Messages

511

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Re: Crapola Radio 6925 USB 2003 UTC 30 MAR 2023

« on: March 30, 2023, 2304 UTC »

Professor Plum wouldn't be related to P.G. Wodehouse would he? Wodehouse was a man who made a living on stories about fools. He wasn't a professor but his friends called him "Plum". If you can find it, read his short story, "The Great Hat Mystery". It explains a lot about  the British upper class.

Professor Plum and Miss Scarlett are on the show together. I don't have a clue about the other one.

Colonel Mustard thinks that there might be a candlestick involved.

512

Broadcast Announcements / Re: Aprils Fools Day Show- CrapOla Pirate Radio

« on: March 30, 2023, 2216 UTC »

... the Aprils Fools Day Show.

Is this a joke?

513

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Thunder Chicken 12230 USB 1930 UTC 30 MAR 2023

« on: March 30, 2023, 2138 UTC »

Thunder Chicken or should it be renamed Thunder Turkey?

2150 - Op notes that "Thunder Chicken" is a term for a turkey. OK, noted, but my counterpoint is that most of your SSTV images over the past months have been of chickens and the "cluck, cluck" that you drop in between songs occasionally would be quite an odd turkey sound. 

514

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: Thunder Chicken 12230 USB 1930 UTC 30 MAR 2023

« on: March 30, 2023, 2136 UTC »

SINPO 35333 at home in California this afternoon. A little lighter than is acceptable to me for pleasurable listening. Much better on the big SDRs (KPH, KFS and Northern Utah) with much bigger and better antennas than little old me.

Grateful Dead tunes. (Spark one up, boys.) I'm something other than a Dead Head but I recognize "Terrapin Station" at 2135 UTC.
2150 - Remake of "Werewolves of London".
2200 - Off after ID.

515

North American Shortwave Pirate / Re: BallSmacker Radio 6960 AM 0056 UTC 25 MAR 2023

« on: March 25, 2023, 0108 UTC »

I'm calling it at 0107 - The theme is "Don't"

Conditions are poor, of course. Even when the signal is strong, the fading and the static make OTA listening very difficult.

516

General Radio Discussion / Re: Balls

« on: March 24, 2023, 2139 UTC »

This is amusing. Maybe they have a half-hour in Mandarin on Sunday mornings? 

Seriously though, I (we) don't know what their range is and I also don't know where the Ecuadorian diaspora has been displaced to. On the other hand, the tri-state area has likely one of the most saturated FM bands in the US and the capture effect* of receivers may limit their range.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_effect

517

General Radio Discussion / Re: Balls

« on: March 17, 2023, 0735 UTC »

There are people that have taken on the FCC and tied them up in knots for a while (read as "decades") but they typically had the tricks of the trade in their pocket. The case of the former W6WBJ, a retired lawyer, comes to mind. This guy Barnes shows no signs of of employing any delaying tactics (or any sort of tactics, for that matter, other than trying to BS them with a handwritten note) and I just don't think he has the smarts.

I agree that this won't end well.

518

The RF Workbench / Re: U-LULU (Updated LULU) for 48 meters, 20 Watt Class-E AM Transmitter

« on: March 17, 2023, 0627 UTC »

Yes, aiming for the 6.2 - 6.3 range.  With 21 turns for L2 it was a little high, peaking in the 6.4 region so I tried 23 turns which brought it down to 5.8, so I've settled on 22 turns for the moment which seems about right with the ability to squeeze or open the coil a little.

OK.

I did see that you had used the Wondom board, they seem to be pure unobtainium in the UK, I have accounts with Farnell and their sibling CPC and they don't have them. 

Forgive me, I was wrong and it appears that Farnell does not carry them nor does AliExpress any longer ("no longer available"). Well that's a bummer. When I started this thing in 2021 they were quite available but of course 2 years is an eternity in this industry, especially with the disruption of COVID-19.

• The price from Audiophonics in France is great and is ~$10US lower than parts-express.com in the US charges. That would pay for the (surely) additional shipping cost from France to me.
• It appears that Sure (Wondom is Sure Electronics) has a "marketplace" store on Digikey (akin to Amazon Marketplace, it appears) and their price is not too bad: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/sure-electronics/MPAB1X100-TPA3116/13982205
• It appears you can also buy direct from Sure but the shipping is probably from Taiwan: https://store.sure-electronics.com/product/AA-AB31184

I'll trawl AliExpress and Banggood to see what they have.
I have tried a clone 100w mono board from eBay also based on the TPA3116 but no joy at all.  I'll give it another go this weekend when I have some more time.

I have a DROK (or Bangood?) module or two and they are problematic in this application. The audio cuts out intermittently, especially at high output and I assume it to be the over-current protection circuitry doing this. The protection appears to be a bit more over-zealous than a real TPA3116-based module. (The U-LULU is something like a 3-4 Ohm load according to simulation.)

Whatever you end up going with, it needs to drive at least 5 Amps peak at 4 Ohms (100 Watts into 4 Ohms differential = 5 Amps RMS). Of course, we are using the amplifier single-ended with the U-LULU. Four Ohms differential (such as a loudspeaker) is equivalent to 2 x (2 Ohms single-ended to ground). If it can handle a 4-Ohm speaker then it should be good to go. Of course the Bangood and DROK are supposed to drive 3 or 4 Ohms too, so.....

For this weakness and a few other reasons (that I am too lazy to describe right now) I suspect Banggood and DROK modules are built around counterfeit TPA3116 chips that can't drive a 2-Ohm load like the real thing from TI. Caveat emptor.

519

General Radio Discussion / Re: Balls

« on: March 15, 2023, 2213 UTC »

There is zero probability that they were in La Grande, Oregon on a lark.

The NALF indicates they first gave him the knock in 2018 after "complaints". They did not mention Facebook posts in association with the first or second times they visited him.

520

FM Free Radio / Re: Not so doing at home sweet home

« on: March 15, 2023, 1932 UTC »

Related: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-391761A1.pdf

FCC PROPOSES FIRST PIRATE ACT FINES TOTALING MORE
THAN $2 MILLION FOR ILLEGAL RADIO BROADCASTING

521

General Radio Discussion / Balls

« on: March 15, 2023, 1930 UTC »

7. On April 8, 2022, just over two weeks after the Agent issued the third NOUO, Barnes
uploaded a video to his public Facebook account stating that he was again operating his pirate station.22
Barnes stated in this video that he did not think the Commission could stop his unauthorized broadcasts
unless it “locked him up.” On April 14, 2022, Barnes posted yet another video stating that he was
“getting ready to go live on 100.5 FM.”23 After conducting additional research, the Agent also discovered
that, in the year prior to the start of the 2022 investigation, Barnes had uploaded over 30 videos to his
public Facebook account in which he stated that he was the “Eastern Oregon Pirate of Pirate Radio
Eastern Oregon” and that he was broadcasting live or was planning to broadcast live on 100.5 FM in La
Grande, Oregon.24

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-23-16A1.pdf

522

SDR - Software Defined Radio / Re: Kiwi SDR software tuning aside of the pointed frequency

« on: March 15, 2023, 0113 UTC »

This decoder improves the stability of the reception, because it partially eliminates the effect of selective fading of the AM carrier wave.

Yes and in many cases it can dramatically improve the quality of reception of very weak AM signals as well, "pulling them out of the noise" somewhat.

523

SDR - Software Defined Radio / Re: Kiwi SDR software tuning aside of the pointed frequency

« on: March 15, 2023, 0106 UTC »

Yep, I uderstand all that. But often, to escape the splashes, I have to go to USB or LSB.
I even use SAM with the sideband selection, SAU or SAL. Alas, in those modes, all too often, the sync is lost, and the audio is mashed. And when I see a carrier on the waterfall, I can't tell its exact frequency, I point on it, and the software tunes 1.5 kHz aside ! Then I have to make the panel come back, but it covers about 40 percent of the waterfall range on my small screen !

I understand the frustration.

I find that the default passband filters in SAL and SAU just barely include the carrier frequency and during fading, synchronization can be lost or come close to losing it. (This may have been improved in a recent software update.) To avoid or mitigate the possibility of sync loss when I am using SAL or SAU modes, I will usually adjust the passband filters to include the carrier and also more of the unintended sideband than is provided by default. This seems to lessen the possibility of loss of synchronization.

524

SDR - Software Defined Radio / Re: Kiwi SDR software tuning aside of the pointed frequency

« on: March 15, 2023, 0051 UTC »

The way I avoid that is by tuning in AM mode then switching to the one I am going to listen in.

Yes, also general tuning around in SAM or SAS in "large" frequency steps (greater than 1 KHz, for example) will generally produce a continuous tone when you finally stop and try to listen to an AM signal. This tone comes about because the inserted carrier that is inherent in synchronous detection (SAM, SAS, etc.) comes from a phase-locked loop (PLL) action (generated in software) that is not able to "lock" onto the AM carrier that you just tuned across because its lock range is much smaller than the tuning steps you were using.

The way to fix this is to momentarily switch modes to anything other than a synchronous mode (e.g., AM, IQ, etc.) then back into SAM or SAS, at which point the PLL can lock onto the AM carrier since the receiver is likely tuned very close to the actual carrier frequency and the PLL can lock.
 
In any case, I try to avoid tuning while using a synchronous mode for this reason but I sometimes forget and I use the method above to get out of the continuous tone mode and lock the PLL.

525

SDR - Software Defined Radio / Re: Kiwi SDR software tuning aside of the pointed frequency

« on: March 15, 2023, 0036 UTC »

When using the pointer on WF to change frequency,
if the mode is USB or LSB,
then the soft tunes aside, 1.5 kHz away from the pointed frequency, grrrrr....

Yes, I find this annoying but like many things I think that one becomes habituated to it and learn to modify my behavior.

This operation is different than, for example, WebSDR (e.g., Twente) but after many weeks of only using KiwiSDRs, I become used to it and attempting to use a WebSDR requires a few attempts to get through my stumbles as a result of the differences.