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Messages - Tom S

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76
General Radio Discussion / Re: TV as LCD monitor in shack
« on: June 17, 2014, 0235 UTC »
Well I'm happy to report that so far I don't see any noise from the TV, even on the SDR.  I haven't yet scanned the entire HF spectrum, but what I've listened to so far yields good results.

Now if I could only get the power company to do something about their noisy lines...

77
General Radio Discussion / Re: has anyone ever thought about...
« on: June 17, 2014, 0232 UTC »
We know the religious shows have excess money (they can afford to air shows that nobody listens to). I assume the shows come from a church that has a budget for "missionary work" or "spreading the gospel". 

That, and a lot of them beg for money on the air, so that the missionary work also becomes a revenue source.

Quote
I assume the churches need listeners so I think the church would pay a person to make interesting/funny things to bring listeners to the main show. I'm thinking of 2min "commercials" of funny stuff not related to religion at all. 

You probably don't understand fundamentalists then.  Most fundie Christians eschew anything that's "worldly," or not specifically Christian.  And it seems most of them don't see a need to "bring listeners to the main show" because a lot of them assume that God will send them listeners.

78
Spy Numbers / Re: Swedish Rhapsody vs Luxembourg Polka
« on: June 16, 2014, 2003 UTC »
Both pieces of music sound similar, but I'd have to give the nod to Swedish Rhapsody.

79
General Radio Discussion / Re: About recording audio...
« on: June 16, 2014, 1810 UTC »
I use an old program called RecAll which allows me to record constant audio.  I also record at 11025 and without compression.  The program allows me to split up the files into hour long recordings.  The hour long files are 76MB, which aren't too unwieldy to open or edit.  And then Audacity allows me to convert them to mp3's if I desire.

I've come a long way from using a small cassette recorder back when I first started listening, and then later using a VCR on ELP with a T-160 tape giving me 8 hours of record time.  Now I can record nonstop for a month and still have plenty of HD space.

80
I think you'd get better results with a tethered helium balloon, but even that may not be feasible with the helium shortage.  An untethered balloon would have quite the footprint at about 80,000 feet, but limited flight time of about 30 minutes to an hour or so.

81
General Radio Discussion / Re: has anyone ever thought about...
« on: June 16, 2014, 1757 UTC »
Well, as one who's not religious the last thing I want to listen to is hours and hours of bible talk.  It's just not something I'm interested in, although I did keep the recording from WYFR on May 21, 2011 when they said that the rapture was definitely going to happen then.

But yes, shelling out $50 or $60 every week to put a show on a licensed broadcaster was a bit outside my budget since my radio budget is usually nonexistent.  But I think it would have been a fun project to do for a while.

82
General Radio Discussion / Re: TV as LCD monitor in shack
« on: June 16, 2014, 1750 UTC »
I haven't done a lot of tuning around yet, but so far I haven't noticed any noise attributable to the TV/monitor.  I remember hearing some noise a while back from one of our TV's, but I think it was the TV/DVD player combo in our kids' room.

The resolution is pretty sharp.  It looks just like a regular LCD monitor.  And the digital TV is also very sharp and high quality.

It was my understanding that the TV frequencies changed when they all went digital, but all the searching online for TV channel frequencies still brings up the old analog information, such as the audio for TV channel 2 being at 59.750 MHZ, etc.

I do have an old TV antenna I salvaged from a condemned house so I'll probably put it up and use it.

One good thing about using the TV as opposed to a regular LCD monitor, aside from being able to watch TV in the shack, is that it has an input for audio from the computer, so I do away with the computer speakers I had hooked up to listen to audio from the radios being fed into the computer.  If I need it quiet, I just hit the mute button on the remote.

83
Equipment / Re: Tips on broomstick receiving antenna
« on: June 13, 2014, 2033 UTC »
I've found that if you wind your coils too tightly, the capacitive reactance will work against the inductance and basically what you have is a trap.  When I was experimenting with a vertical antenna for SWL'ing years ago, I wrapped some copper-clad steel antenna wire around a short length of PVC pipe in the middle of two sections of pipe, making a center-loaded vertical.  The problem was that it was blocking all signals on the AM BCB.  I think it blocked everything 2 MHZ and below.  I took a lot of wire off the coil and spread out the turns a bit, and it worked fine.

The problem with a broomstick antenna is that you have so much wire in close proximity to each other, and unless you have a strong signal it's not going to hear very well.  It certainly won't hear signals as well as if you took all that wire coiled up on the broomstick and straightened it out.  Think of how well you hear signals on a rolled up wire.  It just doesn't work that well unless you space out the coils.  Something like a stretched-out slinky would work much better.

84
The only problem I could see would be the helicopter not giving enough thrust to lift the extra weight.  The xmitter would have to be pretty small.

Of course, if you got a larger helicopter then that would help some.

85
General Radio Discussion / Re: Any new shortwave stations?
« on: June 13, 2014, 1919 UTC »
I've never heard that before.  Ever since I started listening to shortwave 24 years ago shortwave stations like WWCR have run commercials.

86
Did you ever notice that interest in such things increased exponentially after the fall of the Soviet Union?

Yes, but my view might be biased because that's when I first started getting interested in people's belief in conspiracy theories.  It mainly started from listening to WWCR and all the militia wackos talking about little stickers on the back of road signs being secret signals to UN troops, etc.

But yes, all through the cold war we had to worry about the commies.  Now instead of everything being a commie conspiracy it's an Illuminati conspiracy.  I don't know that conspiracy theories picked up after the fall of the Soviet Union, but the players certainly have changed.

87
That's why I'm glad the druggies in my neighborhood just have meth labs.  There may be the chance of an explosion and toxic waste being poured out on the ground, but at least the RF spectrum is clean.

88
General Radio Discussion / TV as LCD monitor in shack
« on: June 13, 2014, 1739 UTC »
Anyone else here using a TV as a computer monitor in the shack?  My 17" LCD monitor died a while back so I went back to using an old 15" or so CRT I dug out of the garage, and it's hard on my crappy eyesight.  Last night my wife bought me an early Father's Day present, a 19" TV with VGA input.  

My main concern, of course, is RFI.  The TV we got is a cheaper one, so I don't know how well it's shielded.  Of course, I'm going to add some large ferrite beads to the cables to cut down on any spurious signals, but hopefully it won't put out noise like some TV's do.

I haven't hooked it up to my computer yet because I need to get a male-male VGA cable, but I did hook it up to my discone antenna and managed to see 10 local DTV stations.  Which leads me to my second question, what are the frequencies for the new TV channels?  I would like to build an antenna just for TV.

89
But if HAARP shuts down, what are the conspiracy nuts going to have to talk about?  I mean, besides 9/11, Obama's birth certificate, the NWO, FEMA camps, fluoride in drinking water, chemtrails, the Illuminati, Reptilians, and the JFK assassination?

90
General Radio Discussion / Re: has anyone ever thought about...
« on: June 13, 2014, 1732 UTC »
I always thought it would be a fun thing to do, but the cost was a bit prohibitive.  Then I think most stations wanted a certain number of programs, like one new program a week.  You'd have to be dedicated to do that, but in my busy life I couldn't guarantee a new show all the time.

Then, you also have to worry about paying royalties for any music you play.  Online stations on Live365 and Pandora, for example, have to pay a little for each song they stream.  If the recording industry wanted to be a bunch of dicks, they'd come after you demanding royalties.

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