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part 15 DX?

someone asked me about the antenna on my part 15 wprdj witch is called "wild plannet radio dj." i will say wprdj from now on. it's easier. anyway, i'm just using the antenna that is on the back of it. It's about 6 or 7 feet long i'd say and i just hang it as hi as i can on my window. you have to be carefull when moving the unit from place to place because sometimes the antenna wire can come out of the back and you have to open the wprdj and satter the wire back on. i had to have someone do that for my grounding wire. but i found you really dont' need that grounding wire on the wprdj. it actually does better without it in my ippinion.
overall the sound quality out of the wprdj is not half bad but the ramzy kits are better in my ippinion. it can go for months of one set of aa batteries... well it depends on how much you use the thing.
i love my wprdj but when it goes, to a ramzy i go. you guys are going to have to forgive me. i really don't know much about antennas as far as broadcasting goes but i am learning. and another disadvantage is that i am blind so i can't just up and build a kit esp if it requires sattering but i can have someone do it for me. i will just buy the preassembled kits. i'm better off like that.
i'd love to get in to it and change the freq to 1630 or something. there is a station on 1600 here so it makes it real bad for my signal. it does not go far at all.
that is the only sucky part though. that is one reason i want the ramzy. i bet you can change the freq on it.
 
Hey guys. I wanted to bring this topic back. I just got a replacement wild plannet dj unit. I forgot how awesome it sounded. Only bad part, there is a station on 1600 about 10 miles away. Wished I could get in there and change the frequency. That would be kinda hard to do when you're blind. lol. Anyway I also am working with a mobile blackbox v4000 fm transmitter. I had the v6000 until it croaked on me. I like the v4000 much better because it broadcasts in stereo.
 
Hey guys. I want to bring this one back. So I own this FM transmitter

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BX174X0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have attached a 6 FT micro USB cable to it and the power is provided to the transmitter from a USB port on my Dell optiplex 790. I can cover a 1500 or so square FT house with a very good signal and has been audable from the next street over but not crystal clear. I had thought about leaving my computer on and the transmitter on and to see if by some crazy off chance I could hear it on the HDR14 at my friend's place which is a mile away from my grand mother's house in Altamonte. My friend is in Lockhart just encase anyone here knows the Orlando area. Not before anyone starts to flip their lid, I don't know how to engineer or nothing so whatever the power of the transmitter puts out is the power I'll be working with. I was just curious if any eskip could carry my signal a mile. I'm not going to do anything to make it happen. I was just curious if you guys thought it could be a possibility.
 
austingrace said:
Hey guys. I want to bring this one back. So I own this FM transmitter

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BX174X0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have attached a 6 FT micro USB cable to it and the power is provided to the transmitter from a USB port on my Dell optiplex 790. I can cover a 1500 or so square FT house with a very good signal and has been audable from the next street over but not crystal clear. I had thought about leaving my computer on and the transmitter on and to see if by some crazy off chance I could hear it on the HDR14 at my friend's place which is a mile away from my grand mother's house in Altamonte. My friend is in Lockhart just encase anyone here knows the Orlando area. Not before anyone starts to flip their lid, I don't know how to engineer or nothing so whatever the power of the transmitter puts out is the power I'll be working with. I was just curious if any eskip could carry my signal a mile. I'm not going to do anything to make it happen. I was just curious if you guys thought it could be a possibility.
Click to expand...

Hey, there. Doubt you will hear anything that far away, but nothing wrong with leaving it on when you go to the other house. E-skip would not come into play here- that is a phenomena where a signal has to be actually strong enough to reach a level of the atmosphere where conditions are right to "bounce" it back to earth. Your "Part 15" compliant transmitter doesn't have the juice to get up into the upper atmosphere, I am afraid.
 
austingrace said:
Hey guys. I want to bring this one back. So I own this FM transmitter

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BX174X0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have attached a 6 FT micro USB cable to it and the power is provided to the transmitter from a USB port on my Dell optiplex 790. I can cover a 1500 or so square FT house with a very good signal and has been audable from the next street over but not crystal clear. I had thought about leaving my computer on and the transmitter on and to see if by some crazy off chance I could hear it on the HDR14 at my friend's place which is a mile away from my grand mother's house in Altamonte. My friend is in Lockhart just encase anyone here knows the Orlando area. Not before anyone starts to flip their lid, I don't know how to engineer or nothing so whatever the power of the transmitter puts out is the power I'll be working with. I was just curious if any eskip could carry my signal a mile. I'm not going to do anything to make it happen. I was just curious if you guys thought it could be a possibility.
Click to expand...

E-skip doesn't carry any micropower FM signal a mile. It carries high-powered FM signals several hundred miles on occasion, with the bottom end of the band getting much more skip activity than the upper.

I have a similar setup to yours. It barely can be received all over my house and back yard, and not at all in the front. (it's located near the back of the house) Since these transmitters are only allowed a field strength of 250 microvolts per meter at 3 meters, you won't get much range. That calculates to about 11 nanowatts ERP, or 11 hundredths of a microwatt. The FCC will never allow any more power than that.

You might get into your immediate neighbors' houses though, so choose your frequency carefully. One of them might want to hear that translator or LPFM 30 miles away that uses the frequency that you are using. That's a violation of FCC regs, since no unlicensed transmitter can interfere with ANY licensed station, period.

Have fun, but be sure to follow the rules.
 
Back in the old neighbourhood as teens (Queens NYC) we fooled around with what I guess would've been a few Part 15 AMs. One looked like a tuneable lump of coal and ran off a small battery, at 840. The more 'modern' one we used was some Lafayette something-or-other, tuned to 900. It was in a small cabinet, around the size of a square meatloaf.
The Lafayette one came with warnings and skulls-and-crossbones about its maximum legal antenna length being 10 feet. We went a few feet extra.
Not much. Like only 260 feet extra. We strung a wire along the fences and poles separating the backyards from those on the next block over. The signal (if the signal actually reached the end of the antenna) was incredibly directional. It went maybe a block and a half long and 15 feet wide. Our buddy had three coils he attenuated between the antenna output of the unit and the start of the longwire. They looked like those old springy things that people used to stow their 45 records in.
The signal only carried about five houses' north with any decent listenabilty. A pretty girl named Iris lived there. A pal of ours recalled the station WJJJ (a frequent sunset DX catch on 1260) and their offer of a free Bible to the furthest listener to call in that day.
Art's line was, 'If we did that, Iris would have a house full of Bibles.'

* * * * * * *

Up here in NEPA, we were decorating the tree one year. In the front window, eye level with the street view, we had a village. It was the standard-issue HO-gauge development, complete with Pleasant-Valley-Sunday suburbs plus slums (broccoli stalks make good Live Oak trees, by the way). I somehow managed to fashion an HO-gauge 'three tower directional' radio station on the edge of town, with a small shack. Blinking red lights and all. The wife thought I was nuts.

(Continued next post. Please try to stay awake. Tia)
 
..... my buddy on Long Island sent a small AM and a small FM transmitter he had no use for to me in PA. I *believe* they were Ramsey 10 things.

The AM was pretty useless. It drifted all over the place. The FM one was a lot better. I never really hooked it up to a respectable antenna. Even though I wired every foot of circuitry in the PA house, I know squatto about electronics. But one night I had the FM Ramsey all fired up for a reception tour. Of course, when I drove about a half a block away, it faded.
Well, my house was 1540' HASL. The *bottom* of the soup bowl that's our town is maybe 1450 feet ASL. I just kept driving south, to the mall. That place was like 1600 feet ASL. And sure enough, the gosh-darned station was coming in pretty well as I drove around the vast parking lot of the mall on our 107.9. Heck, it was either us or some deranged station programmer had ordered three Chris Rea songs in a row to be played.
The 'antenna' I used was an old set of rabbit ears fully extended, and standing by the door of the living room, inside. The mall is just about a mile away.

The crew later applied for -- and got -- an LPFM. Ol' One Ear here pushed through -- and legally survived -- three rules loopholes past our baffled FCC consulting engineer. But that's another story.

Basically: I'd like to know if it's possible (and the cost involved) to make one of those wee *AM* part 15 stations directional. At this time of year I keep thinking about that small HO-gauge station and its three towers outside our Holiday village ....
 
OK. I figured that would be the case. :) Just for anyone that is wondering, I use 87.5 and 87.7 to broadcast on. I'm really thankful that part of the band is very open here. Back in the days when I got my first FM transmitter I used 92.7 and 90.3. And in terms of the wild planet radio DJ, that thing has been gone since 2012 or so. But I would actually like to do a PT 15 AM set up one day.
 
austingrace said:
OK. I figured that would be the case. :) Just for anyone that is wondering, I use 87.5 and 87.7 to broadcast on. I'm really thankful that part of the band is very open here.
Click to expand...

Not legally, you don't. 47 CFR 15.239a states: "Emissions from the intentional radiator shall be confined within a band 200 kHz wide centered on the operating frequency. The 200 kHz band shall lie wholly within the frequency range of 88-108 MHz." It doesn't say you have to use FM, the center frequency doesn't have to be on xx.1, xx.3, etc, nor is a bandwidth of less than 200 kHz prohibited. But it can't be any wider than a standard FM broadcast signal, nor can any part of the emissions be below 88.0 or above 108.0 MHz.

FCC Regulation 15.239 (Operations in the FM broadcast band)

47 CFR 15.209 prohibits any operations on TV broadcast frequencies, with a few very specific exceptions, none of which apply here.

FCC Regulation 15.209 (General radiation limits)

Back in the days when I got my first FM transmitter I used 92.7 and 90.3. And in terms of the wild planet radio DJ, that thing has been gone since 2012 or so. But I would actually like to do a PT 15 AM set up one day.
Click to expand...

Despite the noise on the Ancient Modulation band these days, you'll probably get better range if you do use AM. A 3 meter antenna will be less inefficient at the high end than at the low end, though.
 
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