Hi Guys.. This is actually my first post and hope its not the last The forum is resourceful and awesome .. Am pretty new to the hobby .. have been reading for the past weeks ... Would like your opinion about couple of things ..
Am planning to get my first transmitters.. Am looking for a 30Watt +- FM transmitter that could work for fixed and mobile stations. I can see HLLy and CZH Transmitters are all over the place, some say they are crap and some say they work fine and some say they are fake !!! I have no idea where to get a working one as they are marketed ... I found two site for HLLY: www.hllyelectronics.com/ AND www.hllytransmitter.com/ ... which one is the true company ?? I need your recommendation for that and how to make sure its not fake or uses cheap components ... if am buying a 30W TX, i need to see 30W on that Wire .. Am looking for a transmitter that would stand a good amount of reflected power for 10-15 minutes at a time .. I need your recommendation and suggestion
Second point ... Now .. 1/4 Wave GP or 5/8 Wave ??!! My operating studio in an urban area with buildings mainly and possibly will do some mobile operation when we are in the outdoors... which antenna works fine and which one could be camouflaged easily..
That's for now .. would be awaiting your help and feedback ..
Others will have to chime in on the transmitters you are talking about. As far as the antenna I would always choose a true 5/8 wave over a 1/4 wave gp for the bit of gain it will give you. When you get up to 30 watts you may not notice a huge difference between both antennas though if your local service area is only of importance.
In reply to Astroguy and transmitter reconendations... There are 2 companies in China that manufacture ALL the transmitters that all the sellers on ebay and amazon(usa) sell. Hlly and all other companies and sellers including failsafe on amazon get the CHZ transmitters from Camel RF in China with their logo on it selling it under their name. Even another US seller just came to mind also selling these with their name on it....Dagco electronics or something like that. The other company in China making transmitters is Vastelec and they also are sold from other venders that have them ordered with their name on it. The STA 1 watt to 25 watt transmitters is the same story. Hlly makes NO transmitters of their own. A third company in china, Fmuser, not sure if they make any of their own or just sell others, have a few different ones....the model I have is a CRF-01A, 0-1 watt and have had for a year and is excellent but you said you want 30 watts. You can go to Camel RF and buy all these transmitters directly from them with DHL shipping included in price.
The more power you have the more crucial to have a good antenna match. The RF output generates energy which if it can't be dissapated in the antenna generates heat which kills the output transisters because the internal temperature gets too high. If you need to abuse it a little use a bigger heat sink or a better fan to cool faster.
They are more expensive than the rest but they make a very good product. I know you said 30 watts but check out the 100 watt system, it can be dialed down from 1 watt to 100 watts,(this is what i am running) if you buy a 30 watt system you will eventually want to upgrade to a more powerful system. as for SWR protection a quote from there site "The amplifier is fully protected from poor SWR and reflected power for any duration of time." Good luck... Sixer CYNR 96.3Fm
Another thing to keep in mind is that if you purchase a transmitter that can handle more power than you need but allows you to dial down the power to the level you want to use it will give you some headroom for the transmitter to breathe and run cooler and can help in case of any possible hickups in antenna SWR.
Running some of those chinese transmitters at full rating doesn't give a lot of room for error or else you will be replacing the final RF transistor really fast
I agree Kage, The AAREFF 100 watt TX uses a MRF151 150 watt transistor so it is never over worked. I have never had to test the overload protection built in to this unit, MY SWR is so close to a 1:1 it freaks me out, sometimes I have to wiggle the connectors just to see if the needle moves.
Guys, Thank you allot for the valuable feedback .. Well, i have checked AAREF and its true they use fine components and have good products, but for me its bit expensive, Bit bulky, i wanted something that could be moved easily and it seems to lack LCD for configuration, which for me as newbie would sure need some guide..
I checked CamelRF and they seem to have something good .. am considering both the below boxes, what do you think? First one for fixed and the other for mobile operation.
One critical question for me.. what happens (i know that shouldn't be the case, but ) if someone else broadcast on same frequency and had stronger localized transmission .. how would that effect my gear and would it stand that or not ?
I have just joined the forum as I am about to start up a community radio station in a small town in BC, Canada. I want to go license-free which means keeping it within a small radius, which is OK as the whole of downtown is only 20 blocks or so.
I've been told that we could use anything off the shelf that's marketed as "FCC part 15", although that would limit our range a bit because the States only allows 250 uv/m. Canada allows 4x the strength, so I am looking for someone to make a transmitter with 1000 uv/m.
Does anyone know of an online dealer in Canada that makes special orders?
Post by thelegacy on Sept 27, 2015 21:58:08 GMT -6
Your talking about something like the Decade CM-10 (which they don't make anymoe). At BETS level you'll get about 1,000 Ft. You can also try the Signstek CZE-T200 and set the transmitter to the tx to the 200mW setting. I prefer the FailSafe transmitter which you'd set to 100mW if your cautious. It still may be a little over 1,000 uV/M but not by much and you should reach 1/4 mile with that and 1/2 mile at 500mW.
The forum is resourceful and awesome .. 
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