Post by Reverend Bow Voodoo on Mar 8, 2009 14:06:51 GMT -6
Hey Darklife,
I see you are into the AM BC band, which is great, I want to get in there as well. I have been a SW pirate for years... I recently acquired a AM Xmtr that will go 35 watts all day long, Xtal controlled, and cathode modulated.
What are you running for an antenna? That will be my next reall challenge..
Lol first of all it's "darklife". I am using a basic random length longwire antenna around 50 feet long with a top capacitance hat and loading coil at it's base. I only have a few radials at the base along with a few 6 foot groundrods. Impedance is tuned using a large rotor inductor and tune up is done using a T network.
Setting up an antenna for mediumwave is very specific to the type of transmitter being used and what kind of antenna matching (if any used) is done on it's output. It's not an easy task and is in fact very different from tuning antennas for shortwave.
No problem. Glad you are interested in MW for sure. It's a great band to broadcast on and is a lot of fun to learn about and setup for. One of the best tutorials I ever found on MW antenna design is this.. www.lpam.info/index.php?page=handbook
That guide has everything you need to know to get started on MW, has schematics, antenna info, and more. Have fun.
I have a LPB antenna tuner that I got with the transmitter.
Having the LPB antenna tuner. is going to make your work allot easier. I know one guy who fed a long wire L, with a LPB antenna tuner who covered an area with a population 300,000, with a very strong signal. He had a better signal than a 10,000 watt station at a location that was 15 miles from both transmitters. With 35 watts and that tuner, you are going to light up a pretty good size area; try to go to the top end of the dial, unless you can put the antenna a couple hundred feet in the air!
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