FCC Certification Process

You'll have to give me a hint...

User manual

Thought so, but in reference to what?

Well, there has been continuous banter about linking Rangemasters, long grounds, etc.  All contained in the user manaul supplied to the FCC for certification.

Well, it's definitely true that the documentation forms part of the certification.

That being said, an FCC inspector can trump anything written down, even the Part 15 rules (it's not an exact science to interpret those rules).

Many members here have attended Part 15 Bible School and have a dogmatic view of what the rules say, but I am a liberated free thinking slave of Satan and have my own views.

For example, I will go down insisting that the "Final RF stage" is the antenna.

I soon found that making too much of my radical belief might get me kicked out of the ALPB, so I play along with the mistaken notion that the Final RF Stage is the Final Amp (because it doesn't have filaments).

The "3-meter rule" means, by my estimate, "Somewhere around 3-meters, give or take a few meters here or there".

15.23 makes "Home Built Devices" permissable, but contains the error of saying "...not constructed from a kit." That's an impossibility, because the gathering of parts prior to home building is "the bringing together of a kit" from which to build the home built device. A "kit" of parts is how the project starts. There's no other way of building it. Having someone else pack the kit with instructions included is a fine approach. Paying for that service is reasonable. For that matter you don't have to be home to construct a home built device... you could build it in a hotel room in downtown Cayahoga Falls and it would be a hotel built device. That makes my point.

The writers of the Part 15 Rules didn't even sign their name. The whole thing is probably written by Asian secretaries just like Panasonic Instruction Manuals.

The output tubes or transistors in the last amplifier stage of a transmitter are often called "finals" for a reason. You lose on this one.

Thanks WDCX.

By saying "You lose on this one" you are as much as giving me credit for being right on everything else, just not "this one."

You may be correct "on this one."

Except that I deliberated on the statement "There's a reason they call them finals."

We are not talking about final exams when graduating from college.

No, we are talking about "final RF amplifier stages in radio transmitters."

While on the one hand finals are called "finals," they could not possibly be the "last RF stage", as in "the final RF stage," because there is more stuff hooked up BEYOND the amp final, including the RF stage called the transmission line, another RF stage called the loading coil, and FINALLY, the end of the line, the antenna itself... the real Final RF stage.

Unless you count the air. As a conductive medium capable of supporting electro-magnetic signals, the AIR is an RF stage!

But the air goes where? To the radios! The radios are the final RF stage?

No, you're saying that listeners are the final stage.

No more than 100mW to the listeners!

Actually, if memory serves me, it's not the air rather it's the ether.

ae·ther :  a medium that in the wave theory of light permeates all space and transmits transverse waves

If an antenna falls in the woods....

I believe this has been discussed here in the past but here goes again.

A stage as used in electronic or radio technology is understood to include an active element (usually an amplifier) and its associated components. One could extend this to include everything connected to the stage to be included in the stage but this is usually not done.

That being said, if the final stage of a part 15 transmitter includes all that Carl is including this doesn't change the application of Part 15.219 in that the DC input power would be at the final amplifier tube or transistor.

Neil

Even the FCC recognizes that anyone who'd take the trouble to fiddle with ultra-small RF powers, such as those imposed by Part 15, may not know too much about what they're dealing with.

15.23, which permits "home-built devices", actually says: "It is recognozed that the individual builder of home-built devices may not possess the means to perform the measurements for determining compliance." This statement presumes that the "home-builder" actually grasps the measurements he is ill-equipped to measure.

The next line is the main "defense of ignorance" written into the rules: "In this case the builder is expected to meet the specified technical standards TO THE GREATEST EXTENT PRACTICABLE."

Obviously "the greatest extent practicable" is tied inherrently with the intellectual condition of the builder.

If I am "wrong" about the definition of "the final radio frequency stage" my right to be wrong is defended as "the greatest extent practicable."