Since the week of Christmas last year I have been running a Talking House 4.6 transmitter with their external ATU. The struggle from day 1 has been poor range (even with a solid 8 on the signal meter of the ATU), tinny fidelity, low modulation and major hum issues inside the house. I also have an assembled SSTran transmitter that also suffers major hum issues when the supplied wire antenna is used. What I was wondering is if I found the right adaptor to go from RG-6 to RCA at Radio Shack, would it work to marry the SSTran to the Talking House ATU? The superior modulation ability of the SSTran just might be the ticket to help me cover up the hum issues in the house, and if I can achieve the same signal strength on the meter of the Talking House ATU then I should still achieve the level of coverage to which I have become accustomed with the TH 4.6...1/8 mile clearly, close to 1/4 mile usable on a car radio.
Is there anything I should be aware of before trying this? I don't want to burn up the SSTran or ATU while conducting this experiment.
Deano
I'm not familiar with the SSTRAN but I would guess that it can drive a 50 ohm antenna load.
That being the case there should not be a problem using the Talking House remote antenna/tuner as the Talking House is designed for a 50 to 75 ohm load.
The SSTRAN does not work into 50 ohm loads without some slight modifications.
Since you have most of what you need for this it is worth a try to find out how it works.
The SSTRAN expects to see an 800 ohm load at its output transistor. Change the SSTRAN components as mentioned in the manual for using an external coil loaded antenna. The antenna impedance is transformed up to 800 ohms by tuning the loading coil slightly on the inductive side of resonance. This series inductance in combination with the internal tuning capacitor provides the transformation.
Since you are tuning the ATU manually you should be able to tune to a peak at the test points. This is not guaranteed by me to work but if it were mine I would try it. I am using a link fed loaded antenna with a tuning cap here and I get a sharp peak as I vary the capacitance and it works.
Neil
The designer of the SSTRAN told me that the coil should have an inductance of 400 uH to get it in the ballpark for tuning.