I owe Keith Hamilton a Christmas card! Just did a five-hour gig at the local Chamber of Commerce car show. Set up the Rangemaster, the processing, and my laptop, and played 50's and 60's vintage music (to match the cars) along with recorded thanks to the event sponsors and coordinators.
It was held in our local Home Depot parking lot, so there was little chance of getting a decent ground for the xmtr. But even without grounding of any sort, the signal was to-the-wall over the whole parking lot, and clearly receivable 1/4 mile away on an "average" car radio. I was impressed! (Thanks, Keith!)
Oh, and for those who must know (radio geeks like me), the setup was a simple HP laptop with its internal equalizer rolling off the 32HZ and 16kHz bands, all others flat. Into an Aphex 320A as an AGC, then into a Texar (pre-NRSC) Eagle with fairly robust compression but moderate clipping and 125% positive peaks, then right into the Rangemaster, which was tuned to 100% output. I used ZaraRadio as programming software, which is an amazing program for the price (FREE!), but I think I'll look for something that may cost money but is more malleable. Any suggestions are most welcome.
It's pretty rewarding when others can see and hear what we do with this hobby of ours. And then have good things to say about it, too!
Mark
Reads as if it was a great experience.
Neil
1/4 mile without a ground is not too bad. Was the antenna mounted outside? I assume it was and so it goes. Now if you want easy software with built in compression and which has programming for TOH ID's and even has a nice equalizer NextKast is the way to go. Even beats SAM's audio processing and a lot easier to set up too. For the full version its around $200 but still better than $300 for SAM. It should sound great for your station. I have my songs in 4 year segments for my folders in NextKast.
SAM is the Spacial Audio radio automation platform which I have always wondered about.
From what you just wrote, I am guessing you have given SAM a road test.
Tell everything you have experienced and learned using SAM.
Some Part 15ers have really recommended SAM, but I am slow to spend money and never gave it a try.
If the transmitter was grounded to a car, that could account for range, thinking of how car radios can receive so well on a short antenna. It's over open ground, and if the antenna was in the clear, that would make a difference with short, high impedance antennas.
I've heard about car cruise radio and people doing it, and I'd like to, but am not in the scene and don't know others who are involved. We were talking about event broadcasting, that's surely an event, with lots of AM radios in attendance in classic cars, and an audience that would be very familiar with AM.
Of course the format must be Oldies...
Thelegacy, thanks... I'll try to get a demo of NextKast. And if anyone is a big SAM fan, I'd love to hear of your experience with it.
Important to me with the software I get is that it provide for cue points that I can set at the end of each audio element. Zara doesn't offer that.
Nate, actually the antenna wasn't grounded to a vehicle, although that could give interesting results, I guess. The transmitter was mounted atop a 5 foot tripod, so the tip of the antenna was about 14-15 feet up. I had pounded a ground stake, but ended up not having time to cut some copper wire, connect the ground, and re-tune the transmitter.
There was little in the way of obstructions except for the two display wooden storage sheds that the antenna was sandwiched between. There was a visually clear shot to the two areas of the parking lot I wanted to reach, so the storage sheds didn't have the opportunity to cause any trouble with the signal.
Hey Mark, What frequency?
wdcx, I used 1610. It's a clean freq daytimes around here, and the older car radios can pick it up.
I saved a few scripts for TOH and modified a few for injecting the ads every 4th song. SAM does take some resources and if it were not for the lack of Icecast V2 support I'd have stuck with version 4.2.2. After that version SAM became buggy. The best version that would support Icecast V2 was 4.9.1 and you could have different playlists and set up the clock wheels. The built in Audio processors in SAM are sub standard for Album Rock and requires yet more money for Breakaway Broadcast or Stereo Tool. Both will make SAM sound more Album Rock like. NextKast out of the box has the Audio standards for Album Rock right out of the box and has the ability to adjust the EQ and compression but you need little tweaking. It even has the second sound card setting and I'd say as long as you separate categories like 1962-1970, 1971-1974, 1975-198, 1979-1982, 1983-1986, 1987+ then have your Ads like Ad1, Ad2, Ad3, Ad4, Back To The Music, ID1, ID2 your set to fire up a great station with no glitches. I just add the songs according to the 4 yr segments. NextKast allows for Line In so a mixer can be used too for interviews or what ever and has a mic button which can be configured to either use your mic or USB mic. It has an FX check mark for mic to add bottom end to your voice so it sounds like a big broadcast station. NextKast was designed for part 15 FM (and can work on AM) and online streaming alike. The software was pretty much written to work with even a laptop (which I have) and when I Beta tested it had my station in mind. You can hear the results of the software when listening to my Live shows Noon-8Pm it varies at times. When you hear my announcements about hearing my station further than ¼ mile I'm using NextKast. I use a very simple set up and not had any issues. Many folks think I'm using expensive external processors and mixers but really I'm using a Laptop, headset, and a second sound card for the FM or AM transmitter that is IT. Pepole are SHOCKED at the great audio performance of the software. It should sound good as your talking to a knit picky Album Rocker. You want good audio, get the software written for Album Rock and that is NextKast. It also works for 'Dance as well as Winston has a Dance station and he wanted it to work for that too.
Hear It @ http://thelegacy.shorturl.com or http://www.streamlicensing.com/stations/thelegacy/tlhi.pls to listen on your player.
Thelegacy, I'm anxious to hear your station. I've bookmarked it to catch later tonight!
I'm live and I take requests as long as its not Top 40 or Rap as we are dead set against it. Otherwise I'm sure you'll love the sound.
OK. TNX. That's what I was wondering because as you pointed out, many radios cannot hear anything above 1600.
I forgot to ask, how did you power the Rangemaster?