"Radio8z has nailed the definition of a cap-cap for purposes of part 15 AM operation, as far as I'm concerned."
I suppose so if one shape fits all is your style.
I like to experiment and discover..which is exactly the motto I have lived by for decades.
Cap Cap?? WTH is Cap Cap? A new definition to something already defined for nearly 90 + years???
I believe its called a Capacitor HAT....or Cap Hat.
Accurate information is the name of the game..isnt it?!! 😉
You will find that there are many different shapes that will do many different things in the radio radiator world.
There are more ways than one..trust me.
RFB
Baseball cap. Thinking cap.
A cap is another name for hat.
A capacitor-cap is the same thing as a capacitor hat. It always has been.
I see...so all the literature should bounce back and forth between hat and cap then..just so no one get's confused especially the beginners.
I have an idea! Let's call the globe "baseball" so it all will fit the meme of cap and "play ball"! 😉
RFB
I have done Part 15 stuff for decades. But I
just thought of another top hat antenna from another
Part 15 station I had running for the kids.
This would be about 8 years ago, but it seems
like another life.
Initially, I put together a Part 15 FM for the kids. That
would be my son and his best friend at the
time.
It was on the front porch. They would get on
there and talk and do comedy routines for
hours. The transmitter then was an old
Ramsey FM-10 from 1993. My son's friend's
house was about 200 feet away. And there was
perfect reception on their living room stereo,
which had a dipole on the wall behind some stuff.
I remember the mother of the house saying she
couldn't believe how clear the reception was.
But, of course, that's FM radio. Also, the FM-10
had been modified for mono.
When the kids got tired of the station a couple
of months later, I decided to try AM for my own
enjoyment. (It's been just me on there ever since.)
I had a Ramsey AM-1. (I don't think I had converted it
to crystal control yet. It IS that way now.)
Everything was on the front porch. The ceiling was low,
so only a 5 foot pole would do. I used a 5 foot TV
antenna mast. I got all excited at the thought of
making a top hat. The top hat was a round metal
cooking sheet of some kind. Maybe the kind you
would cook a pizza on.
Nothing in the station was grounded to anything.
Also, the loading coil was from a crystal set. The coil
was sanded across the top, and I made a metal slider
and tuned for max signal. It put out a good strong
signal about 500 to 600 feet away in all directions.
That wasn't bad for a 5 foot antenna and no ground.
I had forgotten about that top hat, but it was really cool.
Also, that was the first time I had made a loading coil. And
things just went on from there.
Bruce, DOGGRADIO STUDIO 2
RFB mentioned problems keeping the antenna tuned at a TIS local to him.
The TIS I manage for our City has a very Part 15 looking antenna.
The system was a turnkey installation. I have since relocated the transmitter and antenna across town as it caused to much RFI where it was located.
The antenna is a center loaded 10 foot vertical. It's mounted on a platform made of angle iron. Everytime the weather changed, I had to check/retune the antenna. This is done by adjusting the length of the antenna.
Recently I installed about 20-10 foot radials around the base of the antenna. That seems to have swampped out the weather effects as the SWR remains fairly constant now. And although the match is not perfect (1.5:1) it's stable and so is the signal.
The TIS station's antenna does not have any ground radial system and is why their signal fades out when snow is on the ground...how ironic is that...a road condition traveler information station cant get much beyond the yard to inform people of bad roads because of snow! DOH! Here..have some more Duff. :/
What good is a road condition report when you cant even tune into that licensed TISk TISk station!!
Bah!
RFB
It drove me crazy! It was on 1630 kHz and
made it hard to hear 1620 and 1640 on
my receivers. I even got it on my crystal
set. I think the callsign was WQBL-834.
It ran the same tape loop for about 5 years.
Then one day I said to myself, nobody is listening
to this thing. Why doesn't somebody turn it off?
Very oddly, about a week later, I tuned in 1630,
and it wasn't there, and hasn't been ever since.
Maybe somebody picked up my thought waves.
I do wish we had taken a photograph of it, though.
Now that it is gone, there is no record of it for
posterity.
Bruce, DRS2
Ya bout the only time it's worth tuning in to the TIS here is after a good snow storm to hear which roads are closed down...that is if the TIS station is getting out!
Any other time during normal conditions, the TIS station is picked up clearly. How ironic eh!
And during the normal conditions period, that TIS station plays two things:
1. 3 DTMF tones followed by a station ID clip...and then...
2. "This is your Casper area road report for...(day/month/year)..there are no hazard road conditions to report"
Imagine hearing that for weeks on end during the summer when the weather is nice here!
I thought gray scale radio was limited to commercial broadcast! Learn something new all the time!
RFB
This brings up a point of view not previously discussed, so far as I know.
In previous discussions the TIS installations have been described in technical ways, but what about the content of the station's message?
What are the arrangements of such stations for their message contents? Do they have a staff who handle the job? Or, do they outsource it to somebody?
I have the hunch that some such stations go out of existence ibecause they have a poor plan for updating their messaging.
WQBL-834, on 1630 about 1000 feet from
my house ran the same message about -
"It's a real good thing to have carbon
monoxide detectors in your house. "
With very very little else. Over and over and
over and over.
For about five years.
I heard it so many times, I could quote the
3 minute message almost verbatim.
Every now and then, they would add something
else on there, but usually it was JUST the
"carbon monoxide voice loop."
I swear, if I had snuck over to the park where it was -
and hooked in some kind of tie-in to the DOGGRADIO,
studio - nobody would have noticed.
The local fire department ran it. I have met some of
these guys, and admire their courage and the way
they operate. But these guys are very busy. My guess
is that they never figured out how to get meaningful
announcements on it in real time. I'm very sure their
intentions were good ones. But the thing was never
publicized either.
That's OK. I really like the local fire guys. They are
great and I'm glad our town has such a good department.
But I'm also glad WQBL-834 is off the air.
Bruce, DRS2
As I have reported there is a TIS station from Illinois Department of Transportation on 530kHz here in my Missouri location.
But inside my house I hear an image from 1430 AM, an oldies station, whereas out in the car I hear Illinois highway reports at 530.
What I must do is pay attention to what their message is. Maybe it is current highway conditions. Maybe it's highway conditions from years gone by. When I find out, you will know.
"What are the arrangements of such stations for their message contents? Do they have a staff who handle the job? Or, do they outsource it to somebody?"
The TISk station here only has 1 human voice...for the station ID clip.
The rest...is a computer synthesized voice, much like the NOAA weather radio voice.
Bleh!
RFB
But doesn't a synthesized voice need somebody to type it's messgae into a text file so the voice will know what to say????????????????????
The title says it all. 😀
RFB
You are intimating that installers of TIS systems don't have a plan. They are gibbering idiots. They have a screw loose. They are looney tune. They don't have a clue. They are out of their minds. They have no idea what they're doing.
Or is there something else going on?