Gentlemen, rev your engines!
So basically everyone is a "reveer". Or a driveer, or a passengeer, or a side seat/back seat driveer.
Airline pilots...piloteer, commercial and privateer...har har.
RFB
Time again for FUN WITH WORDS with your hosts RFB and Carl Blare, this week adding the post-fix "eer" to every word that gets mentioned.
Oh, wait a minute, look at this, we've been canceled.
This ongoing thread mostly features the long wave transmitter project titled DEEP VOICE in which members of part15.us are participating in design of a long wave transmitter.
We have everything except an oscillator that can be modified to work with PLL Data Kit.
Also, I am pre-occupied with startup of a carrier current station.
One more factor is putting a stop on progress. I am afraid of erecting a 50-foot tower, the height permitted under the Part 15 Rule, because of neighborhood considerations. Is there any other approach that would better conceal a long wave antenna?
20-minutes ago I was sitting in a warm, dimly lit restaurant with a trim brunette who loves radio men, but I got an idea for an antenna so I threw her a $20 and promised to call her next week, so I could run back here to tell you about my idea.
Up above you'll see that plans for long wave are inhibited by the thought of a 50-foot tower suddenly appearing on the skyline. One solution, offered by RFB, is an angled mostly horizontal antenna, and that sounds like one solution, but hear me out on this...
I have here in my antenna file-folder an engineering paper for A Novel Short AM Monopole Antenna. My idea would look similar to this but be simpler, because it would have only one feedpoint into four vertical monopoles 25-feet high, with another 25-feet of each leg turned horizontal, pointing all four poles of the compass, like four upside-down L figures.
Comments are sought.
Don't think that would quite work while fitting in the 50 foot antenna limit as you will be feeding 4 sets of inverted L's each at 50 feet a piece, totaling 200 feet in all since your feeding all 4 L's at a center point where they all connect to each other.
Be the same argument over the cap hat on a 3 meter stick.
Not saying I would argue that point because I don't play that ridiculous nit pick game over cap hats or your idea of a 4 count inverted L antenna..but there are those who will argue it till the end of time. To work in their world, each inverted L would have to be 12.5 feet each.
RFB
A cage monopole antenna, 4-center fed 3-meter wires fed from a single point, has the same effect as a wide-width copper pipe: it broadens the bandwidth but is still regarded technically as a SINGLE 3-meter length.
The 3-meter rule does not apply to wire-in-parallel. It only applies to wire in series.
According to the regulations, we are only allowed 15 ft. of antenna, 1 watt.
If we use a loading coil of sufficient gauge wire, shouldn't we expect to get at least 5 or 6 miles? with a decent receiver?
Lemme crunch a few numbers and see what it might look like. I can say that at 284 kHz and 25 watts ERP, our airport NDB gets at least 35 miles, if that helps.
Again, precise matching to peak resonance will be a factor.
Ken Norris, you may have said the most important thing of the day.
For some reason I have been laboring under the idea that the long wave rules allow a 50-foot antenna. Am I spinning my wheels?
I'm checking right now..... let's see....
Look, here it is, Rule 15.217 .... shall not exceed 15-meters....
SEE? 50-FEET! I WAS RIGHT FOR ONCE!
OOPS! Please ignore the previous message, I couldn't delete it.
According to the regulations, we are only allowed 15 M of antenna, 1 watt.
If we use a loading coil of sufficient gauge wire, shouldn't we expect to get at least 5 or 6 miles? with a decent receiver?
Lemme crunch a few numbers and see what it might look like. I can say that at 284 kHz and 25 watts ERP, our airport NDB gets at least 35 miles, if that helps.
Again, precise matching to peak resonance will be a factor.
Yeah, you're right, it was a typo, 50' is 15 meters (approx.) which is OK.
How about modulating the signal, rather than CW or BPSK? That way we can use voice comm. Not sure if it's legal in the U.S. ... checking ...
OK, I don't see anything in 15.217 that restricts license-free ops to CW or BPSK. OTOH, Northcountry's LF90 unit is designed for beacon, cw, or bpsk.
I'd really like to see what it will do over the water. Most of the SWL-type receivers have LowFer ranges, likely using the same or a secondary loopstick as that for AM band.
I guess I'm going to have to give in and buy one, don't think I'll have time to build one right now.
I'm pretty sure that either RFB or MICRO1700 or another Member or a total stranger said that "160 to 190kHz is the experimenter's band and ANYTHING can be tried, as far as modulation or content, within reason."
Other than the 1-watt final and 15-meter antenna/transmission line restrictions, I'd say that's true.
Our band here falls within:
0.009 - 0.490 mHz and the emissions limit: 2400/F(kHz) @ 300m
I think that's enough to skip at night, so we could conceivably get several hundred miles out of it in the right conditions!
I can't find any other significant restrictions in the regs at the moment. There appears to be some other regs governing CC in the low bands, mostly speaking about data ... I have to look some more at those, especially power limitations and output as intentional radiator.
I know OPALCO, our local member-owned power company in the islands, does that, but I think it's not wireless, i.e., the receivers are hooked up.
Hi Everyone
I was told this receiver got really high reviews back in it day.
The Sangean ATS-803A
It cover everything from 150Khz to 29.999Mhz with AM,CW,and USB/LSB
Has external antenna hook up also.
Anyways is this a really good receiver for picking up distant stations???
Thanks
SKW40