I ran across an old thread in which I said some negative things about the C.Crane, and now I wish I could go back and remove those words, because I absolutely LOVE my two C.Cranes.
I've got both 1 and 2, and they are doing useful work here at Worldround Radio.
Either one of them is worth owning.
This is spectacular news to hear that Tim is moving forward with measuring and analyzing the FM2.
These are the best of times here at part15(dot)us!
My Ramsey FM 25B does rather well at 2 mW but can do incredible things at the maximum 18 mW on a folded dipole I built a couple years ago. Back when I was living in London.Ky and my station was known as Rock 105.3 and before that Rock 95.7 the folded dipole I built was 8 feet off of the ground and covered a rather noisy hit and miss signal for roughly a mile in some directions. 1/4 mile where the hill behind my house would block it.
We were living in a mobile home park at the time but had a clean shot to the main drag where tons of business's were. On a factory car stereo I could hear Rock 105.3 rather well in the walmart parking lot, one day I managed to pick up on the dispaly radio's inside walmart so i made presets on all radio's there lol
As for noise, spurs, splatter, ghosts, I could not hear the Ramsey on any other frequency besides 105.3 or 95.7 FM, the low pass filters work rather well.
That is my take on it but I too would be in favor of a real test from Tim in Bovey.
800 to 1,000 feet is GREAT and without harmonics and spurs? I Want One. I'd take the C. Crane at the High power mode or the 18 mW Ramsey. I wonder how it does with a whip antenna or rubber duck inside? You have a gem that matches the SainSonic at less output power. There is a lesson here. The only thing I'd do to the C. Crane if I could see well enough to do it was to put a variable power control outside the TX. This is nice for when you only want to do short communications with your Car Stereo or just want to do private listening to something in your collection. In a car for instance you would not need the 800-1,000 Ft Range or ¼ mile. But when I want to broadcast my Internet Radio station I could turn the control back up. The Ramsey would be nice already put together as I'm legally Blind. If I said it was a gift I could legally own one. I'm not too worried about that though. I had what looked like a Ramsey years ago and it went 3 miles on a beam or Police Scanner antenna too. Thanks for the range report on the C. Crane. Wish I had bought one already tweaked instead of the SainSonic AX-05B.
The Legacy,
The telescopic whip that comes with the Ramsey does pretty well and it should be noted it does cause some hum in the transmitter. Years ago I had the Ramsey FM 25 A and it did pretty well , kind of wish i still had that but a crooked storage facility took it and most of my posessions claiming we were over due on rent.
Any way both transmitters have a screw soldered onto the board which is in line with the F connector as well.
I have removed that screw a long time ago since the rf from that whip seems to put noise into the transmitter but a trick around that is to take one of those cheap $9 cb antennas from walmart, the kind that is a little over a foot tall, magnet mount with the coil in the middle.
Remove the cheap 50 ohm coaxial cable and replace it with 75 ohm coax , the coil needs to be removed and a wire jumper placed in line to complete the circuit, otherwise you would be feeding the wrong frequencies into a 27 mhz coil and your rang will suck.
The other end of the coax needs to have the F - Connector on it to screw into the Rasmey transmitter.
Placing the antenna in a window away from transmitter will remove any hum you might have experienced when the whip was coming out of the top of the transmitter. It's crude but effective.
Since Tim used a battery for his test's the walwart power supply won't be needed but I am wondering if he will have the same problem with hum , if he decides to test the Ramsey.
The main one lasted 3 years running non-stop before it went out.
Now that's funny!!
It was a bit funny, I forget how I killed it. I turned it off and it never came back on.
I figured it was from the antenna mod I did, it always worked best mistuned.
Could have been a static discharge from your finger......the final and the digital display doesn't like thousnds of volts!
With the Ramsey's this is a problem with the GAL-5 chip used for the output.
Mark
If the Ramsey used a 75 Ohm impedance one could simply use a set of Rabit Ears at 75 ohms that don't have any amplifier or anything else. Just two antennas. You could put them horizontally possibly and have it indoors. What about a 75 Ohm dipole antenna that is set up for 75 Ohms you know the wire T or just the straight piece of wire that has a F connector on it that came with some high end Stereo systems or that you buy from Radio Shack? As far as the C. Crane I thought it was VSWR where it didn't matter rather the antenna had a perfect match or not? I think the Ramsey has to be matched. That was what happened to my Transmitter in Michigan when the coax was not firm inside the connector and it worked lose.
A little hum is annoying but better than harmonics and spurs. I could save for a better power supply or simply play music in a fashion where it doesn't stop. I think the C. Crane FM2 has no hum.
Rabbit ears without the UHF element make fantastic transmit antennas up to 15 watts. Placed vertically it becomes a 1/2 wave dipole.
For the best range a tuned antenna is the best. At low power levels the transmitter doesn't care, but your range does.
What about those 75 ohm circular antennas without the amplifiers in them? Never tried those? If I placed the rabbit ears virtically I'd have to somehow make a stand for them. I'm thinking if he does he Ramsey and its affordable I'd do that with it and at the 18 mW level I'd really ROCK!! I wonder if it will do 87.9 Mhz? If not I'd have to go back to 96.3 Mhz and watch the inversions.
There's more than one type of Ramsey FM Transmitter and they are not all based on the same circuit. So far we do not know which one Tim might build.
The one I care about is the 25B FM Transmitter, because it is only a transmitter and doesn't contain a bunch of other integrated sections, like a mixer and all that. I think the audio components should be separate from the transmitter.
The 25B Manual lists 88 to 10 MHz as the range, but sometimes there are "secret" unpublished settings that can get to out-of-band frequencies such as 87.9. Maybe someone can tell us.
BACK WITH MORE -
I paid a quick visit to the Ramsey site to see what they have...
FM10C is a play-toy transmitter with manual tuning, not recommended $47.95;
FM25B is my choice for stable, pro-quality, stereo FM transmitter $139.95;
FM30B is interesting. The description says it is a 25B circuit with added bells and whistles including a metal cabinet and front panel display. $199.95;
FM100B looks like a microwave oven/air cleaner and has a built in mixer. Hint: in the professional radio world no transmitters have built in mixers. I am told this transmitter is a different design than the 25B. $269.95.
The only other FM transmitters are 1 Watt for export only.
You can thumb tack it to the wall, or window. Thats what I did.
You need plain jane old school VHF only rabbit ears. Like the ones in the link.
http://www.fmdxantenna.com/proddetail.php?prod=simtrans
TheLegacy
As far as I know the PLL will default back to 88.1 mhz if you try to go below it, as Carl said sometimes there are secret settings but I haven't found them.
Here is a clone of the Ramsey TM-100 that I have built in the past, I might build another in the near future.
Clone Antenna
A side note, it does well as a receive antenna but has it's limits since it is cut to transmit for a certain frequency.
Here is a spiffy picture of the Rock 105.3 FM Antenna (TM-100 Clone) I think if you go to this post , right click and choose view this image, it will open up in a larger image. This is also on my old Blog.
A good 3 amp 12 volt Pyramid power supply will work wonders for these Ramseys, I have one but it is 8 amps so I don't use it on my Ramsey.