Hello. I could not help but notice the ease of access to the parts inside of the Procaster for tuning access reasons. I have some questions and thoughts and know some people might not be in favor of such mods for what ever reason. With that said. I would appreciate that this post does not get ragged on as such. But if you have any info that could be informative related to my questions. Then please share! Sooo here goes 🙂
Say we wanted to experiment with ramdom wires antenna sizes with the Procaster. What ways would we go abouts.
Here is what I know:
The procaster runs fine completely out of tune. The only side effect is no range! This indicates that the RF final runs at a fraction of its top rated output to withstand such a high SWR. I might be wrong here?
I tried to use other lenths for an antenna. Anything more then a few feet trows the tuning right out. This is normal I guess because the on board inductance is tuned for the 10 feet short lenth. With that said. Could we simply modify this coil. Make our own with much less turns to accomidate a longer antenna lenth?
In some areas of the world, Where we don't have to worry about the FCC or max antenna lenths. What could 100mw really do on a half decent antenna system? Maybe it could be a very cheep way to setup broadcast quality AM stations with OK range for a fraction of the price.
This is only one of the many reasons I can think of for wanted to know if these "hacks" can be possible.
Other reasons is simply for educational purposes seems to be a popular term.
So let me know all your good ideas 🙂
coming from a guy who loves to tinker i wouldn't hack up a 600 certified tx for experiments. i would buy a sstran.
I find the question fair and believe it's reasonable to become informed about the whole world so we can better understand our small portion of it.
I am not the engineer who can answer the question, but I have wondered the same thing...
What can be done with 100mW if there is no antenna restriction?
Very interesting question.
Well, considering the range KENC was getting by simply having a 40 foot ground, seems reasonable to assume 100 mW into a full blown 1/4 wave with extensive counterpoise would do quite well.
And even if budget only allowed a loaded 50 footer with a good counterpoise, unless 100 mW won't make it to the tip of the tower, the coverage should be pretty good.
Anyone know what the gain of a 50 footer over a 10 footer would be? 3db? 6db?
I have ruined a lot of good equipment by
trying to hack it, but that's in the time line
of about 40 years. For me, with my sight
restrictions, I wouldn't do it.
You would have to COMPLETELY understand
how the unit works first. Then you would
have to have a very thorough plan. And the
plan would have to have a way for you to
"get out" if things went bad. In other words,
if the mod didn't work, in my opinion, you
would have to have a way to restore the
equipment to the way it was.
I knew a guy who used an SS-Tran with a
gigantic long wire. He built some kind of
matching network. It went out a lot farther,
as in - he could hear it loudly on the car
radio several miles away.
But then he got worried and made the set-up legal.
And I'm glad he did. He did that because somebody
else got busted that was running a similar operation.
Decades ago, we had a 1550 kHz daytimer in the town
that had a 2.5 watt presunrise authorization. It covered
the town without any problem.
We have a local on 1290 kHz that runs 11 watts at night.
It dominates the channel, even though there are a
bunch of other 1290s on the air.
I agree with KC8GPD. I would get something like an
SS-Tran and leave the Procaster the way it is.
But that's just me.
And I wish I could tell you more, but that's all I know.
Bruce, DOGGRADIO STUDIO 2
The reason I like the procaster is because it seems to have some sort of built in antenna tuner and readout meter. It could be complicated to build your own matching devices networks traps etc... I know about it all but not good enough skill to make these things and i'm sure im not the only one beeing an everage guy. The procaster hasa built in inductance coil premade connecting to more or less final RF out and then the other end to RF out. Just like that. It seems to look like an easy job to bypass this coil and run your own without hurting the unit if someone would ever want to revert back. The procaster looks like the most user friendly device out that could be open to experimentation. But im far from an expert. I might be wrong.
I never looked at the ss-Tran in detail. If it had a built in tuner or meter or any kind. Then it would be easy to run a super long wire on it and mess around with random home made coils with miltiple tap points to find a sweet spot etc.. Having a indicator helps. Some have used lights to tune but that seems again a big to to and complicated!