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Post by Admin on Jun 12, 2022 20:53:14 GMT
How's your station doing these days?
Just wondered what kind of useable range you're getting and what's your setup to accomplish this?
I'm still using the Talking House with their range extender, as permitted per the FCC certified test results.
My typical range to a vehicle radio is about 1.25 miles. After that it gets pretty spotty.
My station runs 24/7 with ZaraRadio v. 1.6.2 automation.
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Post by mark on Jun 19, 2022 0:16:53 GMT
I am similar to you, 24/7 all automated with Zara running along smoothly with an oldies format and running Suspense Theater radio shows at 10 PM each day automated with Zara. With the Procaster on 1630 and an in the cabinet "ground" and after experimentation with the antenna wire(I'm doing it from indoors) shapes and location, I am getting out nicely to the neighborhood and beyond. Using the Sean Cuthbert 3 band compression with EQ along with the Procaster studio processor. Here's my artificial ground in the cabinet. I did it neatly on the back of the board and it's hardly seen when reinstalling the board in the case but this is the diagram. I can't show the picture of my range as the picture drawn on the map from Google maps of my area is to big to upload here....it won't let me. But the strong signal goes up and down the block and around the block both sides of the street and a weaker signal about 1/2 a mile all around. I have a few listeners and I advertise on a site called nextdoor which is a forum for neighbors in a local area.  |
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Post by Admin on Jun 19, 2022 18:32:25 GMT
Very good!
I'm using an old Marantz 5030 Cassette recorder as a compressor/leveler. Does a good job. Also have a Tascam GA-30 graphic equalizer in line to tailor the audio response to my liking.
Programming consists of random plays from my music library until a scheduled show comes on. Shows are:
Lefty Gomez Rock Show, Tim's Oompah Hour, Lew's Radio Active, Gaules Mouldie Oldies, Gospel Memories, The Italian Connection, DJ Frederick's Radio Thrift Shop, The Kevin Smith Show-Talk Radio Like No Where On Earth.
Zara takes care of breaks every 20 minutes during random plays, announcing Station ID, Time and Temperature.
I started this thread to see how the Hobby Broadcasting is doing these days. There are so few posts here lately... but lots of visitors.
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Post by mark on Jun 20, 2022 0:00:29 GMT
I know this forum and part 15.org seem to be dead these days. Lots of visits on both but no posts. I think it's because there's no new topics to post and everything has been covered in the past. I seem to be doing what others do...check for new posts by someone else. A suggestion I could make is to allow a larger picture able to be posted...say up to 2MB instead of 1MB. I wanted to post my range but even resizing it wasn't small enough. That "ground" I did was just an experiment to see what would happen and was surprised at the jump in the meter reading with everything else the same. Found also that how the antenna is shaped makes a difference. I try to adjust the EQ to sound better on the not so good receiver one may listen on and got comments from one of my listeners down the street saying how do I make AM sound good! When tuning I use a hand held signal strength meter getting the signal off the antenna as it has a higher resolution than the little tuning meter inside. Here's what I use to tune the antenna.. Also the antenna is looped around a little screw by the ceiling and looped back on itself and taped near the Procaster. With it this way the signal peaked a whole lot higher increasing my range. Straight up vertical is not always the best!   |
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Post by Johny on Jun 30, 2022 3:30:19 GMT
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Post by Admin on Jul 4, 2022 3:06:18 GMT
Hello Johny, nice to know some of the old gang is still around.
Your studio is looking good as ever and I see your posts on Facebook.
Seems I land in Facebook jail quite often anymore.
Lefty Gomez is still kickin. He and his Misses bought and RV and cruise the southwestern states.
Keep in touch.
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Post by sparepart on Jul 6, 2022 11:42:32 GMT
Still here - actually running two channels, using talking houses and range extenders in a side mount configuration. mbcf.boards.net/post/16446 Channel #1 is big band and swing, full auto using Rivendell Channel #2 is classic rock, full auto using Rivendell. We stream on our internal network Channel #3 (the FM experiment) ended in March when we returned the AAC100S to the owner mbcf.boards.net/post/16462Have a pair of donated TR.6000 Model 15.73 transmitters to replace the talking house gear , scraping up the coin to have a broadcast engineer set this up to stay legal. Music library continues to grow, the backlog of media to ingest into Rivendell is slowly shrinking SP |
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Post by Admin on Jul 6, 2022 21:48:32 GMT
Very cool!
I've always liked the Talking House units. The older ones just need a little tweak in the audio stage to open the audio low end. Just had to change one coupling cap making it a 10 uf instead of a 1 uf. That brought the usable low end down to 30 Hz from 300 Hz.
I also installed a "netting" cap on the master oscillator which allows me to ZERO in the frequency (which was about 800 Hz off.) At night when the Skywave signal comes in, it's nice to have ZERO heterodyne from other stations.
If you're ever listening to 13.560 mHz, you may hear my CW beacon. That's the ISM band where Part 15 allows a few milliwatts. In CW I send "MRAM 1500 CF OH V V V".
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