Yeargh! HOA's are a PAIN!

I assume HOA is "Home Owners Association"? I'm very surprised these people would object to a 3m length of copper piping sticking up. It could be worse: you could be a HAM operator with big antenna arrays?I have a long wire shortwave antenna running from a very tall pole at the back of my property to my eavestrough and also a 10ft pole with my experimental transmitter bolted on top - adding another 10ft. My wife thinks that the neighbours will think I'm a mad scientist or something :). A few years ago we had neighbours complain about umbrella style washing lines saying they looked "tacky", but now with concern over the environment it's OK. Go figure! You must have very picky neighbours 🙂

Gerry

IIRC, the real challenge with the whip is the narrow, narrow bandwidth, which makes tuning insane.

The xmtr I bought uses a coil with an iron powder core that slides in an out to fine tune. You might try that, as it seems to provide for very fine adjustments of the antenna loading. My xmtr tunes up a 3 meter piece of 18 gauge wire just great.

Dr. Jack's tuning meter should be a huge help.

Experimental broadcasting for a better tomorrow!

There was a nice old lady in New Port Richey who live in a 'gated community" who decided it would be envrionmentally wise to rip of her lawn and repace it with artificial turf since much of west central Florida is on water resrictions. She had it professionally installed, landscaped and it was the best looking home in the neighborhood. One problem, the homeowners ASSociation specified the type of turf and how often it needed to be cut. Guess what? She lost 5000 bucks and had to re-sod it.

WDCX AM1610 Part 15
John
Owner-Operator-Chief Engineer-Program Manager

Sorry to hear of the problems with the HOA. I am VP and Chairman of our HOA Design and Review Committee and can't imagine us doing anything that restrictive. It could be because we have only 69 homes here and we all know most of the residents.

Just some advice, be proactive and contact the HOA and get an OK before you do things. It will help to have sketches of where you intend to place things and you might also get a zoning clearance from the city to take with you. Then your investment is protected from ninnys who might not like it. After all, if you go ahead on your own you will be at the HOA eventually if anyone complains and it may not sit very well with them that you ignored the covenants and procedures.

Also, I believe and you could check on it, that antennas intended for TV reception are exempt by law from HOAs. This would be a stretch for a copper pipe but in desperation one needs to be creative.

Neil

Couldn't you just paint the 3M pipe a neutral color, like gray or brown, so it would blend into the background?

Or again, what about making a flagpole out of it by slipping a length of PVC pipe over the pipe (possibly somewhat longer than 3M, but with the pipe inside) and hoisting a flag on top of it?

Finally, you could approximate the characteristics of your pipe antenna by mounting a couple of CB whips close to each other and connecting them together at the base. Then again, other than having slightly higher losses and possibly narrower bandwidth, I can't see why you could not get approximately the same performance from a CB whip the same length as the pipe antenna.

WEAK-AM
Classical Music and More!

Weak,

You have presented some clever and good ideas, but I still think it is wise if you are bound by covenants and HOA procedures to take the approach I suggested.

Maybe if my proposal was turned down I would consider some stealth approach but it sure would be nice if it was approved and I didn't have to worry about it.

Neil

Radio8z, I definitely agree that it is best to ask first. What I am suggesting is that maybe one of these approaches would be acceptable to the HOA if they were discussed with the powers that be in a nice way.

WEAK-AM
Classical Music and More!

Weak,

Good thought! Maybe start with that or come back with it if turned down. Certainly worth considering and I can't imagine some of your stealth ideas would not be OK.

I know HOA's have been badmouthed, but ours here is a pretty good group. We just approved, without modification, a proposal this week, though I am already getting heat as the chairman about HOW it was done (and not WHAT was done...idiots! How's that for my diplomacy? Why the hello did you elect me if you don't trust me to .....etc. Another time, another board). Maybe it is not such a good group after all.

Neil

Ours are a group of people who are looking for status (hoa status? what the heck...) anyway - the little whip will be fine by them... I do have to get rid of the pole, and mount the box to the house, but ah well.. take what you get, yeah?

Ok - so I went and bought a "Junction Box" from Home Depot, and a whip antenna mount from the rat shack. I get about 1/4 mile range, and a lot of hum.

Yeargh again!

I think I need to sell my house.

Any ideas on canning the hum? I'm using the stuff that came with the sstran...

MLR,

You certainly have read the manual for the SSTRAN and know about the jumpers bridging the three inductors for the power input and the audio ground. Experiment with these.

You might also consider getting a ground loop isolator (a line level audio transformer available from Rat Shack). I didn't need one, but others have reported success.

Neil

...and see if the hum goes away. If it does, then your problem is most likely a ground loop in the audio feed and you could probably correct it with the ground loop isolator recommended by radio8z or any good line level audio bridging transformer.

Also you might see if the hum goes away if you power the transmitter from a clean source of DC.

One thing though, did you put the ac adapter outside in the box with the transmitter? If so, those things emit a pretty strong hum field. You might want to consider locating it indoors and running low voltage ac out to the box.

And if you do that, try not to bundle the ac wiring together with your audio feed! 😉

WEAK-AM
Classical Music and More!

I have found by experimentation that audio or power feed lines,even antennas and feedlines can pick up hum from unlikely places. Anything that creates its own magnetic field can have its lines of force radiate far outside its physical chassis. Good examples are power supply transformers and CRT's in tv's and computer monitors,even wall warts! Route wires away from these items and DO NOT locate items such as power supplies near any other wiring or equipment. The biggest mistake I see hams make is putting their mobile radio on top of a power supply and wonder why it hums as they move the dynamic mic in and out of the transformer's magnetic fields.
I put all my power supplies and wall warts under the bench at floor level and avoid wire coupling. Most of my equipment is powered by a bank of 12 volt gel cells,BIG gel cells(750AH total) so all equipmend gets pure d.c. The only exception is the SS Tran,it needs 18 to 20 volts,so it is on a wall wart. I have reduced the hum but never quite able to eliminate it all. Its not coming in the audio or power wiring,I think its induced from overhead power lines. One of our local AM stations has serious hum problems in many parts of town while others are clear.Very strange! Regards,Lee
http://www.freewebs.com/wilcomlabs/index.htm

I'll try experimenting with the jumpers a bit more. I have always used twisted pair for running my audio/power (since I have pretty much unlimited access to it) - I never had an issue like this before.

We have no overhead power in our area, and the underground cable is not in my backyard, where the tx is located.

The power / audio feeds run from my "studio" area, through the attic, and out an air vent down to the tx.

I wonder if plugging into a switching power supply rather than the wart would help?