Fm Stations in the 80's

Discuss & sharing nostalgia relating from the pirate stations of the 60s up to modern day inactive stations.
davemartin
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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by davemartin » Mon Dec 02, 2019 7:22 pm

Albert H wrote: Thu Jun 20, 2019 9:58 am RFM - "Your All-Weather Station" - was the only thing on the air on the morning after the big 1987 hurricane! Dave & Andy used a couple of car batteries to power the rig and link receiver up a block in New Cross and linked on UHF for about a mile.....

The London "Veronica" spent one Sunday jamming Q102's link - playing Elvis Costello's "Veronica" repeatedly on a tape loop - since they were annoyed that Q102 had flattened their piss-poor signal over most of London. We got to the Palace on the Sunday evening, and installed a rather different link receiver to the Q102 site, and normal service was resumed. "Veronica" moved frequency the next weekend!
Chicago 87 was also on air before, during and after the hurricane, I know because I was building all the gear and engineering for them at the time. They were putting out dead air in the morning and not answering the phone. So I went over to Plumstead on my motorbike, a car wouldn't have got through. Trees across roads everywhere, the massive oaks on Plumstead common were on their sides. When I got there, nobody was in the studio. So I threw a tape in and left it running. Turned out during the worst of the storm they panicked and went home, I would've stayed put.

BTW Sam the 819 TX at Simla House behind Guys was 'The Edge' not RFM. 15watt rig built by Kenny Myers.

Dave
Dave Martin
Founder and manager of WNKR
Designer of the Commando and Corsair AM transmitters, developed to promote easy to build short wave transmitters for the hobby LBP.

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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by Albert H » Mon Dec 02, 2019 10:25 pm

We'll have to change the name of this thread, since we're talking about AM!

"The Edge" rigs were built by Andy Allman. Dave Fuller still has one of the spare ones in his garage. They had a 6.552MHz rock divided by 8, using a 4060. The 819 kHz squarewave drove a BFY51 medium power transistor, into an IRF640. The '640 had a modulated supply from a TDA2040 on a big heatsink. There was crude envelope feedback, using a couple of germanium diodes into an op-amp, feeding into the inverting input of the '2040. The link receivers were Band III modules (the ones that came in little tinplate boxes that you might remember). The aerials were always "tower block slopers", with the ground of the rig connected to the lightning conductor, and the RF output going into a quarter-wave(ish) (around 91 metres) of wire off the top of the block and tied off with fishing line to a lamppost or other suitable object. On the bench, the rigs developed a carrier power of about 18 Watts, and could do about 70 Watts on mod peaks. They were housed in blue metal-lined plastic boxes. AFAIK, there were six of them built. The audio quality was remarkable for medium wave.

The antenna - if you got the angle right - was pretty close to 50Ω resistive, and was astonishingly effective! These little rigs put a good daytime signal into most of London and out into the countryside in many instances. I remember hearing it near Reading on my car radio.

"The Edge" used (as I recall) three sites - Guys Hospital ("Dennis' Block), one in New Cross, and one in Hackney. The station closed down and became "Countdown Radio" in the weeks before the Law change in 1985 - "The station where you're never more than a minute away from another minute"! Presenters on Countdown included Myers, Allman, Ashton, Fuller, Hugo LJ, Dave C, John Smith, Bubbling Bob, The Beachcomber, Chris England and many more of your "old pals". Countdown used the remaining "Edge" rigs.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by reverend » Fri Mar 05, 2021 12:32 pm

Clockwork Wireless with the Intrepid Birdman. Can't remember the exact frequency but somewhere around 90.0 if memory serves. Really weird programming.
if it ain't broke, keep tweaking

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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by Persona Non Grata » Thu Apr 13, 2023 6:01 pm

drumandbasshead010 wrote: Sun Mar 12, 2017 2:12 pm anyone know if the Irish pirate of the 80's, Q102, got its name or were linked with the station mentioned here or vice versa?
There were a few Q102's in North America back then so I suspect both stations Independently ripped off the idea from there (like a lot of pirates tended to do back then. -That way one got a free jingle package)

There was a (legal) Q102 in Derry/Londonderry Northern Ireland as well.

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And now .....

Post by SamTheDog » Mon Apr 01, 2024 11:28 am

The Edge.. Blimey.. That's going back a bit...... Could pick it up north or Orpington Kent...

Plenty of am going to be appearing over the next few years perhaps....
Plenty of redundant
kit turning up!

Have a spare TX..
All i need now is a big helium baloon to lift the antenna...
Sam The Dog.....

TOR-Radio FM / Mediumwave / Shortwave and dvb-t2 !
And many moons ago.. WNKR on FM and Shortwave.
info@torradio org / qq22.net / TorRadio.ORG

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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by Albert H » Tue Apr 02, 2024 1:01 pm

Sam - have you considered Long Wave? The rigs are even easier than MW - it's just the aerial that's a problem.....

I used eight miles of disused railway track for one Long Wave project - with great success. Dave F pointed out that the military used aerials that were - essentially - long wires lying on the ground! This gave me the idea to try the railway line, and it worked well for a while until the railway company decided to repossess their track and started cutting it up and using it to repair other tracks!

We discovered that one version of "Armco" barrier (used on motorways) is isolated from ground, and - in many instances - is continuous for miles! We're planning to try a few miles of this on a hillside in southern England on either 225 or 252 kHz. If it works well, I plan to build a bigger rig on 198 kHz for when the BBC shut down Radio Long Wave!

I've also done a lot of work on shortened aerials for MW - with capacity hats to open out the bandwidth - and have built a couple of highly experimental, CMOS exciter-based "out-phased" MW rigs, and am looking forward to trying them out during the summer.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by Premier-Carousel » Tue Apr 02, 2024 8:02 pm

One particularly audacious medium wave arrangement that comes to mind was Carousel Radio Stockport (First incarnation thereof, not the later one that I was involved with). The story goes (I'll go as far as saying I'm reasonably confident it's true) that while the station's FM arrangement was conventional with the studio in town and transmitter up on high farm ground at Mellor Moor, access had been obtained to the roof of a motor dealership on the Green Lane industrial estate near the town centre. Said dealership used to fly a blimp advertising it's existence, and one night said blimp was lowered, and went back aloft on the end of the antenna. Mains being pinched from the buildings signage, and the link just being the normal FM output relayed. I can't remember the frequency and I don't recall ever being aware of the power but it's a fun story. It all went south the same week KFM and Southside were raided if I recall.

I'm curious as to how long wave rigs would be easier to facilitate than medium wave. I'd have imagined that some of the inductive components would be physically huge

S

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Re: Fm Stations in the 80's

Post by Albert H » Wed Apr 03, 2024 12:44 am

Hi

The coils for Long Wave are (typically) between twice and four times the inductance of those for Medium Wave. My earliest LW rig had an antenna matching coil that was wound around the tube from the inside of a roll of kitchen towel. Re-wound small mains transformers were used for inter-stage coupling transformers and for modulation on the very fist one (before I sussed outphasing!). The output FETs were large IR switching FETs. The whole rig cost about £15, and generated some serious power!

The technology is closer to audio or ultrasonic technology than it is to RF! A friend of mine used a 400 W VFET audio amplifier as a Long Wave transmitter, with only minor modifications.
"Why is my rig humming?"
"Because it doesn't know the words!"
;)

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