Dugger is going intense over there, a lot for a little part 15, and I think it's great! I always have an internal auditor in my brain that says go cheap in line with the amount of power in use, but some P15 people have better studios than commercial radio can boast!
I'd like to hear how the Spitfire sounds and how convenient and easy it is to set up. I've been looking at it too, a good price for a simple built unit that could become your backup.
I used to be able to get a college station that loved Chicken Man and played it for a long time. I guess they had a stack of CM tapes, and each new wave of young student pups would come in and discover them and go, hey this is great!, and they'd get played all over again, like it was all new, becaues it was new to them.
I like Y'tube for audio too, and use a downloader to grab old ads and movie trailers for soundbytes. Their sound is a lot better these days too.
Grateful Dead's in a lot of places, some on 'Tube where they fixed up the audio on concert videos, so the sound is very good, like the early 1970s European tour.
Bit torrent has great GD stocks, deadicated people keep all of the old taper stuff up, look for FLAC- based audio, that's the best. Torrent is good for classic Art Bell, and Kasey Kasem, like you can get the top-40 from 1973, with classic ads included. What I like about torrent is that some stuff is compiled in big collections, so you can get a year's worth of something all at once if you just wait on the download.
WFMU's site is another great archive, lots of really interesting and crazy music and audio there. If you have an hour to fill on your eclectic college radio music show, a cruise through FMU will come up with lots of rarely heard tunes, and you can go theme based too with it.
Soulseek is also great for independent music. It's not a site, it's a program that runs on a desktop. It's also big on collections, the Dead, Flexipop, and many more, and it has airchecks and other weird stuff. You just put in a keyword(s) for something, and it will come back with hits in a list that you can download, like "Halloween", OTR, Offshore Radio etc. There also may be commercial music there (since anyone can upload anything) so if your conscience has its pants scared off by acronyms like RIAA then don't download that stuff.
Archive ORG, oh my god, where do I start, they are so good for audio now, they have lots of Dead there, some is steam only, though you can use a grabber on it, and so good for vintage propaganda and school films, in-store music recordings, vintage radio like Jean Shepherd and just anything if you know what to look for.
I rarely buy commercial music these days, not that I'd ever buy sellable popular hits anyway, but I don't even have to bother with used recordings muche anymore. On topic of what have I done for my station, I did get Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds at a pawn shop for hallowe'en, my old one was on tape, but it's so rare to do that these days.
I went here, and typed in 1530:
http://nf8m.com/pattern_maps/2016/DAYTIME-UNLIMITED/DAYTIME-UNLIMITED_map_1530KHz-1.html
See the east coast? WVBF is a 2000 watt daytimer. There is nothing else close. There are those who wonder why I don't go 1640 or above. My neighborhood listeners' radios do not tune that high. That is one factor. 1610 is TIS and I don't wanna be anywhere near that...
1530 looks like a safe bet for now. Here is the site you can find stations on any frequency:
Daytime:
http://www.nf8m.com/nf8m/us-medium-wave-pattern-references/day-patterns/
Night time:
http://www.nf8m.com/nf8m/us-medium-wave-pattern-references/night-patterns/
Hope that helps ya!
Doug
Wow! Absolutely no space at night. Amazing a few stations cover all of the US and half of Canada! WBZ 1030 in Boston covers half the continent right up to Hudsons Bay.
A big drawback for AM as part 15 is only good during the day. Everything interferes with everything at night, and part 15's micro signal is gone at sunset.
Mark
I flipped the format on my station this morning from News/Talk to 80s Hits. Picked up the "Sunny" name and branding from cloudcastradio.com, there is a ton of musical tweaking I need to do. (Mainly in the form of weeding out some of those miserably slow and cheesy tunes portions of the 80s liked).
The local AC station just dropped all their 80s content, the only other sources are the FM classic rocker and a far away Jack FM. (Jack FM is about 88 miles from here and spotty at best)
Plugged the Orban into it, the antenna and power, and tried to tune it up to 1530. Nothing. Powers on, light comes on...The ATU is set...the trimmer cap has no effect. I must be doing something wrong...
Doug
You are playing like the big time stations now!! Flip her again...keep them guessing!! I would guess right now News Talk hosts are having to retool to find new information and scandals since the POTUS election.
I probably picked up some more listeners today. Several city employees were hanging out near part of my old store front (it is not used these days). Inside I have the 2 magnavox consoles I mentioned several posts back. I have been working on these specimens, and part of my testing now has them blaring my radio station.
I kept seeing them peek in through the door and staying close to building so they could here them playing music (I have cameras). I finally got time to go talk to them. They were enjoying the programming and the vintage consoles playing it. They were tuning their work trucks to the station in hopes of listening.
Why were they standing around, you might ask in these politically loaded times? They were waiting on the state to show up and authorize a dig in front of my facility on the main highway.
So today, I gained a few more possible listeners, and at the least, some supporters of the concept.
Do you get a signal to a radio with no audio applied?
Check, maybe no sound from source, or input volume way to low? Don't know what an orban is.
If I remember you have to set the operation for wire antenna, not for the outdoor set up, and the light on the front goes OUT when tuned right.
There's also a setting on this transmitter for Europian AM freqencies and North America AM frequencies...again if I remember right! or it may be a separate transmitter for each.
Mark
Regardless of antenna etc... if it is powering on, you should get some kind of signal from a radio placed very close to it.
I am not clear if it is powering on.
Keep us posted. I am curious how it works out!
I wish I could rent a abandoned store and set up an AM station with a 6-10 foot antenna next to it or on the roof. This way I would not have to worry about a temperature inversion and keep going. Today 100.3 from MD came in again. It was BOOMING and lasted for several hrs. Of course I won’t operate during those times. The station was playing Classic Rock (Hits). They call themselves BIG 100. I’d have thought that ducting happens mostly at night. This station has surprised me several times and came BOOMING in the daytime here.
Anyways with an AM Album Rock station I don’t have to worry about that sort of thing and if people saw a sign they would know to tume in to the station. If I only could get close to say Top China or maybe the marina. The AM signal if I got it to go a mile from Top China would cover all the way to where I live and go to maybe Taylors restaurant which is where people travel.
I doubt I could get permission to broadcast at the church as then they may want to only broadcast Christian stuff. But if they would allow regular programming when service is not going on then I’d try that. A 10 foot AM antenna on top of a church heck that would really make it get out.
Maybe I’ll find someone with land that likes my station and wants to hear it further and then I’ll set something up on AM with some serious range. Probably would go with something with built in processing and use NextKast for automation. The FM would remain here where I live. I’d somehow feed the AM station via the Internet.
The following link may be of interest ...
http://transition.fcc.gov/eb/FieldNotices/2003/DOC-269883A1.html
... I doubt I could get permission to broadcast at the church as then they may want to only broadcast Christian stuff. But if they would allow regular programming when service is not going on then I’d try that. A 10 foot AM antenna on top of a church heck that would really make it get out. ...
________
Just as a heads up and with reference to the bold text in the clip above, please read the FCC link given in reply 176 -- showing an operator Citation relating to that "top of a church" scenario.
summed up best as "lengthy ground lead." I would not run a continuous ground lead. The rules are very explicit.
However, there are ways to allow the interpretation of the rules apply and still ground the station (i.e. leave the FCC agent a way out). That of course is dependent on the field agent, but aren't all these installations?
Safest and perhaps best is to follow the rule of thumb.. a short pole in a clear field and follow good procedures for radials and a short ground lead. I would argue that this seems to work best anyway.
My experiments with height on the building I am at do not stack up against a properly installed near ground mounted installation. I get inconsistency within 1/2 mile but can be heard at times 1 mile away. This I believe is due to poor grounding... i.e I am trying to follow the rules.
Everything I understand about the AM broadcast band is that it works off of a good ground not altitude.
Another major drawback of a elevated installation is that you need to tweak things and inspect them periodically. I am tired of climbing on the roof to do that. I might add that my roof is easily accessible, but it is still a pain.
***Rich, you might expand on your thoughts of a properly mounted near ground system vs a roof mounted system i.e one with altitude.
Assume that one could possibly obtain a compliant ground using the interpretation "short ground lead" to an existing ground on the higher altitude installation at say 30 ft. This is of course a hypothetical scenario.
Hard to be local with piped-in News Talk! This music format allows for far more community integration, plus now I don't have to worry about the internet dropping out or it being cloudy. Lol!
This'll be the last flip for atleast a year, the Sunny contract sees to that.
(Not to mention music covers up static very well making the signal appear larger than it is)
... ***Rich, you might expand on your thoughts of a properly mounted near ground system vs a roof mounted system i.e one with altitude. ...
This was done in Reply 17 of the thread below. The chart there shows the effect of the length of the conductor(s) from the transmitter chassis to a true r-f ground.
http://www.part15.us/forum/part15-forums/define-ground-lead
So elevation matters! But, what I did not see was a measure to prevent RF from eminating from the ground lead (or did I miss that?)
If a true earth ground existed, but was choked to prevent radiation, would the results be the same?
And installing radiators above ground level probably would be an instant disqualifier from an FCC groundpoint. But, like a dipole antenna, they do work!
That may be hard to model for, but possibly (I use that term loosely), allow for a compliant elevated installation.
If that model was in the post, I missed it. I just took a quick read this morning before heading out.