Messages

136

General Radio Discussion / Re: Why 69xx kHz?

« on: May 03, 2016, 2015 UTC »

After some research, it looks like the actual range is 6770-7000. It seems like this band aligns with the "land mobile" band right under 40 meters. Are there any specific stations to watch out for here (other than 6903, 6913 and 6915)?

How about the "land mobile" designations above and below the 20 meter band (13.87-14MHz and 14.35-14.99MHz)? Is there anything to watch for there? Apparently the 20m band is the most popular during the day?

I plan on operating AM. What is the normal audio bandwidth for AM on shortwave. Is it the same as the broadcast band (10khz)? Can I use whatever I want? My transmitter can go up to 50khz, so I'm deciding where to filter the audio.

I know these may seem like obvious questions to some of you, but I am not a ham, and I'm new to shortwave. (I do have all the equipment (spectrum analyzer) to make sure I'm not putting out any harmonics or spurs, though.)

Thanks for all the help!

137

General Radio Discussion / Why 69xx kHz?

« on: May 03, 2016, 0055 UTC »

So I'm new to this forum, but not to pirate radio in general. I pirated before on 1710khz, but the antenna construction is hard and I never seemed to get out very far (plus the ground conductivity where I am is really bad).

Anyway, I want to try pirating on HF and I'm wondering why most people use 69xx khz because for me it would be much easier to make an antenna for around 10-15 MHz. Does anybody listen for pirates around those frequencies? Do they get out as far?

See the graph on this site: http://www.voacap.com/antennas/squeezing-decibels-out-of-dipole/

You can see that if I created an antenna for 10-15, it is very doable to get the peak gain out of the antenna based on the distance from ground. However, if I were to use 69xx, it would be very hard for me to get more than 40ft from the ground and so not much gain...

So would pirating around 10-15 be better?