not ‘float into the air’ as some people think it will. Those ground radials will serve to push that signal along until it runs its course.

I use 9 foot radials in the ground system I sell with this antenna simply because the antenna, basically, will average out to 9 foot tall. Remember that we want to concentrate as much energy as we can into the ground, not into the air! We are only using 1/10th of a watt!

I believe my message is getting through to the part 15am community; I’m getting a lot of letters about increasing the amount of radials and in so doing, the effect they will have on signal.

The answer is simple: as far as I know, no one has used more than 25 radials and has reported results.
I myself experienced an increase in signal of about 1/2 mile (which is a fantastic increase!) by doubling my radials.

There becomes a point where adding more and more radials will not be of service, just because we are using miniscule power. But to answer the big question, it is true that full power radio stations do use 360 degrees of radials; that is a lot of wire and a lot of work.

You need to look at where you live: if you live in a desert area, it may be best to increase your ground system….that is, to increase the amount of 9 foot radials you use. I’m not positive that increasing the length of them is important, although mine are generally 15 feet long. (I’m an experimenter and builder that is why they are long).

A desert environment would benefit from using 20 or even 30 radials, simply because you are sitting on dry sand. However, a Midwest environment could get by with a simple 10 radial installation. Overall, I do believe that the more radials the better, but I don’t see the need for 100’s of them in this particular installation.

I decided to write this because I got a letter from a customer who wants a 60 radial installation. As a businessman, that is fine with me, but for his location,(and his financial situation) I don’t feel a 60 radial installation is needed.

What I liked about his thinking was that he realizes how important the ground system is to his LPAM installation.

Sincerely,

Carl Van Orden
Antenna Guy
http://antenna18431.tripod.com/antenna.htm

I have discovered that Emule Plus, which uses the Edonkey 2000 Network, is a great source of Information…

I have discovered that Emule Plus, which uses the Edonkey 2000 Network, is a great source of Information…

I have found over 20 Gigs of electronics tutorials, ARRL Handbook, Antenna Book, Military electronics courses, Tesla information, Free Energy, p2p is not just for movies, music or warez anymore. there is a wealth of Free information available on this resource. Here are the keywords i use….

Schematic
Radio
ARRL
Electronics
Free Energy
Nikola Tesla
Ham Radio
Amateur Radio
Water Carburetor
Natural Cures
Illuminati
New World Order
Conspiracy
UFO
Majestic 12
Army
Navy
CIA
FBI

Let your imagination run wild. The information available is constantly changing and some of these keywords bring back off the wall results.

I recommend the Emule Plus client available from

http://www.emuleplus.tk

Enjoy 🙂

Radio 1700 AM

A few visitors have been talking about podcasting in the forums, a technology which might be useful for station content…

A few visitors have been talking about podcasting in the forums, a technology which might be useful for station content…

Here are a few to check out:

http://podcastalley.com

The podcast lovers portal. Featuring the best Podcast Directory and the Top 10 podcasts.

godcast.org
A podcast site, home of free MP3 audio shows that you can listen to now on your computer by clicking on the MP3 icons.

Thanks to Mrklingon for our first two listings!

www.archive.org
Internet Archive, featuring the Live Music Archive, Netlabels, Open Source Audio, Presidential Recordings, Democracy Now, Other Minds Archive, 78 RPM Records archive, Conference Proceedings, Naropa Audio Archives, GenderTalk, Berkeley Groks Science Radio, Tse Chen Ling Buddhist Lectures and Childhood Matters. Not all content is in MP3, so you’ll need your codecs handy.

audio.weblogs.com

The freshest podcasts in the known universe

www.ipodder.org

A decentralized, categorized directory of links to podcast feeds.

www.podcast411.com
The 411 on podcasts, podcasters and podcasting

ryandobson.com
Great interviews with young upcoming artists, musicians, comedians, athletes and wise sages who have been around the block a few times. We’ll be playing great new music and posting amazing works of art to accompany the artist interviews.

distantcreations.com

Welcome to Inside the Magic, the Internet’s First Orlando-based Disney Podcast! Our biweekly podcast covers anything related to Disney, from the local parks to distant lands. Please select a Podcast below to begin listening!

graperadio.com

GrapeRadio – Sharing Passion For Wine

radio.ksl.com
Radio Station KSL Podcasts

www.thesportsking.com
Sports talk podcasts for the Sports King

Wheee!

UPDATED 5/31 – Some of us have been wasting our time on the ‘world wide wait’ for years now, others have created awesome electronics links pages, like the ones I’ve listed here…

UPDATED 5/31 – Some of us have been wasting our time on the ‘world wide wait’ for years now, others have created awesome electronics links pages, like the ones I’ve listed here…

Here are some more great pages to add to your favorites list – enjoy! I think I’ll just keep this going…

. o O – NEW – O o .

More Electronics Stuff…

http://www.bobbamont.com – Bob Bamont’s Electronic Component Catalogs, and many other things.

http://members.shaw.ca – Electronic Project, Circuit & Component Info.

http://eweb.chemeng.ed.ac.uk – Yet another “how to make a coil” calculator.

http://www.arconix.com – A wire size conversion chart.

More Good Neighbors! Great sites that send visitors our way…

http://www.kqcx.com – Cool Station, Nice Site.

http://www.radioamateur.ca – For you Francophiles – French Only.

http://www.geocities.com/lpamj – An Asian Language Site.

http://www.radiobrandy.com – Radio Brandy Links.

http://digitalsyndicate.tv – Nice Online Article, and a Link to Us!

http://futureofradio.typepad.com – Cool Blogspot.

http://www.techpuppy.com – The Web Page Referred to in Our Forum.

http://www.scitoys.com – Science Toys Message Board.

http://telephone-entertainment.com – Off the Hook! To Much to List!

http://www.smartgroups.com – Nice General Interest Stuff.

http://home.ripway.com – Radio 4 USA – Good Info.

http://infohost.nmt.edu/~ktek – Nice Link Back.

. o O – 5/14 – O o .

http://users.tns.net/~bb – Receiving antennas modeled.

http://uk.geocities.com/soundrediscovery – Convert LPs to digital files.

http://www.radica.com/products – Transmitters, audio processors,
studio-to-transmitter links, telemetry.

http://www.ptekpower.com – LPFM Stuff, Excel Spreadsheet for LPFM.

http://www.g4tv.com – Make your own FM radio transmitter, video.

http://www.rfsolutions.co.uk – 400 – 800 MHz XMTR module info (pdf).

AccessWorld – A review of low-power FM transmitters.

http://www.montagar.com/~patj – A Tube-type Class-A DC-Coupled Plate Modulator for Low Power AM Transmitters.

http://www.commlinx.com.au/transmitters.htm – Transmitter schematics.

http://www.qsl.net/yo5ofh/links/transmitters.htm – Transmitter info.

http://www.motherjones.com – 1999 article about LPFM.

. o O – Show Prep – O o .

Here’s a smattering of links to web sites that can help Part15 broadcasters add content to their operations…

www.radiospace.com – Free mp3 and wav PSA downloads.

www.radiolinks.net – Outstanding mega-page of all kinds of radio links – wow!

www.daytips.com – DayTips provides users of the Internet with free daily newsletters and ezines. Great for rip & read, and feature filler.

www.preplinks.com – A labor of love from Joel Folger, format consultant.

www.danoday.com – 100% free stuff from Dan O’Day – show prep, info and downloads.

www.bitboard.com – Primarily a pay service, like so many on the ‘net, however, a free trial is offered.

www.interprep.com – Another pay service, also offering a free trial period.

www.radio-classifieds.com – Pack a lunch! More stuff than you can shake several sticks at.

www.pueblo.gsa.gov – Another great source for copyright-free, easy to access consumer interest pieces and useful facts.

dir.yahoo.com/news_and_media/radio/show_preparation – Yahoo metasearch.

www.readplease.com – Home of the Read Please software package, a free text-to-speech application with interchangeable voices. Use these digital voices to read or record some of the text materials available above, and you have a free source of content and voice talent!

Have fun!

. o O – Calculators – O o .

‘Nobody told me there was going to be math!’

www.the12volt.com – Cool electronics info and on line calculators for Ohms Law, capacitors and coils:, short tutorials for Diodes and relays, and a variety of circuit diagrams.

library.thinkquest.org – Electronics online guide with formulas for resistors and capacitors in series and in parallel, and other handy agony.

electronics2000.co.uk – A great site with all kinds of interactive tools and online calculators for capacitance, L/C and inductance, component color codes, LED info, and so much more. It’s in the UK, so they spell funny!

www.martindalecenter.com – Martindale’s Calculators on-line center, Part 1: f-h, Ham radio, hi-fi, acoustics, noise exposure – wear your pocket protector!

www.vk2zay.net – Hard core solder-head site, many electronics and info pages – Site owner Alan Yates, VK2ZAY, writes “Online engineering calculators for some problems I’ve needed in the past. I’ll be adding more as I need them and find the time to write them.”

www.hamuniverse.com – Length conversion for antenna projects. Use these converters, calculators, charts and tables to convert from one measurement to another!

www.csgnetwork.com – communications based calculators, conversion charts and converter programs for many different antenna and frequency needs.

. o O – P R E V I O U S – O o .

4/18
jcgriffin.com –
an outstanding mega-links page, rather than steal it, we’ll just link – Check it out!

www.electronics-tutorials.com – an outrageous mega-link page for all kinds of electronics tutorials, plans, schematics…

Making Waves with Low Power Radio. A video looks at using this tool to communicate with target audiences.

Products for hobbyists, home-builders & electronic technicians.

4/11
Bill Beaty’s Surplus Parts and Equipment for Amateur Scientists page. Be sure to scroll down, this baby goes on and on!

Arny Krueger’s PC Sound Card Technical Benchmarks.

Tomi Engdahl’s Home Page.

Tomi Engdahl’s www.epanorama.net.

www.epanorama.net’s Hot Link Archive.

(soon to be Dr.) John Anderson’s link pages for DIY media, technology and content. About.com has got to be sorry that they lost this guy!

And from last time:

DC Kits – several FM PLLs.

Datakits from the Datak Manufacturing.

FM Transmitters: Assembled Modules and Kits.

Ocean State Electronics – RF Electronic Project Kits.

Dan’s Small Parts and Kits. Dan’s Virtual Internet Catalog.

Technical information on FM Transmitter Kits. Some older info – great background reading.

And, of course:

Don Lancaster’s Guru’s Lair.

Nuts and Volts Magazine.

Marlin P. Jones & Associates.

American Science and Surplus.

. o O – GOOD NEIGHBORS – O o .

walkerart.org – See how they grow – Walkerart/radio has been doing some great stuff, check ’em out!

Don Weaver’s LaserFM, http://thelaserfm.freewebpage.org – I use Don’s most cool ‘broadcaster’s skin’ for WinAmp – Check it out!

www.desmondcrisis.com – Pnoi radio’s article there sends many folks our way – Check it out!

Ramsey Forums – We get lots of visitors from the Ramsey discussion boards – Check it out!

www.radio-classifieds.com – Lot’s of cools stuff here, check ’em out!

nordlie’s home page – A quixotic mix of weather and technology links from a poor soul in North Dakota – visit for sympathy’s sake!

FLorida Low Power Radio Stations – A long time supporter of Part 15 and experimental broadcasting, check ’em out!

Visitors are welcome to send over their favorite pages for our next list!