I stayed up all night tweaking and detuning trying to catch a glimpse of some action but never could get a useable picture. I'm still disappointed.
CraigF, are you still in Texas? If so where at? I'm in Texoma and have an awesome connect to an area station that is about to unload on a bunch of vintage equipment that was dumpster bound. (This station was THE model station of a broadcast supply company back in the day, the studio was custom designed and fitted with the top of the line gear back in 1973 and still has ALL of that gear, excluding a board they unfortunatly already threw away.)
This offer also extends to you ABMedia.
Yes, I am west of you about 150 miles I think give or take a few.
I would have loved to had that board even if it needed work! Shame it was disposed of. I am not sure what I could use, but it sounds interesting at the very least.
If you want, my radio email is [email protected] at your convenience.
On Friday evenings a lot of my friends get together to have a few drinks and catch up on the weeks gossip and mostly just hang out.
Since I have started my programming, they play my station in the background. I try to beef up the programming for the evening. It usually ends up in a few laughs because of some of the spoof commercials I run and because they enjoy giving me a hard time.
But, they keep listening, so I keep going. Of course when you are in the Center Of The Universe, everyone keeps looking in and listening!
There was 3 very popular (But Easy) ways to unscramble those UHF stations in the mid-late 70s to around 1983. We had a station in Detroit called ON TV WXON TV 20 in Detroit. Three Crowns Electronics (A mail order outfit that advertised in Popular Electronics and Popular science magazine in the classified ads. Anyways ON TV used a simple Gated Pulse synchronization method and you got the sound by using an oscillator circuit which acted like a BFO (Beat Frequency Oscillator). There was two ways of building this type of descrambler. One was to build a converter that converts UHF 20 to channel 3. then you would inject the BFO for sound and then you had the notch oscillators for the black and white signal and the color burst. Careful tuning of the 3 oscillators you got a perfect lock on the picture as well as perfect sound as you tuned in the sub carrier by using a beat frequency. You could buy a kit or one that was fully assembled for around $200. You could watch a lot of movies that HBO carried and at night they did play porn movies.
The next scrambling mode was made by Zenith SSAVI called phase synchronization and inverted video and you used an LM 565 chip to decode the sound. You could also buy this descrambler already assembled for $300. This one did however change the code for the video at times to where the video was not inverted and the syncc was variable. The front porch and back porch were inverted (crossed). This one I did have myself but I bought the assembled unit for $300.
The next was Sign Wave scrambling where there was a sign wave injected in between the audio and video such as channel 44 in Chicago. All of which you could buy from Three Crowns Electronics.
After around 1980 the FCC eliminated those subscription TV channels when they complained that people could get them for FREE and wanted the FCC to do something. The did alright except it was not in favor of the broadcaster trying to make a fast buck by scrambling a UHF signal for money. They ruled that UHF was never meant to be Pay TV and therefore the end of those channels.
It was loads of fun for me because I had FREE TV and I even could pick DX subscription channels at times too.
Oh and profanity and vulgarity on your part 15 station WILL get people to complain to the FCC about you. Hint... Do you homework and you'll find out why the field strength was lowered in the late 200's. You'll have to find this yourself as I'm not about to post this and be ridiculed. Just do the work you'll see this yourself.
I think I finally found a station call sign I will use. I have been searching and everything I found that might have some relation to my station was taken. I will be using KWJT as an identifier. It looks like it might have been used in the past for a short period of time, but is not in use presently.
To eliminate any chance of it being assigned to a licensed station, I may shorten it to KJT.
Comments are welcome, as I am not used to picking something that is usually assigned by the FCC.
Sort of the same process I used for mine identifier. What I did was used Google and made sure that was not a used call sign which stood for album Rock for the quarter mile and it
was not actually being used by any other licensed radio station. And the call letters fit.
The FCC has something to say about the naming of part 15 stations, but they don't say it in the part 15 section of the rules, but rather in Part 73.
PART 73_RADIO BROADCAST SERVICES
Sec. 73.3550 Requests for new or modified call sign assignments.
(1) Users of nonlicensed, low power devices operating under part 15 of this chapter may use whatever identification is currently desired, so long as propriety is observed and no confusion results with a station for which the FCC issues a license.
Our comment: As you've seen many part 15 radio stations use "K" and "W" call letters similar to those used by licensed stations, but in most cases have taken care not to use the same call sign as currently licensed stations.
We have not heard of any FCC action against a part 15 station over use of a contested call sign.
was still on the air and running the programming per individual day as I had setup last week. I listened to the station via my private stream while I was in Colorado, and on the 12 hour drive home yesterday.
After a hard day of riding my dual sport on the passes around Lake City, rolling down a hill after crashing, it was refreshing to hear my voice on my station while having an adult drink and a stogy. Part 15 programming at its best or worst, depends on your point of view!
BTW, I can fly...eyewitnesses, but no video!
Awesome to see your station is coming along!
I just opened a P.O Box and got some business cards for mine.
Edit: For all your callsign needs go here and click on query:
http://licensing.fcc.gov/prod/callsign/main.html
Edit: I almost forgot! I also added Logmein Pro to the on-air computer, that has been a life savor as it lets me remotely log into the machine if a problem arises!
Thanks for the link! And I need to install the remote software. I was thinking about it while I was gone. I really want some more redundancy built into my program server too.
We did have a hiccup with the streamer while I was gone, I noticed that it was offline late Thursday. I called my son in law, and asked him to check the server. Sure enough one my employees ignored the message on the screen that said "do not touch". It had been logged into another profile so Icecast was offline. A quick restart and login cured the problem.
I jokingly told my friend that works for one of the big conglomerates that this radio hobby was becoming work!! Imagine that!
Today, I added some shows to my upcoming schedule. Should be on air the first week of October. 🙂
I had some spare time and added some more music tracks and will cut some updated Id's and information spots tomorrow.
I also ordered a new Mackie fx12 usb mixer. I am wanting to change how I do my voice work.
I hope you are successful getting your station on the air by the first!
Keep us posted!! I am gaining listeners slowly. That just means more work to keep everything current... or is that fun?
Seeing that SSTRAN is missing in action (still no reply after a month), I've been trying to make the Talking House work. It just does not look like AM is practical. I have a Veronica 30W FM Stereo Xmitter, but I can't get it to go less than 1 watt. So that's out. Not making modifications to that.
Of all the AM units I have seen, this one seems the most affordable and least hassle:
And this one is the best quality (unfortunately it's 60w, meaning 15W Carrier):
http://www.rfsource.gr/tmw62d-am-exciter.html
I tell ya guys...the SSTRAN AMT3000/5000 is the best thing going. Too bad about Phil being silent...
Doug