I'm planning on using Band 1 to link to a midpoint a short distance away. However I don't want a bait horizontal dipole on the roof showing exactly where the signal is coming from should the com come looking for it. Would they be able to track the signal and tell exactly where it was coming from if i put it in the loft. Surly they need more evidence than the general area to raid a building.

They have all the gear they will ever need to find it in your loft, no troubles.

Yep. If they want to find it, they will.
Having the dipole in the loft does help and probably gives you piece of mind.

I ran 150w direct for 3 months solid without any problems till I bottled it.
Lesson is if you don't cause any problems or make the legals jealous, then you'll last a long time.



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I was running a 200w last year in the loft but it wiped out everything in the house. Tv, radio, even sky tv and started setting off smoke alarms where I must of filled the house with Rf.

Dan wrote:I was running a 200w last year in the loft but it wiped out everything in the house. Tv, radio, even sky tv and started setting off smoke alarms where I must of filled the house with Rf.

shoulda put a low pass filter on your loft door....

Loft aerials aren't good at that power. The signal reflects back into the house and swamps everything.


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Using a directional antenna it's very easy to triangulate any transmission. As you get close, wind down the sensitivity to exactly locate it. There's a video on Youtube that shows a system Ofcom had in London (presumably for the Olympics) that lets them do it from Baldock. I saw somewhere that they have them installed in all telephone exchanges but I don't believe that - not noticed any wideband antennas on exchanges near me. The local radio investigation people would definitely be able to do it the old fashioned way though.

What's the furthest anyone has linked using a band 1 I've done about 8miles without a problem

We linked about 28 miles in Ireland on Band 1. It needed old Band 1 TV Yagis to give us directional aerials at both ends and about 10 Watts up the coax.

Hey Albert! Good to see you back on here mate. How are you keeping?

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my mates gotta scanner and theres still loadsa people using band1 .

WEBB-TECH wrote:Hey Albert! Good to see you back on here mate. How are you keeping?

Hi

Thanks for the welcome back! I'm OK, but getting older!

Cheers!

How old are you Albert? You're a ledge mate!

I'll admit to being born in the '50s!

Dan wrote:I'm planning on using Band 1 to link to a midpoint a short distance away. However I don't want a bait horizontal dipole on the roof showing exactly where the signal is coming from should the com come looking for it. Would they be able to track the signal and tell exactly where it was coming from if I put it in the loft. Surely they need more evidence than the general area to raid a building.

Putting the aerial in the loft will be a nightmare! You'll lose as much as 90% of the radiation into the roof itself, and you'll get RF feedback (causing that nasty hum) into all your audio gear.

If you're going to a midpoint, why not use a vertical Band 1 aerial? Look up "sleeve dipole" - on here and on Google to find out how to make a really simple vertical that can be hidden in a white plastic pipe.

The plastic pipe needs to be checked - cut a bit off, put it in your microwave oven with a cup of water. The water should get hot after a minute, but the plastic should stay cold. This test makes sure that your plastic plumbing pipe isn't the "metal loaded" type of plastic. You can paint it with acrylic paint (NOT enamel paint!) to make it less obvious from the ground.

You can use the same kind of aerial at the midpoint.

Unfortunately, tracking Band I is really easy, and if they want to find you, they will. If you hide the aerial indoors they'll still be able to find it!

Just to add to what I said about Band I:

You could consider using a microwave link out of the house - that's much more difficult to track.

does microwave to b1 badly compromise audio quality?

mrillusion wrote:does microwave to b1 badly compromise audio quality?

No it shouldn't, but....

Depends who built the box.

mrillusion wrote:does microwave to b1 badly compromise audio quality?

It shouldn't compromise the quality at all if the gear is properly built and aligned. A really good piece of link gear should present you with a socket for modulation input at the transmit end, and a corresponding socket for modulation output at the receiver. It should be as transparent as using a wire between the sockets!

I used multi-hop 10, 11 & 12GHz PLL TX & RX microwave to get a stereo with RDS link over a 120km path in Eastern Europe. The paths weren't easily aligned - setting up the horns and dishes took three days in some of the coldest, wettest conditions I've ever endured! When - finally - it was all aligned, it really was as good as wire! What went in to the audio sockets at the studio end was exactly what came out of the audio sockets of a good FM receiver tuned to the station.

This is one of the main reasons that I've lobbed the servers directly into the tx site.
I've always had concerns as to how the audio quality will deteriorate being passed through an analogue baseband (cheap) satcan.

I've got spare APT worldcast units if you've heard of them? The only problem is that if someone wants to trace you back, they can quite easily as most people can't afford the units in the briefcases.


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