Can you get your hands on one of those battery packs that is used to jump start a car? This would be a easy 12 volt supply to test with..
Do you own a riding lawn mower or a motorcycle? Borrow the battery if you do. It doesn't take much current to operate the xmtr. If you had 8 flashlight batteries in a holder it would work..
Don't be concerned about the voltage reading of the power supply. Mine was near the same..
i actually have an emergency jump-start battery pack
for a car. thanks! ill try that right away. im going to try
a couple of things.
i know that it sounds like im lazy but im not dying to pull
the transmitter off the roof. at my college, it was a real
struggle to get them to let me put it on the roof and it
was an awkward installation/tune. im going to try the
battery as the new power source first and then am going
to try the 1620 crystal as opposed to the 1470 crystal
its using to see if we can get this thing to run clear
and strong before i pull it down off of its mast pipe.
thanks alot for paying attention to the forums and sharing
your thoughts.
nice base loaded home made antenna in your picture
for you signature, did you build that? i was actually going
to do the sstran/base loaded copper pipe thing before
college activites allowed me the funds for a rangemaster,
but thats neither here nor there. thanks alot
md
I and everyone will again suggest that you pull it down and then test it. It's a lot easier and safer working at ground level. And then you have control of the cables, etc. You could hook it to am mp3 player for the source so there could not be a ground loop.
In other words simplify the installation down to the most basic parts that will allow it to function.
In other words simplify the installation down to the most basic parts that will allow it to function.
Amen to that. It's almost always the quickest and surest way to fix a problem or at least figure out what the cause is or where it is.
It can be something as simple as a bad cable or connector, and if you tear it down to the transmitter and a battery and then add things one item at a time, it's obvious when you find the place where the hum or whatever is coming from.
But yeah, sometimes one runs into the problem after "launch commit" and it can make a bad impression on the wrong people if you need to tinker with it much (that they're aware of). Years ago when playing in bar bands and running sound for other bands I had more than a few times when things had been set up fast and there was some hum or feedback where it would have been nice to call a break and track it down, but since the bar owner and patrons would have taken a dim view of that I'd grit my teeth and tune it out as best I could with a parametric eq until a break.
One would think that schools would be supportive of their station, but I know some aren't. The college station I got my first taste of broadcast on, even the bare budget was a problem. A lot of the gear we used was donated or loaned by the student djs, and the transmitter was built by the retired radio engineer that was kind enough to volunteer to be the engineer for our little class D FM built the transmitter from parts from his own junkbox and used an old army ammo case as the transmitter case.
It's not the way it should be, but it seems that all too often it is.
I suppose there's not some easy way you could check whatever the transmitter is grounded to so you make sure it's actually connected to something resembling a decent electrical ground?
Also it's been mentioned here that the Hamilton's audio input is a balanced low-z line. Is the output of your sound chain to it the same? Or did you have to use or rig some sort of adapter?
Daniel
my school dosent care very much about the station,
all of our equipment is donated or frankensteined from other
things and we are always having problems with commonplace
components such as RCA cables and not having enough
XLR cable to get microphones where we need them.
As far as the audio goes, im self taught with everything
ive learned about audio equipment and part15 am (which
i just started reading about this summer) so im missing
a good deal of fundimental information. im not sure what
Z means, so i doubt my output is the correct kind, but
ill cross that bridge when i come to it, right now the
transmitter just buzzes away even when the audio
isnt plugged in.
im going to try the battery power with the transmitter
still being on the roof, if that makes no difference i am
going to change the crystal to 1620 and retune to see
if that changes anything, which i dont think it will.
after that i am going to take the transmitter down and
go though the troubleshooting steps outlined by SCWIS.
thanks for your help, everyone its been very positive
and encouraging, if you catch the refrence.
honestly, i feel very fortunate to have the help
of you fellows.
thanks again and ill definately update.
MD
Well, since you don't know if the audio is balanced, I would bet money that it isn't. You should invest in one of the devices outlined above to fix that, it will come around to bite you later on if you don't.
How close can you get the battery? Use the shortest cable that is safe and hook it up whiles the transmitter is in place. That way you can not only isolate the power supply, but the cable that was used to conduct the power. Long runs of cable pick up untold amounts to problems, and that might just be where your problem is.
And even when the money is coming out of our budget, the college has been less than helpful in getting our stream on the web. All that the onther departments needed to do was activate a port on one of the switches, and forward the correct ports from the firewall. Took all of about 15 minutes of their work. I bought all the hardware, and installed all the software. Ran all the cables and actually connected all those cables. It has been really discouraging. And this is for our classes, not just a club, so I'm not surprised to hear of your problems with the school.