The most we have on this website is small claims.
Hi : would like some more information on your transmitter setup please!!!!!
If your going to give information to people on the range on your transmitter(s) in my opion you
Should give more information out then the vague detail that you just gave us.
EXAMPLES:
1) Antenna height above ground.
2) Terrain, valley, hill, mountain.
3) Location, town, city, rual areas.
4) Near water.
5) Are you in a noise infested area.
6) Ground rod setup, example 3 foot rod or 8 foot rod or 10 foot rod.
7) Buried ground radials.
8) Transmitter height off ground.
These are just some examples
So you should let people know in more details so other people can try and see if will work for
Them Instead of holding information back or forgetting to mention.
This should go to everyone who going to give information out.
It would be nice and well appreciated.
I hope this helps
Station 8
Jon Druid Hills WDCX said: "Jesus H. Christ said: "But this website is The Court of Last Resort.""
And I ask, what is The Lord's middle name? Sure, everybody knows the initial, but nowhere in the Bible is there any trace of what his middle name might be.
Let's consider possible names starting with "H".
Hal, Henry, Homer, Hector, Herbert, Harold, Horace, Hiram, Howard...
Does anyone know?
It's a court alright...The court of it can't happen.
Carl I love your creativity. At least some of us have open minds. Im willing to experiment with AM a bit.
There is talk here and there about the AM and FM rules.
(Part 15.)
I'll just try to look back to
the past (Oh say) 45 years ago. (Hopefully, in a somewhat
humorous manner.) This is just about me, and not
meant to be related to anyone else. So to start off:
It's about 1969. I'm 15 years old and a complete goofball
of a human being, but a pretty nice guy most of the time.
I had been completely blind a few years prior and had
gotten some vision back in one eye. Because of that experience -
this just applies to me - but - my emotional age was
probably about 10 years old - and not 15.
My understanding of the FCC regs (for ANYWHERE in
the radio spectrum) was foggy and SKEWED. SKEWED?
What does that mean?
Well - - I was deeply into radio. I had a broken 100 mW 27
MHz walkie talkie - broken because I had messed
with the inside too much and because I had probably
blown out the final RF stage when I tried to feed the output
into a whip antenna that was also attached to the metal
frame of my bicycle. I TV DXed so much that I broke the
fine tuning knob of my parent's color TV. I had also broken
the Alliance U-100 TV antenna rotator because I was whipping
the TV antenna around in all sort of different directions to try
to view TV stations out of the Connecticut service area. I would
look at the snow on TV channel 6 for hours to try to watch
Philadelphia (sp?) - I can't remember the callsign back then.
(WPVI?)
I watched the screen so intently - that when I went upstairs
to sleep - I closed my eye and still could see the TV "snow."
I had destroyed several AM pocket radios. The best one was
still working. I monitored CKLW "the big 8" (Windsor, ON) during the nightime
on 800 kHz (about 500 miles away?) when nobody was around. Somebody gave me a
regen CB walkie talkie. Instead of keeping it the way it was - I tore
the circuit board in half and used just the receiver as a "CB monitor."
I had no way of knowing that I was hearing F skip during the day.
And E skip during the summer. There were lots of
DX stations comming in on that regen receiver. (All 23 channels
at once, probably.) I had a crystal radio almost permanently
attached to the top of my clothes bureau (with masking tape
or something.) There was a dedicated receiving antenna for
that thing that went around the room. The crystal set was
a Heathkit CR-1 "cold war bomb shelter (?)" radio. Those
crystal sets are still highly saught after today. I had a
morse code record for eventual entry into the mysterious
"ham radio." (And I DID finally get there.)
I listened to the shortwave broadcast bands on several different
receivers at many friends houses. I listened to ham radio AM signals
on 160 and 80 meters on a beyond horrible multiband portable.
I blew up a beautiful reel to reel tape deck by trying to transmit
stereo audio. This was done by putting the left channel into an
"AC/DC" vacuum tube phono oscillator and the right channel into
a second "AC/DC" vacuum tube phono oscillator. Many of you
will understand that (because I was doing this in the cellar on
a damp concrete tiled floor) I could have been electrocuted.
(But it didn't happen, of course.)
Yup - I had been fooling around with phono oscillators on
the AM broadcast band. Different " young geeks of the day" were
building teeny little "broadcast stations" all around town.
And, unbeknowst (?) to me - all over the country and around
the world, too. Many many of these people would go into
successful broadcast industry carreers or successful electrical
engineering carreers. At present, many of these people have been happy
working in these fields for their entire adult lives.
I had actually gone completely blind TWICE those few years
earlier. I was certain that it would happen again. That the
fragile retina in my one working eye would fail again and
be "mechanically compromised." I was counting the months
since the last "retina reachment surgery." (Why months
I don't know.) I think I was up to 41 months out of the
last hospital stay. I would comfort myself by listening to
FM HI FI on a vacuum tube set on Saturday nights when
nobody was around.
Nobody else could help me. The terror in my mind of "going
blind again" was always there. So in the morning before
school it was radio. Going to school it was radio. During
school lunch it was radio. (I had built an FM station in
the school AV room.) After school at night in the middle
of the night it was radio. It was the only thing that eased
my mind.
At my father's "well meaning and strong urging" I was headed
for a carreer in EE. I never got there but it was in me
nevertheless because my brain was "wired for it."
It was the PASSION.
RADIO. The first thing you think of in the morning.
The last thing you think of before you went to sleep
at night. (Fortunately for me - after having a great
wife and 2 wonderful kids - my priorities have shifted
somewhat. - But the RADIO in my brain is still there.)
So WHAT DOES ALL OF THIS HAVE TO DO WITH MY - - -
- - SKEWED PERCEPTION OF FCC REGS,
you ask?
Well - it was - TO FIND ANSWERS! I've got this
RF unit thingie... Transmitter. Receiver. Lot's of
wire. Parts. WHAT CAN I MAKE IT ALL DO??? What
can I make it do RIGHT NOW???
I only knew 2 things. On CB radio you
could only have 5 watts AM. (I didn't know
about input or output.) On some frequencies
- MAYBE - ALL OF THEM??????? - - 100 mW was
some kind of limit. I knew that was then true
for unlicensed CB walkie talkies - - and for
unlicensed AM broadcast band transmitters.
One guy told me that he thought less than
100 mW was OK for ALL FREQUENCIES - -
in other words - if you complied with that
power level - you could be license free
anywhere. (HAHAHAHA.) AND in our world then it was
AM, FM, CB, and maybe the shortwave
broadcast band frequencies??? Some guy
had just told me that ham radio was 75
watts. That was the limit. It WAS true
for the Novice license at the time. This
was so much transmit power to me - -
I couldn't fathoom it. I had to put it
out of my mind.
I had a "high end" FM wireless mike.
Many companies were selling them and
they were all out of FCC compliance. They
transmitted much farther than the rules
allowed. I was bored with my FM wireless
mike. I had done so many experiments.
It could cover up a local FM station 50 feet away
from the radio. This had been FUN but I had done
it so many times. There had to be something different.
My kite was in the cellar. How about if I put it up on
the kite???? How far would the transmission go???
Could I do the test right now? SURE! The golf course
was closed and it was just across the street. I had
everything I needed.
So I lashed this beautifully made FM wireless mike
(I would love to still have it.) To the bottom of the
kite - ran across the street (NO homework for me NOW
MOM!!!) Ran ino the wind and let it GO!
I could see it. It was up there in the wind. I turned on
my crappy multiband portable radio and put it on 90.1 MHz
(or so abouts.) What did I hear???
THE WIND!
Somehow I had expected something more interesting.
And then after not too much time I got bored. So
I tried to bring the whole thing back to earth and
crashed it into the muddy swamp next to the little
stream that flowed across the golf course and into
our neighborhood.
I squushed squushed squushed through the muck and
retrieved it. Slowly the reality sunk in. The beautiful
Radio Shack FM-90 wireless mike (I know some of you
out there remember it) had changed in appearance.
It was scratched up and caked in mud. It was still operating
but the frequency was jumping all over the place and there
was static noise on the audio. In the name of science and
engineering - I had ruined a great piece of electronics equipment.
Would I ever be able to get another one? NO. My parents had
seen it after the kite experiment. I would never be able to convince them that I could be trusted to
take care of another one. But life moved on.
A few years later I was doing a presentation on
"electronic bugging" for a "social studies" class.
Watergate was breaking into the news everywhere.
I know very little about the Watergate scandal but
I figured I could conjurn up some kind of FM electronic
bug. Even if the Watergate conspirators had never really
used one - I could - I could - I, er? What was I thinking?
I needed to do something to pass that semester. I needed
an electronic "bug" of some kind. This would justify my
getting another FM wireless mike.
I was friends with everybody who worked in the local
Radio Shack. Lafayette radio was cooler but I couldn't
walk there. Radio Shack it was. I was on a mission to
get another Radio Shack FM wireless mike. This would
make my Watergate report interesting and probably give
me a C or B grade. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA - great
standards there Brooce - - yeah - you're shooting really high
there kiddo!!)
I finally got into the Radio Shack and discovered something I
had never expected. The FCC had come down on all wireless
mike manufacturers. They were told to make compliant mikes
our they would be IN BIG TROUBLE.
The manager said "Bruce, don't buy this, it doesn't go ANYWHERE.
Meaning it's transmitter range was much much much shorter
than the previous FM mike I had flown up on the kite.
Well, I had to buy it to save my -- well, you know what I mean.
I had to have it for my report. I had to demonstrate electronic
bugging and this would be the transmitter to do the job.
So I took the circuit board out of the case and taped it onto
a popsicle stick. That way I could hold it up and the students
in the social studies room could see an FM transmitter circuit board
and get an idea of what it could do. Which wasn't much. The signal
barely got across the classroom although admittedly, the receiving
FM radio was the same crummy FM multiband radio - which wasn't
very much of a radio for sure.
So I went home after giving my presentation. I brought the FM
transmitter out of my paperbag (nobody had backpacks
then - that would be out of place) and set it on the table in the
cellar.
An FM transmitter that really doesn't go very far at all.
WHAT A HARD PILL TO SWALLOW. WHAT A VERY VERY VERY HARD
PILL TO SWALLOW. It took YEARS to sink in.
(However - with something like a Tecsun PL-310 for receiving, that transmitter taped onto
the popscicle popsicle stick probably would have been heard 500 or
800 feet away or WHATEVER.
But there were no Tecsun PL-310s back then, of course.
So it wasn't a meaningful issue for me at that time.
What was meaningful at that time?? Well.
In the other room was the beginning of a ham radio station.
I built a 5 watt one tube transmitter. It didn't work right so I
ended up with a Viking Callenger ham transmitter instead.
So right in that next room through that door was a 120 WATT
transmitter. Much more than I ever thought I would have.
I could only run it at 75 watts. I understood that now.
And I could see part of it from where I was sitting.
On the other side of that wall was WN1POI,
license effective Dec. 9, 1971.
A few weeks later the grade came back for my presentation
about Watergate and electronic bugging. I wasn't happy
with the presentation. But somehow I had fooled
them into thinking I knew what I was talking about.
I had received an A plus. What bozos they were.
REAL BOZOS. I had sure fooled them.
The red laser I had used in the presentation had been
returned to the school physics department. The laser
had been used to plant
the IDEA (only) of laser recovery of audio from a
vibrating wall or side of a building - which could be
turned into an audio signal of a conversation that
spies, investigators, or whoever -
could record and use in espionage. This was
being thought about at that time. I guess
they are doing that now, today.
I have to go. My friend is calling me on 220 FM.
Brooce, West Hartford, CT
Brooce, great stories you have there! Is there a Part 2 coming?
Brooce MICRO1700 is the first to post a full length book here on the site!
I have some popsickle sticks... thanks to your presentation I will be taping radio equipment to them today!
Back in Post # 45 John Druid Hills raised the question of Jesus H. Christ's middle name, and I got a call from Father Gerald Mother of Steeple of Saints Church. Father Mother tells us his middle name was "Hank".
Jesus Hank Christ.
Just for the record, 'Christ' is NOT a name....it's a title, meaning Messiah. One could say correctly that he was "Jesus 'the' Christ". He did not have a middle or last name. This part of the thread may have been intended to be humorous, but it is actually sacrilegious.
Morningdj says: "This part of the thread may have been intended to be humorous, but it is actually sacrilegious."
Thank you for the opinion.
For your information "sacrilegion" is an abstract fabrication and would be best expressed on a religious web forum. It has no appication in low power radio.
For those who accept the title premise leaving the "son of God" without an actual name, his true name is BoB.
I am not the one who brought the subject of Jesus Christ up...I only responded. And I am the first to agree that it shouldn't have been mentioned in a Part 15 forum, but then, again, not a whole lot here IS about Part 15. So, go pound your fist somewhere else!
The dictionary would be the wrong reference book in this case.
I didn't bring up Jesus if you'll look back at the posts, and we're discussing history, not religion.
Many part 15 stations delve into intellectual questions and they are not off limits here.
Hold the hatred.
I enjoyed reading that alot.
Though I have not had vision problems in my life (until lately), the trials and errors of Radio DJ, a "Mr. Microphone" wired into an old turntable and a cassette player come to mind. I had a switch that "mixed" the two. It was crude, and the range on the monitor speaker was farther than I transmitted, but I spent hours cutting shows on tapes. I even had a couple of old reel to reels I scrounged up and made work.
My time of play was in the middle late 70's. I remember building a supermicrophone to listen to things at distance. I used a plastic tube about 3 ft. long, fixed a decent microphone into one end and a large cone on the other. I ran it thru an equalizer and then into headphones. It worked pretty well.
The reference to the walkie talkies reminded me of the pair I had, and destroyed, they didn't work well on the bicycle. A pair of Lafayettes stuck on channel 14. They wouldn't talk across the yard, but I was constantly messing with them and eventually gutted them for the sake of science.
I made a friend during my youth, and still enjoy his company on occasion, from a small town a few miles up the road. He had a radio/tv repair shop. He was a ham operator, and I remember looking in his car back in the 70's. It was full of radio gear, which amazed me.
He did his best to get me into ham radio then. I had piles of old parts he would give me to tinker with. I did, and then I learned about girls.......
So, many years later I got the bug for radio again, and I had a career in Information Technology. I got my ham license and stopped in to see my "old friend" who I credit with building my interest, though it took me 20 years to get there and that was 20+ years ago. He is still alive today, though nearly 90. He was the closest thing I had to an Elmer in ham radio.
I retired from IT work several years ago, can't stand computers anymore, but I refuse to take any crap from them either. See for me its personal, they are machines and they must submit to my beckon call. I conquered them, and now I am not interested in them. They are not logical, they make mistakes after doing the same thing day after day, then they randomly change the way they do things..... I am rambling. They try to rise up from time to time with "new technology." But, they are still dumb machines with aspirations of wanting to be intelligent. When they get out of hand, I acquire and conquer.
These days, my supposed retirement is not retirement. The thousands of shares of stock in various IPO's didn't materialize. My ex wife ended up with our investments of 20 years.... She also had aspirations of intelligence, it was marred by randomness. Randomness is not possible in the logical world.
In computers it is based on an equation using time as a means of introducing a variable into a set of rules to "create" output that appears to change. It is not random, it is very predictable if one knows the equation. Try applying that humans on a broader scale using years as the time variable.
Though not retired, I am fortunate, I acquired a small supply shop that is not related to technology. I enjoy it most days! I have radios playing and regal people with my stories of travel and what we did in the "day". I get to play with part 15 in between projects. And occasionally, I even get on the Amateur bands and have a chat.
I am not sure what the youth of today will carry forward. I guess they can remininisce about catching Pokemons, or how they hacked a cell phone to play a game or something. Perhaps it is all relevent.
I am known as Craig, I am randomly jabbering, based on current time. Up next is...
First you say (Post 55): "For your information "sacrilegion" is an abstract fabrication and would be best expressed on a religious web forum. It has no appication in low power radio."
Then you say: "Many part 15 stations delve into intellectual questions and they are not off limits here."
So, Carl, which is it?
Point of fact--I did not say that YOU brought up Jesus...I was responding to the thread and a post that you made.
I have no hatred, but I am quite amused at the double standard that runs through many of these threads, especially from you. To your credit, you bring up some very interesting points at times, but you also seem to be at the center of a lot of controversy.
Hey MorningDJ, I referenced ONLY because another member was berating (sp) me about the use of the word "delusional." No disrespect was intended.