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talking house transmitter report

J

jammerdave

Just took delivery of a talking house transmitter from an ebay seller. It was used, but came in the original box & with a talking house sign (no manual, tho). Paid just a bit over $100 for it..

We are getting ready to sell the house, so I thought that this might be of some value, and also, I'd have a neat toy to play with afterwards.

First thing I noticed: A "key" is required to change frequency or change the recording. No problem, it's just a shorted 1/8" plug that goes in the "key" jack on the rear panel.

Audio inputs are RCA unbalanced. I haven't tried a new recording yet, but I did plug in a CD player into the "live" input, which was too hot of a level. That input is something lower than -10db line level. I used a little behringer mixer to adjust the level down to the point where it wasn't overdriving the transmitter. Sounded decent then. I added a bit of high end boost to make it a bit brighter. The "live" input disables the internal player when you stuff an RCA plug in it.

Something cool I noticed is that the RF circuitry automatically tunes itself via motor/gear driven inductors when you first turn it on or re-tune the frequency (pretty cool) I am using the standard 3 meter wire that came with it, but I see that they also offer an external ATU via an F connector and mode switch on the back. No range reports yet, as I'm testing it at the office in a metal framed building (eeeww).

Also, I took delivery of my SSTRAN kit, but have not had time to play with that yet.

Cheers!
Jammerdave
 
Thanks for the props JD! We love hearing that we've been simulcasted somewhere. Anyone with a part 15 station is welcome to rebroadcast our feed.

Check our site at www.Surfside1640.com for the HD digital feed.

Cheers!

Surfside 1640 Radio
 
Update/info Re: talking house transmitter report

I finally got the thing set up at the house.

Sounds "OK". Turns out that the mic for the built in recorder is located on the main board, and you speak through the top grill when recording.

Power supply: The standard wall-wart supply it comes with is un-labeled as to specs. I checked that out, and it is a 12 volt unit. I have an identical supply that came with a uniden scanner, and it specs at 12vdc, 700ma. Positive tip on the coaxial power plug.

Grounding: I have a potomac FIM-41 field strength meter, so it was easy to see the difference between using only the groung thru the wall wart 3 prong plug VS grounding to my amateur radio ground system that includes an 8' rod and a lot of buried metal pipe going around the property and out to my well.
there is about 3db or more difference, in my case, with the antenna just strung up on the wall in my ham shack. Equivalent to doubling the power, so grounding properly is worthwhile. I'm sure a good radial system spread evenly around the antenna would be substantially better. Even more so with a tuned radiator like the one described on the SSTRAN site. As it is, it currently has an effective range of about 200 yards. I used the "F" connector body to attach the ground with a small clamp. This connector is normally used for the optional remote antenna/tuner unit.

Transmitter PA mixing:
I originally had it on 1650, but I noticed that the 1690 station (a mile away) was mixing the signal, and you could hear it in the background on my signal. I moved it down to 1580 ( really clear here) and the problem went away. Slightly reduced signal strength with same 3 meter wire antenna on 1580 vs 1650, as to be expected. The transmitter automatic-tuned output network is hi-Q (narrow) enough to stop the mixing when I get far enough away from the offending signal. Something to keep in mind with this unit, and maybe others.

Now, some time to build my SSTRAN, soon, I hope! A friend here at work just finished one, and he gives it glowing reports as to the sound quality and ease of assembly. I am a broadcast engineer, and he is just learning, so his report says a lot about the SSTRAN unit.

There ya have it..
JD
 
Re: Update/info Re: talking house transmitter report

jammerdave said:
I finally got the thing set up at the house.

Sounds "OK". Turns out that the mic for the built in recorder is located on the main board, and you speak through the top grill when recording.

Power supply: The standard wall-wart supply it comes with is un-labeled as to specs. I checked that out, and it is a 12 volt unit. I have an identical supply that came with a uniden scanner, and it specs at 12vdc, 700ma. Positive tip on the coaxial power plug.

Grounding: I have a potomac FIM-41 field strength meter, so it was easy to see the difference between using only the groung thru the wall wart 3 prong plug VS grounding to my amateur radio ground system that includes an 8' rod and a lot of buried metal pipe going around the property and out to my well.
there is about 3db or more difference, in my case, with the antenna just strung up on the wall in my ham shack. Equivalent to doubling the power, so grounding properly is worthwhile. I'm sure a good radial system spread evenly around the antenna would be substantially better. Even more so with a tuned radiator like the one described on the SSTRAN site. As it is, it currently has an effective range of about 200 yards. I used the "F" connector body to attach the ground with a small clamp. This connector is normally used for the optional remote antenna/tuner unit.

Transmitter PA mixing:
I originally had it on 1650, but I noticed that the 1690 station (a mile away) was mixing the signal, and you could hear it in the background on my signal. I moved it down to 1580 ( really clear here) and the problem went away. Slightly reduced signal strength with same 3 meter wire antenna on 1580 vs 1650, as to be expected. The transmitter automatic-tuned output network is hi-Q (narrow) enough to stop the mixing when I get far enough away from the offending signal. Something to keep in mind with this unit, and maybe others.

Now, some time to build my SSTRAN, soon, I hope! A friend here at work just finished one, and he gives it glowing reports as to the sound quality and ease of assembly. I am a broadcast engineer, and he is just learning, so his report says a lot about the SSTRAN unit.

There ya have it..
JD
Click to expand...
I have reports that the SSTRAN final has very low efficiency (less then 30%) so your ouput might be very low with the FCC part 15 mandated input to the final of 100 milliwatts. Please let us know.
 
Well, I got he SSTRAN built over the weekend. While it does sound great, I noticed the the output is a lot lower than with the "talking house" unit. I had step the potomac field strength meter down by 10db. I will call sstran, and double check on the output tuning meter readings. It is a very well thought out kit, though. All parts there, easy to follow instructions, etc. I've built a lot of kits in my day, and this ranks up there with the best of them.
I used both the output tuning meter points and the potomac field strength meter for tuning, at least the potomac and the meter points jived on the output peak.

I'll follow up when I learn more from sstran

jd
 
Received this reply from SSTRAN..

Hi Dave,

Your results depend on whether you are using the wire antenna or the external base-loaded antenna. Which one are you using?

With the wire antenna, a 6V reading is normal at the high end of the band. This is a relative reading and is for finding the tuning peak only. The internal tuning circuit is much less efficient than the external loading coil. The internal tuning circuit is designed for ease of tuning across the entire band. This involves compromises in efficiency but results in enough signal to be received strongly within a house or building.

The external base-loaded antenna provides a near perfect match to the transmitter, but only over the 1500-1700 kHz range. You will notice a very much stronger signal with the base loaded antenna.

Hope this answers your questions.

Phil Bolyn
SSTRAN

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Fortenberry [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 1:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: amt3000 questions..


Hello,
I took delivery of my kit a couple of weeks ago, and finally built it this weekend. Great job on the kit. High quality stuff, easy and well thought out directions. Even better, it worked and sounded great when I finished it!

On the test points, I can only get about 6 to 6.5 volts max/peaked, and the peak is extremely sharp while tuning the capacitor. Is this normal? I set the output network switches to provide me the highest peak I could get.
The reason I ask is, on my potomac fim-41 field strength meter, I had to down-range it by 10db as compared to my "talking house" unit. Same length antenna, same ground, antenna positions set the same, and the range is substantially less as well.

Any help with this is appreciated,
thanks
 
Re: talking house transmitter report and Rangemaster questions

Hey engineering types,

I have always had so-so coverage with my Talking House II, but the audio is so bad that I gave up the coverage for the much improved audio of the SSTran. After reading this thread I went straight to Lowe's and bought an 8' ground rod. Even though my part of Florida is a sand box when I ran a wire from the ground rod to the outside of the F connector on the TH II the modulation almost doubled (it is still a quiet whisper on the dial compared to other stations) and there was a significant increase in coverage...from an 1/8 mile to almost a 1/4 mile using a 7 foot wire antenna (I had to remove three feet of antenna to make up for the three foot ground lead I needed to hook the transmitter to the G/R outside).

Now the questions. My Talking House II has always had a bad hum on the audio. I have double and triple checked to verify that the audio out of the Alesis compressor/limiter is clean. Even with the audio cable unplugged it has a very bad hum. When I use one of those three prong to two prong plug adapters to eliminate the ground through the power supply does reduce the hum a little, but not much. And since you can't modulate the TH II very hard, you can't cover up the hum with agressive processing or modulation. When using my SStran I also have a slight hum, but it is much lower than the TH II and can be covered up by cranking up the modulation. Any suggestions from the group on other troublshooting ideas I can try to eliminate the hum?

I have been very tempted to bite the bullet and try a Rangemaster but fear that I will have the same hum issues I am fighting now and would be out $900. One engineer friend of mine thinks that the signal is getting into the house wiring and the hum is a by-product of the mixing. Thats all greek to me. If I were to install a Rangemaster on a wooden fence post to get it a couple feet off the ground and ran a 8' G/R right along the side of the post, what kind of coverage could I expect mounting the transmitter so close to ground level? In my deed restricted neighborhood I can't mount it on the roof. Since the power supply will still be plugged in to my house wiring, will I still have the hum that plages my other two transmitters? I just want a good signal (1/4 mile in the daytime would suit me fine) and NO HUM.

Any suggestions or trouble shooting ideas would be delightful.
 
It sounds like you may have a ground loop that is causing the hum. My Talking House TH II and my audio source (my computer) are plugged into the same power strip, which caused a terrible 60 Hz AC hum in the transmitter's audio.

I connected a Radio Shack audio line Ground Loop Isolator (Catalog No. #270-054) between the computer and the Talking House, and the hum vanished. If your AC grounding isn't perfect, a Radio Shack AC line filter (Catalog No. #15-1111) filters out noise that gets into the house wiring. (I'm not a Radio Shack stockholder, just a satisfied user of both of these devices.) :)

By the way, your Talking House TH II should have good, loud audio "punch" and high modulation. None of mine have weak "whispering" audio as you described your unit as having.


-- Black_Shire
 
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