Total posts : 45366
Hello 12vman,
Careful, I may actually take you up on your offer!
Sorry for my delayed responses guys. Things were pretty busy over the holiday season.
I should also mention that a couple of my limitations here are space and the fact that there is a commercial 50 kilowatt AM about a mile away. But, the good news there is last year the station received approval for its relocation and that should hopefully be happening this year. It will certainly clear up a LOT of reception problems around here, not only for my little station, but for general AM listening as well. There is a lot of splatter being this close to the transmitter.
Okay, so here is some exciting news, over the holidays I ordered an SSTRAN AMT5000. From what I have read, users are reporting improved range therefore I am looking forward to building it and setting it up.
I also moved my station up the dial to 1650kHz. Going above 1610 is something I’ve always tried to avoid simply because of its obscurity in my area. Radio listeners here are not used to tuning to that part of the band. The highest anyone here has ever had to tune on AM is in the 1100kHz range. 1580 was already very far away from anything else. Although I am sure it’s not a huge issue these days, older tuners may not be able to tune above 1610kHz and so that also influenced the decision. 1580kHz was chosen because that was the quietest high frequency channel below 1610 I could find. (However, other frequencies were tested as well)
Well now there seems to be a lot of electrical interference on that channel and the signal gets washed out at night sometimes. Therefore, it was time to relocate on the dial. Along with this move is a format flip to a more contemporary music playlist to reflect on more localized talent.
While doing some testing over the holidays, I was once again amazed at the audio coming from my AMT3000. I use a Carver TX-11a tuner to monitor my broadcasts. You haven’t heard AM radio in all its glory until you hear it through this tuner. During the testing I also fired up an FM transmitter with the Stereo modulator turned off. Flipping between the AM and FM feed on the TX-11a resulted in almost identical audio from a quality standpoint. There was higher audio response at the high end on the AM feed because the treble boost is enabled on the AMT3000. (FM TX pre-emphasis was set to a 75 µs time constant, both transmitters receiving the same feed) Otherwise, the full audio range is heard over the AM. That is what I love about the SSTRAN product, it sounds great. However, I always felt the signal could use a little punch. Hopefully the AMT5000 will provide a better signal to the antenna.
Speaking of which, I’d still like to pair up the AMT5000 with as efficient of an antenna as possible and I’m looking for some help. Is there a PM function on this board?
