The other day a bunch of you guys helped
me with some research for a Part 15 college
set up. And I certainly do appreciate it.
You guys know my eyesight is problematic,
The other day a bunch of you guys helped
me with some research for a Part 15 college
set up. And I certainly do appreciate it.
You guys know my eyesight is problematic,
so it is just easier for me to ask this.
(Even though it's probably been asked before.)
I came upon the 95 dollar Ia.m. transmitter
while we were doing that research I mentioned
above. For some reason I was unaware of this
inexpensive unit. Some time ago, I knew it
existed and was at that low price, but I
thought that was a limited time offer by the
company.
So I was surprised to see it again a few days
ago.
I have a few very basic questions about the
95 dollar Ia.m. unit.
I believe the transmit audio has very narrow
bandwidth and doesn't sound that great, I believe
there is a cap mod for that. I think RFB just
mentioned that recently on another thread.
I don't know if this basic unit is compatible with
Ia.m.'s external tuner package, and am curious
about that. However, it is for curiosity only,
I cannot afford an external tuner any time soon.
Has anybody ever just stuck the Ia.m. 95 dollar unit
out in their back yard?
And have they run AC out to it, also with audio?
With a 3 meter antenna on top (either Ia.m.'s
supplied antenna or something else?) Home made
of whatever? And after doing all of that, have
they attached a good ground radial system to the
transmitter? I would put the transmitter in a
tight safe box right on the ground.
So basically, my question is just, has anybody
tried an outdoor installation with just the $95
unit over a good ground radial system. I believe
the unit has a tuner system which is motor driven.
i know you would have to run AC out there. I
believe this can be done safely.
I had a very successful system running outside on
1690 kHz with an SS-Tran AMT-3000, as many of you
know. I took it apart, a few years ago, with the
intention of rebuilding the whole thing. There
were unforeseen problems.
Because of time constraints, I have not been
able to jump the hurdles to get this AMT-3000
set-up going again outside. It has been frustrating.
So that's when I thought of an outside install with
the 95 dollar Ia.m. unit. Even an outside set-up
is pretty close to plug and play.
Do you guys have any comments?
Best Wishes,
Bruce, DOGGRADIO STYDIO 2
I never had much luck with the pre-IAM Talking House, but I know other people have. I never used the IAM ones.
Here's what I'd do with your proposal (I did something similar with a Decade MS-100 FM transmitter). Get a weatherproof box that has built in AC power connectors ($30 or so). Run an outdoor extension cable to the box (I cut it at the box end and connected it to the power distribution inside). Plug in the Talking House inside the box. As for running audio, I did an interesting experiment in that I put an Internet radio inside the box, streamed to the radio and used the output to drive the transmitter. I also plugged the Internet Radio from the box AC. That gave me a really portable package, tethered by the extension cord, of course (and where you plug it in) and it worked well (I just had to use high quality, shielded audio cables between the Internet Radio and the transmitter, to eliminate interference). I also had to use (and still use, as a matter of fact) software audio processing on the encoder computer. Of course, you can run power and audio through CAT 5 cable to the box as well - cut your Talking House wall wart cable and direct wire it to the CAT 5 cable - put the other end inside the box to plug it into the transmitter. But there, you are tethered to your computer itself, and you can have potential long runs of cable which can degrade the power, and introduce issues into your audio.