TiminBovey said:
"As for those who always insist that if your transitter has power or audio leads that these are in fact ground leads, then virtually no part 15 transmitter ie legal unless your studio is underground and your wires connect to it at grouund level from under the Earth. Virtually all transmitters require power and sound be fed to them. Even a ground installed unit will have power and sound going to them, and even if they went from the transmitter on the ground into a ground floor window to the sound source, it would be over the ground length limit. For those believers, the only possible legal transmitter would be one with a build in USB port, with all the audio on the drive, and run on internal batteries or attached solar power. This is silly.
In the photos I've looked at from the submitted lab work for certification for virtually all the popular certified transmitters, they all have power and audio cables connected. So they were certified this way.
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Excellent! Beautifully put, and illustrates my point exactly. If the objective is to be 100% legal as the rules dictate; you will find that it is impossible to do. It's been impossible to do all along. Yet in spite of that, the utilization 15.219 has consistently thrived with usefull and entertaining broadcast for over 40 years.
It is what it is. But if you recall a few months ago when someone had taken a Rangemaster or a Procaster and hiked it up some 50 feet or so in the air on a tower --with no ground lead attached-- (I forget the exact details but the whole discussion is in past threads here),. Anyway, with this setup he was acheiving something like 5 or 6 miles and he insisted it was completely in compliance with the rules...
At face value, he is correct. Per the rules he is acheiving greater range than even a licenced LPFM generally is capable of. But do you think a field agent would agree? Certainly not.
Thus the frustration. There is no certainy of compliance with any installation.
"Moreover, regardless of strict adherence to the technical limitations in Part 15, a Low Power Communication Device is permitted to operate on a sufferance basis only" - https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-74-87A1.pdf
These discussions of part 15 legality have recently become mature and well reasoned.
In the past we thought we knew what was true, but have since learned there's more to it; it's more complicated than we thought; the FCC is not an intellectual giant and perhaps spends more attention on good lunch breaks than drafting rules.
We hobbyists are a minority group and you know how they are treated in the U.S.
What the hay, guess I'll revive this old thread.. Balloon antennas are an idea that's been floated before.. except this example is with a kite. From the "New Products" section in Elementary Electronics magazine, July 1972, Page 11 (the second excerpt shown below):
But it actual goes back to the early 1940s with the "Gibson Girl" transmitter which allowed you to raise your antenna 800 feet with a balloon: Some great pictures and info here: http://www.usmilitariaforum.com/forums/index.php?/topic/46103-gibson-girl-scr-578-survival-radio-transmitter/
That same transmitter was described in the 1956 FCC Annual report:
