A couple of years back our favorite classical station decided it was a good idea to go to all day NPR and talk. They threw a bone to their loyal supporters by acquiring a weak rim shot station which now carries their classical programming. Our response was to subscribe to XM and use my FM Part15 transmitter to broadcast the classical channel content to the house and yard. Works OK but XM has now cut from two to one classical channel and they are on a very thin rope as far as the wife and I are concerned.
Planning for future dumping of XM I thought it a good idea to try to receive the new classical FM station which I will call PUNY. It is very weak, barely listenable on a car radio. I tried various solid state FM receivers we have using wire antennas and none even hear the station. I placed a dipole in the attic and ran the coax to my lab and tried again. PUNY is audible but miserably noisy.
Sitting and staring whilst contemplating this problem I recalled that I have an EICO HFT-90 all vacuum tube tuner which I built when I still had pimples. I had added a solid state FM stereo demultiplexer in the '70s and this was my entertainment center tuner for a long time. I retrieved it from my storage shelf, plugged it in, turned it on, and was treated to a very familiar filament flash from the 6AL5 dual diode tube which functions in the ratio detector of this unit. The flash caused no alarm since this is normal and I remember it well from bygone days. The other tubes slowly began to glow and the very nice DM70 dial pointer/tuning tube lit with a reassuring green glow. The audio outputs were connected to a stereo amplifier and there was the nice interchannel hiss coming from the speakers. No hum and no smoke so far.
This tuner was built in 1958 and equipment this old can have problems but it warmed up as expected. A twist of the tuning knob and I was treated with super sounding audio from radio8z's station. Other lesser stations also were heard but were immediately abandoned.
Believing that it would improve things a bit I attached two three foot wires to the antenna terminals and now the band was filled with signals. I was so pleased to have this working again (with no effort) I had forgotten why I retrieved it from storage which was to try to receive the PUNY classical station. Thinking that since it was in my basement lab with a short antenna nothing would happen, I tried anyway and there it was...PUNY classical FM. It had some noise but it was there!
Now the moment of proof, grab the attic antenna lead and connect for effect. The music came alive with no noticeable noise. Another triumph for a vacuum tube receiver.
Next step was to connect the attic antenna to our main Sony receiver/amplifier. The signal was there but was noisy and not as listenable as through the old tube tuner. The EICO manual claims sensitivity of 1.5 uV for 20 dB quieting, 2.5 uV for 30 dB quieting, and full limiting from 25 uV. The signal is not full quieting but sounds better than 20 dB quieting so it is probably closer to the 30 dB figure and has less noise than the Sony.
This tuner was built right out of the box in 1958, never aligned, and never needed service, yet by my ear analysis it performs at least as well, and better it seems, than the Sony or Kenwood solid state units I have.
Good quality tube equipment can really perform well even compared to modern solid state audio devices, plus they have the added benefit of warming a bag of cashews placed on top of the vented cabinet which can be enjoyed with the music.
The final install has yet to be determined but the options are presently tube vs. solid state with the advantage belonging to tube.
Neil
Man I agree with you 100%. The Tube FM tuners are awesome. They probably could receive a part 15 FM station close to 1/5 mile to a mile. Its what I've been talking about. There is no reason these Radio's of Today are even allowed to be sold in the first place. The NAB is so damn concerned about part 15? They should concentrate on petitioning the FCC to force better performance in all modern FM receivers. They should at least have the performance of a 1958 tube receiver NO QUESTIONS ASKED!! and any manufacturer who fails this should be fined in the millions of dollars.
The market doesn't appear to want high performance receivers and the reason probably is that there are so many local stations with adequate signals (except for PUNY) that good sensitivity is not sought by buyers. Even if one wanted a good receiver then how does one compare what's on the shelf? The HFT-90 was purchased due to the reputation it earned as reported in respected magazines of the time.
The market, not the FCC, determines the minimum acceptable performance of receivers, some of which I have had are not much better than a crystal radio.
You are correct that a Part 15 FM station would have better range if a good receiver and antenna are used by a listener. Why did I go to all the trouble to install an antenna and find a good receiver to hear PUNY? It is because we want to listen to their programming. Could it be that the keys are programming and education. Provide programming people want to hear and tell them how to use a good receiver and antenna and just maybe they will go out of their way to do so. This is what Hi-Fi enthusiasts did back when and it is what I am doing now.
Neil
I am going by memory but I think this kit sold for $40 back then and the optional side panels and top cover were an extra $5. The average daily wage was about $20 so this was at least a two day's wage plus it had to be built. For me, a kid working in a bike shop for $8/week, it was a major effort to save to buy it. (I told the shop owner about it and he bought one and had me build it for him. Years later he gave it to me so for a while I had two of them. I bought a third on at a ham flea market so I have three and all of them work and none have ever needed repair or new tubes.)
How many would be willing to pay about a half a week's wages for something like this? That is probably why modern designs are targeted at a low price point which gives low performance and questionable reliability.
Neil
Heck worse comes to worse I can tell my listeners to buy a Tecsun Radio with the Stereo outputs and simply plug that into the AUX of their present amp. I had a little Toshiba FM Radio walkman style. Now this thing had extremely good sensitivity (as good or better than a car Radio no kidding). It probably was an IC chip to be honest and was digital but the desplay looked like it was trying to Imitate an analog tuner but was indeed digital. Each time you pressed the up or down button it would beep and you could figure out the 1,3,5,7,9 after the decimal point. Now imagine getting an adaptor that has a male 3.5 mm plug on one end and two RCA's on the other. Yup you got it a cheap replacement for the garbage tuner built into some receivers. A little mod and you have it running on electric and since the cord of the headphone was the antenna well the actual patch cord was the antenna now. You would be able to pull in stations as good as a car FM Radio and my friends could not believe that a Walkman style Radio's FM receiver put their expensive stereo's to shame. DXing was awesome. I just wish I still had the Radio. When I took it to work the jack messed up and since the whole thing was a chip well it would cost too much to have it repaired. I tried to get it fixed and most electronics repair shops would not even want to touch it. If we have the good programming and a promo on the part 15 station talking about Tecsun Radio's we may get listeners to buy them. Especially if the promo is something like "Don't subscribe to Satellite Radio when the Best Album Rock is Right Here!" There would need to be promo's talking about the good FM and AM receivers and antenna's listeners can buy to receive your part 15 station far beyond its original range. I still want more field strength for FM (if they don't auction it all away first). Even if you transmit AM Stereo your big sell is trying to get listeners to invest in an AM Stereo receiver. Remember some of us heard AM Stereo, but many listeners will laugh at the thought of AM.
When I was young I had a great
FM vacuum tube mono tuner. It
was open on the sides and the top,
as if it was made to fit into a HIFI
cabinet of some kind. It also had an
output on the back where one could
attach an optional stereo decoding unit.
I'm assuming this would have been another
unit that was similar in size and shape -
probably with vacuum tubes and open sides
and top as well.
I'm think this unit had a magic eye tube, but
I may be confusing it with another tube FM
tuner of that early time.
This unit was very hot on the FM BCB.
Being young and very stupid, I went in
and tried to align the thing. I adjusted
a core of some kind and broke it.
That was it. From great piece of gear to
broken unit in one second. I did not have
the skill to repair it. Feeling very bad because
a good friend had given it too me, I hid it from
view in the back of my ham station/monitoring
post. Eventually it went into the trash. I don't
even remember who manufactured it.
It was a really good tuner.
I'll have to look and see if I can find a
picture of it. Perhaps I can figure out
who made it.
It had a narrow front panel - in other words,
it was not very wide. My Technics 9030 FM
tuner is 19 inches wide in a standard rack mount.
This unit was probably 8 inches wide with a gold
front panel.
What was it?
Brooce, "WLP"
This was supposed to get tacked onto
the end of my original message. I don't
know what I did wrong.
Anyway, Neil, good luck with your Eico HFT-90.
I had dreamed of building an Eico FM tuner kit
when I was a kid. I know the sensitivity was
almost unmatched at the time.
If anybody can get an HFT-90 into top operating
condition - well - I know you can do it.
Brooce "WLP"
Neil,
I don't know if you have tuned in to this staton or not and it would have to be online for you since you do not live in Raleigh NC, but WCPE-FM offers a retransmisson consent for anyone wanting to carry their proramming for over the air broadcast.
This link will take you to that information... http://theclassicalstation.org/partners.shtml
I often use their stream for over night hours at Blue Bucket Radio, it even aired on Rock 105.3 when I lived in London,Ky. Give them a listen, have your wife listen as well. If neither of you like it , nothing is lost and you may find some other avenue to explore.
Hope this helps.
Barry.
Down in the vaults I have a scavenged remnant of an Eico FM tuner which has been surgically plundered for parts. It could be re-constructed, but I would ask "What for?"
The FM stations for several states around are the worst, unless you count a valiant effort to run a classical station on a 250 Watt translator, but hold on... I'm not looking for a classical station. I am a classical station.
Bottom line is this... I feel foolish for not better protecting the old tube equipment, but in fact I don't need it, marking the great difference between the emotions and the logical mind.
This is NOT "royalty free" programming, as it would appear in the above post. You pay no fees or royalties to WCPE, BUT you MUST be paying appropriate royalties for music rights to BMI, ASCAP, SESAC, SoundExchange, et. al as appropriate. This is mentiioned in their rebroadcast consent form "We pay our applicable copyright fees. You must pay your applicable copyright fees.... You must have an agreement with the licensing agencies.... You are legally bound to verify your own situation!"
Words to the wise.
Tim in Bovey
We did stream our all time favorite station, WGUC, for a while. This is the station we listened to when we lived in Cincinnati but we found committing a computer to this didn't work for us. PUNY also streams but this is not seen as a solution.
Carl mentioned the logic of fixing or saving something one doesn't need. I suppose I do so out of sentimental motives. The old AM radio I recently reconditioned was such a project. I don't need nor want a receiver to listen to AM for there is nothing on which interests me but the sound, smell, and tube glow is something which reminds me of my early days. Value is not always measured by utility.
Brooce, it reads like you are describing the HFT-90 but since you mentioned you wanted one then you certainly know what one looks like. There were several good tuners back in the 60s. One was the H. H. Scott tuner which boasted a newly developed FET front end. I wanted one but the kit was $125 and being newly married and in school I couldn't justify it so I used the "old" Eico instead.
A friend had a Fisher tuner with a magic eye (the 6FG6 with the bars which closed when tuned) and it seemed to work well.
Tim's caution about royalties is worth noting but I have intentionally limited my range to just my house and yard and am not trying to "broadcast". The phrase he quoted ".... You are legally bound to verify your own situation!" leaves much to interpret but I do not feel obligated to prove to anyone that I do not have listeners, but that is a subject for another discussion.
Neil
I don't think the RIAA will bother part 15. First of all they would have to receive your station first. If you live in CT or anywhere close to the DC area I'd think twice about FM on part 15 because most of the NOUO's are based around those police like areas where people wear their suits so tight that it chokes the oxygen from their brain. If you live in a redneck area like I do where the cable operators think a TV that isn't connected to the system will cause interference to your internet I don't think you have anything to worry about. The cops here are a JOKE. The only days the RIAA will be down here is when the folks are coming home from a tour of duty. Seriously not here. If my station got 3 miles or more I'd do the royalty thing for on air. I know plenty of folks from the School for the Blind running transmitters some grey and some legal. No one I personally know has ever been asked by the RIAA or any troll if they pay for broadcasting music. Now I've had on the other hand tens of thousands of trolls asking me if I pay for streaming on my Internet station even had a police officer warn me of it as well so yes I do pay royalties for that and would not tell anyone not to unless you want to not have your station listed on iTunes or TuneIn Radio and what would be the fun in all of that. I hear this RIAA paranoia all day long and yet they still can't stop The Pirate Bay or millions of Bit Torrent Pirate sites. They have tried since 2003 and all it has got them is one huge headache. They should have allowed commercials to pay for music on Napster. They can do the same for part 15 Radio. Just make stations play their RIAA ads for artists they promote. Believe me when I tell you that the RIAA is in their dying days at best. No way are most part 15 stations going to pay royalties when they may not even have one listener. I don't get any locals calling my Rockline and my station has been on air since June 5th so No just so the flies can hear your station? There is plenty of other things I NEED to spend my money and Food, Rent at $1100 a month and $600/Mo electric bills are enough to spend. I'm not giving these clowns one more cent to spend on their crack cocaine.
OK sorry about my Rant but I had to get this RIAA BS off my chest because I'm so damn sick of hearing about how their going to fly over your house and land on your rooftop if you don't pay these crack heads. OK now about the Scott FM tuner. My friend Gene had one and it was a really good tuner. It picked up the station I worked with at Olivet, Michigan which was 40 miles away and running 10 watts. It was on 88.7 FM. 88.5 was a station from Canada which would bleed 88.7 and 88.9 was Impact FM in MSU which would also bleed. The Scott knocked them both out when I was trying to receive the little 10 Watt station 40 miles away and sounded very good. I loved that tuner as well. Wish I had one.
Please forgive me for slightly hijacking this thread momentarily, just need to clarify a few things.
NO radio station EVER pays the RIAA even one penny. The ONLY fees radio pays is to BMI, ASCAP and SESAC which are performing rights organizations that pay the WRITERS of the songs. These writers may be the performers, or someone who just sits at their piano and writes songs. Radio pays completely, abosolutely NOTHING to the performers of the songs, or the record companies (except the possible purchase of the records outright and most labels have discounts for stations that buy and there are many services that provide the music at far below retail). Unless the performer happens to have written the song, in which case he receives the writers money. Period.
If you stream, or operate a satellite radio company you DO pay SoundExchange which does indeed pay the performers of the songs, but not ONE PENNY goes to the RIAA. The RIAA's main concern is people violating copyright, e.g. making copies of songs and selling them illegally or distributing them for free. I believe there is some valid argument that if I were to release a song and it became free with the click of a mouse all over the internet it would indeed decrease my ability to earn a living at my craft. So that's what the RIAA is protesting. However, I do believe they have become quite carried away. But the RIAA has nothing directly do to with music on the radio. However they are busy trying to change that insisting that radio also pay the performers, which so far has been stopped under the concept that we're giving away free airtime promoting their songs.
So, no, the RIAA won't come swooping down on you. And odds are that the other groups will never run into your station on the air, check their books, find out you're not listed, and come after you. However, they do. You see stories in the trade magazines all the time. The biggest way people get busted is when another radio station complains. I realize that we don't see us as competition to a big station, but they see us as a threat. Even if we steal 5 listeners from them, they want it stopped. They WILL complain. I posted last year the story about what happened to me. Oddly enough I work for two commercial stations in the area, as you probably know. So I'm in direct competition with myself. The deal I made with my boss was that as long as I don't start streaming while I'm still working for him, we're good. (I'm ready to hit the button the day I retire) Anyway, HE was contacted by another station a hundred miles or so away who heard about this "pirate station operating in Bovey" and if he knew anything about it. He forwarded the email to me, and let me respond, which I did. I believe the details are posted here someplace. No, your biggest fear shouldn't necessarily be the music licensing groups themselves, but the other stations who want to stop you and are looking for legal ways to do that. THAT's why you want a legal transmitter, and legal music. Those are really the only two ways you can get shut down.
I look at it this way. If I buy a set of golf clubs because I really like playing golf, but I can't afford to join the club, I don't bitch about the cost and break into the club to golf when they're not looking. It's part of the cost of the game. I don't expect the club to let me play for free just because I can't afford it. The cost of licensed music for Part 15 is part of the cost, whether you look at it as a hobby or a business. I see it as both. My hobby business has done quite well this past year.
Like everyone else I don't LIKE spending money, but it's part of the deal. If you want to be legal anyway. I don't have to like it, but I don't really like paying my electric bill, either.
Now back to your regularly scheduled discussion.
Tim in Bovey
The royalty subject is very interesting.
And to Neil, I keep on thinking about the
old FM tuner stuff.
I may have some ore comments on that.
Brooce