Hi Thelegacy: Here is some answer for you.
I'm on a very limit buget too and haven't had a job for 5 years as well and i also know how it feels when you want to buy a piece of equipment.
You need to have a kiddie fun like i do to save for equipment and it seems to work for me,I just put in what i can afford at the time even it's a couple of buck it adds up after awhile.
Then when i'm ready i start searching at Pawn shops, Ebay, Amazon, local paper, Etc.
And when i find something close to price or a little high i ask the owner straight up that i'm not working and your price a little high can i give you this price and they usally say yes to me and i got the item. You never know until you ask people about the price.
Example On ebay i found a guy who sold 2 talking house version 5 units for $100.00 for both units which he did not want to part, NOTE: The i AM transmitter is same as talking house. When i contact owner and told him about my finance that i only could buy one he was nice and sold me the 1 unit for $50.00 and we meet and i picked it up from him at a center location because we lived in the same town, what the odds that happening again.
I ran my talking house ver. 5 with the wire antenna and i got close to a mile with the unit inside the house,But again all depends on the setup.
I even got other am transmitter cheaper just by making offers.
If i was closer to you i would help you out, But i'm just to far.
As for building the radio shack am transmitter you can't find some of the parts anymore you would have to use replacement part like the 3 transistors, varible tunning cap,audio transformer.
I like fm but using very tiny fm power you can have allot on noise on your carrier if you use the stereo setting due too you have a 19khz pilot carrier and a 38khz seperation L-R- carrier and on very low power the noise is there plus your stereo carrier will not go to the very end of your transmission.
There is too many fm station here so i do am here.
In my opion on HD radio and Hdtv for comercial and part 15 they can through the stuff in the dump !!! The range on Hd is very very very very bad with bad audio quality at times we have station here since they went digital there bad so i don't listen to them anymore.
The only way to go is analog radio, dependable !!!!!!!
That's all for now station 8
Yes it's true....no 3 meter rule(antenna, groundline or feedline) or 100mW into final, only field strength which is 250uV/M @30 meters.....or 2500uV/M@3 meters.
Mark
how long is the inside wire on the Talking House Transmiter 5? How was you able to connect it to say your computer? Will it take a Stereo 3.5 mm male patch cord and mix the two Stereo channels to Mono? Or will I have to get one of those tape adaptors and run the wire through the door of the transmitter and connect that to my computer so the unit thinks its playing a tape and transmits what I'm playing? $50 is more like it for an AM Transmitter. I'd look up the specs on this one. Did you run the wire virtical or horizontal? I could run it beside my window and maybe capture a few listeners that way. If nothing else I could use it to monitor my station when I'm out of the house. A mile or 1/2 mile is what I really had in mind on FM. If I don't get my FM transmitter i'll have to look into it a bit.
OK I was able to find a demo video on it on Youtube. I typed in Talking House Transmitter 5.0. It has two Line In's and a mic in as far as I saw. Not too sure how long the wire that comes with it is, but I seen the inside of the transmitter when Art upened it up. Looks very sturdy and made of Metal. Loved the digital readout and it looks like some of my older Stereo components I had before I lost my house due to financial issues. Something like that may be worth the $50 but he hum was something I'm conserned about as was talked about in the video. I have two windows in my room I could drape the antenna across the celling from one window to the other and get that 3,000 feet. Not too sure how music would sound as I'd not be playing or broadcasting Talk Radio.
Hi Thelegacy : Talking house 5.0 unit i have or had.
Wire antenna length is 9 feet 10 inches long or 118 inches long, Just measured it.
The first unit i had was brand new and bad out of box, sent it back and got my money back.
The second unit i got it was used with no issues at all.
As power supply hum i had no issue with both power supply, except a broken ground wire inside one of the power supply where the wire got pinched.
As using a 1/8 stereo jack on mine, with no issues at all.
As antenna placement i ran vertical and had a short section in a horizontal position (1 foot long ).
When i did testing on my unit for setup, On my first test i place unit in a non metal room and checked range.
When i did testing on unit for setup, On second test i place unit surrounded by metal and checked range.
Range report - Non metal room got me up to a mile range.
Range report - Metal surrounded by unit i was lucky i got 1/4 mile range.
DO NOT PLACE UNIT IN A AREA SURROUNDED BY METAL OTHER WISE YOUR RANGE WILL BE REDUCED.
If you live in a house with metal siding you will have also bad rage result as well.
The reason why i say these things is that i been through this personally and try different set up to see what work to give me max range.
Music sounded good,But could use a eq to give you better highs.
I hope this helps Station 8
I think the house I live in now has all wood siding. Its a 200 yr old house I rent but don't know how long I'll have it as there are some pluming issues the land lord don't want to fix. However I'm willing to bet I'll at least get out that 1/2 mile. The house next to mine has wood siding as well. I'm thiking with NextKast I may have some luck with the compression. If I were to use Breakaway for the audio I could even EQ it some more. It may be somehing to play with as this transmitter could be affordable if I find a realiter that is going out of business and don't realize the value in the whole house transmitter.
I got a Talking House from Ebay oh heck, like 6 years ago or so, and I think it was $60 with shipping so it was around $70. It was one of the older radios that was said to carry "voice quality" modulation. When I plugged an mp3 player in, it did seem to have low bass, but you could Equalize it to add more bass, I did and it seemed to help, you'd want to do a few listening tests on a few different radios to get the best sound.
One of the great things with the Talking House is the automatic antenna tuner, it's a pair of ferrite sticks on a motorized shaft that moves along tracks like the laser pickup in a CD player. When it boots up, it checks to see if the antenna is tuned for the most output before transmitting, a feature that I don't think any other transmitter has.
Mine got out pretty well too, from inside, wire out of the window hanging. It was on a long stretch of road, I don't know exactly how far that was, but it was real strong for about 500 feet, then got weaker with some radio hiss, then just trailed off slowly for a long time until it was off into the background noise. It was odd how the signal stayed along the roads too, go off the road and it would die out fast, farther away, the signal stayed concentrated by the road mostly. I didn't care as much, who is listening in open fields anyway.
Now you can get a Talkin House for $50 or less on Ebay, there are so many that the prices are low, many are still in boxes with little or no use. I guess they are old units, I don't know why so many have gone unused, maybe it was a fad in real estate, and I don't see signs on houses for sale that mention to tune in to their talking house like I used to. I even heard one on FM back then.
Radio Systems company bought Talking House a few years ago, and they changed the name to I AM Radio, and improved the circuit. I've never heard the new one, but it's supposed to have better sound quality now it's beem redesigned. They also have an outdoor case so you can put the I AM unit on the roof or somewhere outside above obstructions with a whip antenna, so it can transmit farther. Since it's new equipment, it costs a lot more than the Talking House units on auction though!
The antenna on mine was a black wire, I'd guess it was about 8 or 9 foot long. I did have some hum, but only when the radio was close to the power cord, no problem in another room or outside.
I hear you guys about being on fixed income and wanting to have a fun hobby that doesn't cost too much, and with AM that's supposed to have low listening. I think AM could work wth the right programs for your listening area and community involvement, but how will you know unless you try, a big gamble taken with thousand dollar transmitters.
I hope that cheaper AM transmitters start being produced in the Orient, like the FM kind are right now, and sold on the world market. Hobby FM transmitters used to be very hard to get and costly. I'm not thinking overpowered, regular 100 mw AM, but a real circuit with high quality, to compete, but mostly to fill the needs of the hobby market.
So if I have this correct it will put both stereo channels out into the Mono AM not just the left channel. And yes I have seen the video of the antenna tuner in action. Pretty genious if I say so. Its how FM transmitters should be made to adjust the SWR if FM ever gets to where we could transmit 100mW (which i think will happen). In the meantime Album Rock does not need a lot of base like Rap. I'm looking for a nice frequency response. Yes you want some as AM did have a boomy sound. WLS in Chicago yrs ago had a little reverb on their transmitter to compensate for the poor quality of AM. It had a sound listenable knowing it was not Stereo. CHYR Canada I think was the same way and CKLW was not too basey either. Imagine listening to Rush - The Trees or Emerson Lake And Palmer - Kern Evil #9 on AM. It won't quite give you the euphoria because of the lose of Stereo. Progressive Rock gave you the high feeling because of the Stereo and how the sound kept moving. But too ZZ Top, Van Halen, CCR should sound listenable on AM where you could crank it up and sound good with a high performance AM receiver. I don't know how you could convience listeners to buy a high performance AM receiver maybe a GE Super Radio you could. You could hve a sigh that says The Legacy Progressive Rock, Classic Rock receivable on Car AM Radio's only or GE Super Radio's sold at where ever you can buy one. I'd have to check the AM on my boom box but last time I checked I didn't receive many AM stations. This is gonna be hard to get folks to like my station on AM then tune in on the net. Could be an interesting transmitter to play with however.
Hi Thelegacy: Answer to your questions.
Audio cable Connection - Yes it mixes both L & R signal together inside transmitter.
As for Breakaway software you do have preset eq setting in the software so you can give the transmitter better highs.
Personnally as reverb in the music i personally hate, It should be clean and normal audio.
True Am stereo is great it can put fm in the toilet for audio quality if done right.
I have am stereo transmitter here with am stereo receivers.
There was an old trick back in the 1980's to have simulated am stereo out of your radios this is what you need to do.
Take 2 am radio that are the same if all possible.
Now take the first radio which will be your left channel tune for high freq sound which will be the front or beginning of station freq .
Now take the second radio which will be your right channel and tune to get the low freq sound which will be the end of the station freq.
This will give you a simulated am stereo sound which are station told us to do.
As for making your am radio receiver to receive am stereo there is a circuit from meduci on ebay that will do that.
There is also a am stereo transmitter from sean cutburt on ebay he sells for about $150.00 but if you talk to him about how much you can afford he might help you out, But you won't know until you ask.
The am transmitter he makes is a c-quam am stereo transmitter.
Some hd radio do receive the c-quam am stereo signal, But will need to do your reasearch before purchase.
My blog has allot of info about am stereo due to i like am stereo.
You can find cheap am transmitters on site like i said in previous talk.
Station 8
You also can learn allot from ALPB which is free to join and be able to talk to the person on the 1 & 3 saturday of the month and also on our site be able get manuals and project to do as well.