HFU HF Underground
General Category => Huh? => Topic started by: ThaDood on May 29, 2022, 0550 UTC
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I do on occasion check this page out, since supposedly our tax $$$$$'s are paying for these, but scroll down and check out how many outages there are as of late, (5/28/2022). https://www.weather.gov/nwr/outages Weird...
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It’s not much better here in Canada. Our equivalent is Weatheradio Canada. Our local AM Weatheradio Canada (the VHF one is fine) has been of air for at least several years. I phoned and asked about it a few weeks ago and found they had been unaware of the problem (for SEVERAL YEARS). I have a feeling it might be hard to fix because the transmitter is a LPB AM-5 and low power broadcasting (LPB) is out of businesses so now there is nowhere to service their products.
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Oh yeah!!!! I've always thought that made some nice sense to have a Weather FREQ broadcasting on the AM BC band. Well, if that is indeed a LPB AM-5, unless that took a big lightning hit and fried that, a decent tech shouldn't have too much trouble replacing anything on that transmitter. Even if a new crystal is needed, a DDS oscillator will do very nicely on that. I know this, since a friend of mine is running his AM Carrier-Current station with an AM-5 and a DDS OSC for his selected FREQ. So, far, rock solid for 8 years with him on that. So, can be done.
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I've noted a couple of recent outages for 162.55 which is the big one for Denver (300 W I think, whereas I'm under the impression that most transmit at 100 W.... I could be full of it though, except the 300 W part). Hopefully not something that happens during tornado/microburst season.
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Oh yeah!!!! I've always thought that made some nice sense to have a Weather FREQ broadcasting on the AM BC band. Well, if that is indeed a LPB AM-5, unless that took a big lightning hit and fried that, a decent tech shouldn't have too much trouble replacing anything on that transmitter. Even if a new crystal is needed, a DDS oscillator will do very nicely on that. I know this, since a friend of mine is running his AM Carrier-Current station with an AM-5 and a DDS OSC for his selected FREQ. So, far, rock solid for 8 years with him on that. So, can be done.
You're dealing with Canadian government. These are the people that are so uptight that when a new station signs on, they have to have a representative from IC come out and sign on the transmitter. I highly doubt they will retrofit an old transmitter with parts that would void its type acceptance.
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Oh yeah!!!! I've always thought that made some nice sense to have a Weather FREQ broadcasting on the AM BC band. Well, if that is indeed a LPB AM-5, unless that took a big lightning hit and fried that, a decent tech shouldn't have too much trouble replacing anything on that transmitter. Even if a new crystal is needed, a DDS oscillator will do very nicely on that. I know this, since a friend of mine is running his AM Carrier-Current station with an AM-5 and a DDS OSC for his selected FREQ. So, far, rock solid for 8 years with him on that. So, can be done.
You're dealing with Canadian government. These are the people that are so uptight that when a new station signs on, they have to have a representative from IC come out and sign on the transmitter. I highly doubt they will retrofit an old transmitter with parts that would void its type acceptance.
+-RH
The Canadian's are a picky bunch. When the transmitter that served the little towns along the inside passage from Vancouver to the Alaska border gave up the ghost, a bunch of hams in the region retrofitted a Kenwood transceiver to do the job 24/7 at their own cost and labor. Radio/TV Canada rejected it w/o firing it up for testing into a dummy load.
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https://swling.com/blog/2022/08/noaa-weather-radio-needs-some-serious-upgrades/ I wouldn't mind if my tax $$$$$'s went for that. Question is, will it?