Small chunks of memory float around in the brain for years, then suddenly meet other chunks of memory and a new thought is born.
Small chunks of memory float around in the brain for years, then suddenly meet other chunks of memory and a new thought is born.
The new thought of the moment is the realization that part 15 broadcasting is the “top of the line”, the “ultimate in quality”, the “mecca of excellence”.
The small memory chunks that bring this new thought into mind include something a radio engineer said in the 1960s.
The engineer explained that the reason radio stations broadcast with such high power is to allow the radio manufacturing industry to produce inferior, cheap, insensitive radios. He said that if high quality radios were the norm, much lower radiated powers would do the job.
The second memory chunk recalls what we talk about now here at part15.us…. the milliWatt signals are best received on very high quality, sensitive radios.
Therefore part 15 broadcasting represents the green, efficient, non-polluting world of our dreams. No drain on the power grid.
Full power licensed stations are brute-force frackers; electronic oil-spillers; energy squanderers.
Unplug them. Unplug them all.
No Batteries Required…
Now, if they would just bring back quality, sensitive receivers powered by watch batteries or better yet, powered by ambient, radiated background noise.
Crank Power
The Grundig FR-200 has a very sensitive AM section with a power generating crank that restores battery capacity.
For the first year I owned it I lived solely on crank power and truly believe women began to notice my arms.
But one day the crank broke off and I turned to AA-batteries, which last an amazingly long time in this radio.
It resembles Tinky Winkies purse, but I am secure in my guyhood and carry it openly.
Memory Chunks
The engineer explained that the reason radio stations broadcast with such high power is to allow the radio manufacturing industry to produce inferior, cheap, insensitive radios. He said that if high quality radios were the norm, much lower radiated powers would do the job.
This depends not just on transmitter power, but on where the receiver is located, the r-f noise level there, co-channel interference, the medium-wave frequency used, and more.
Useful reception by most AM broadcast receivers in the past, and even these days was/is limited by the field intensity of the arriving radio wave compared to the ambient r-f noise and interference at that receiver location.
Probably there isn’t much point in producing (or buying) a consumer-level AM broadcast radio receiver more sensitive than is useful for reception conditions.
AM broadcast stations can’t control local r-f noise levels, interfering signals, or earth conductivity. All they can do is to try to maximize the strength of their arriving radio waves by being authorized to use high radiated powers, and low frequencies in the AM broadcast band.
Part 15 AM operators wish for the same, I suspect, although low frequencies are not as useful for this, given the restraints of §15.219.
NOTICE: The word “functional” was not used in the above text.
Funky
I’d guess the expression “funky” and even “funk” are abbreviations from “functional”, “function” and “functioning”.
My reason for tampering with the oft used phrase “functionally compliant” was that I rather supposed that if it was “compliant” it would therefore, necessarily, be “functional” or otherwise its compliance would not be in question.
Yet, I held open the possibility that, in a language skill beyond my own, the inclusion of “functionally” together with “compliant” might have a special case importance in terms of scientific literacy.
There are many things that are not functional. We must try not to be one of them.
One Good Turn Deserves Another…
My daughter presented me with a Radio Shack multiband radio one Father’s Day and it too has a “crank” to charge the internal NiCad pack.
It too will run on two regular “AA” batteries or an external AC adaptor.
The amazing thing is the “AA” batteries can run down to practically nothing and the radio continues to perform very well. Only at high volume does it distort a little.
Now if it just had a solar cell like the one my wife has…
FCC Rules and Time
I was wondering this morning if there is a “statute of limitations”, so to speak, on FCC rule violations. Or is it more like pooper-scooper laws, in which you are either “caught in the act” or escape without penalty.
Back in the 1950s I chummed with some RF types who infused me with enough knowledge to build a Frankenstein Transmitter, made of dead parts from a surplus store. I went heavy on large power supplies and tubes that glowed blue and orange when the power variac was turned up. The most potent piece of knowledge I managed to employ was the “grid dip” method of tuning between a buffer and final. This monstrosity was set with a variable oscillator at about 1630kHz with power X for unknown. I knew nothing of antennas, antenna loading nor harmonics. It was brute force power into a wire.
I think I need to change the years to the early 1960s, because the clunky transistor portable radio I used for testing did not exist any earlier.
One night I rolled the Wollensak tape recorder playing “fine music” and went walking in the dark listening to the “flame thrower”. Solid signal for one block. Two blocks. Three blocks, four blocks, about a mile, with still no sign of fade out. I became filled with panic that my “crime” would get me swarmed with agents before I could get home to turn it off.
Half a century later here I am confessing on worldwide web, trusting that enough time has passed to avoid a citation. Yet, my “guilt” could impell me to “turn myself in”. Please write me on the “inside”.