December 21 this year is only a Tuesday, a few days before Christmas, but it is also the Winter Solstice, a very interesting astronomical event. It is the shortest day of the year, but since thereafter everyday is a minute longer, it is nature’s actual New Years Day.
Also don’t forget the Twelve Days of Christmas. Last year I attempted to re-instate all twelve days, but everyone else lost interest after the main Christmas Day.
Lights and colors are very good for the mood and we should discuss what happens when our 10-foot mast is draped with strings of lights.
lights on a tower
I expect to see my lights change in brightness to the audio from the TX. I wonder how many watts I’d need in order to do that 😉
Light Inspection
The Crow
Describe the lights you will run on your tower. How many bulbs, what is the operating voltage of the lights?
Xmas Lights
I’d just use the standard xmas lights.
Carrier Current Christmas Coupler
Perhaps some inductive loading by wrapping the light string around the antenna would create a carrier current effect. Or, maybe just bother the telephone and baby monitor.
I remember one article where the guy terminated his Part 15 transmitter antenna cable with a coil of wire wrapped around his cable TV wire. By tweaking the coil he claimed obtaining a fantastic coverage area. He called that “carrier current” but I would liken it to link coupling to a long wire antenna.
Coupling to Utility Lines
For a brief time I used what I thought was a spare wire on a telephone baseboard block to get a ground line down into the basement, I am not sure what the ground line connected to, but I started hearing 1680 up to two miles away. The actual phone line still ran out to the pole but no longer had actual phone service because of having switched to cable telephone.
But I had two worries over the situation. Besides being concerned about too much RF coverage, I was afraid people would start hearing the broadcast on their telephones.
In the cable situation described by MRAM something similar might take place, namely the RF getting carried on cable, but an AM signal probably wouldn’t disturb video channels, although maybe it would upset internet or even telephone which, if it’s at all similar to DSL, might occupy AM frequency space on the cable.