How much transmit power is needed?

[kb1jcy]

... so that I'm not piss weak but not causing RFI hell for my neighbors. I'm an apartment dweller so I'm not sure I can do AM the right way without getting myself evicted.

[flintstone mop]

Interesting situation. IF you are on the TOP floor AX the rental company for permission to install a dipole. If there are trees around the building build a stealth antenna. It would be better for a 50 ohm system. End fed antennas are going to cause you a lot of problems. If there is RFI, use one of those MFJ artificial grounds. They really work!
100 watts should be FB on a quiet night on 80M or 40M would be better during the daytime. The antenna is going to make or break your station. Start operating after 10PM and see if there are any calls to the management about some guy saying "haaaylooo test". It's not goodness when you are next to a lot of people in one building. A lot of opportunities for RFI.
We ran 100 watts SSB with one of those magical emergency HF radios in a business environment and no RFI reported. The poles kept the B&W dummy load dipole 30 feet from the roof. This was the Y2K farce. My company spent $50K on a bunch of those Motorola ALE radios. They really worked! Nobody could understand what people were saying coz they thought it would be like the FM two-way radio system. It takes a special ear to hear SSB on a noise filled path into a P.O.S antenna..........hi
There may be other "cliff dwellers" on this board who have had good success.
Fred

[WBear2GCR]

Apartment?

As in 6 story building?
Two- three family?
High rise?

All different challenges.

In most cases, if you can't get "permission" - and you probably can not (liability, fire, blah blah blah) - the "stealth" antenna made of "magnet wire" (thin wire) is virtually invisible at any distance.

Back in the day, there were tons of TV ants on the rooves of apartment houses, doubt if there are any in use today - everyone has cable. If no one is using rooftop ants, then u've got an easier time of it...

Get the ant as far away from the residences, use stealth cables (people used to use brown twinlead, if they had to...) and throw on a LPF for good luck, don't overmodulate, make sure ur clean, and keep a TV with rabbito ears around for monitoring (ch 6 and below) to see if getting into it.

Other than that, AM shouldn't be any different than SSB, except they can understand what ur saying! 

Consider moving too...

               _-_-WBear2GCR

[The Slab Bacon]

Other than that, AM shouldn't be any different than SSB, except they can understand what ur saying! 
Consider moving too...

And that is where the hell comes from!! they can hear your voice, so they
know who to cuss out!! BEEN THERE DONE THAT!! I have had / heard every rfi complaint imaginable running HF ssb, and especially "legal limit" AM in a residential neighborhood with "postage stamp" sized yards.

Usually 100w power class (AM) into a good balanced antenner causes minimal complaints. Be sure your house is "clean" and the neighbors cant bitch too much. Anything much less than 100w and/or a good antenner and you will be a perpetual "piss weaker" and get "squashed like a bug"

                                                 The Slab Bacon

[WA1GFZ]

I put a dipole in the attic of a place and ran a 4-1000A rig on 20 meters. I could modulate the front porch lights when they were off and most of the lights in the house. The owner's son had him convinced they needed a man of the cloth to preform a cermony to rid the house of the devil.
They were from across the pond. Anyway the owner came to me one day and told me what was going on as if I didn't know. He almost kissed my hands when I copped to doing it and let me put up a 75 meter dipole between trees in the yard.
Then there was the story of creative house wiring and I was paying part of his bill......an caught him.

[w3jn]

Some on this board have had success loading into fire escapes, so I'm told  

A hundred watt class rig (Apache, DX-100, Valiant) with a decent antenner will make sure you're heard.  20 watts from a ricebox is A-OK under the right conditions with a decent antenner but during the evening when the static and slopbucket QRM is heavy it can turn into quite the battle.  If you run the ricebox into a KW class linear (about 150-200W carrier) you should be fine.

[Pete, WA2CWA]

As an apartment dweller, apartment location could a key factor in minimizing interference. Depending on the age of the apartment complex, it could also be plagued with all types of “community type” wiring between each apartment, each floor, etc. If you were to position a dipole type antenna around the apartment (tacked to walls or ceiling, or both) you run the risk of radiating RF into lots of appliances (radios, TV’s, audio systems, telephones, etc.) mostly due to the close proximity of these devices within the apartment complex, the wiring behind the walls or floors,  or the wiring dangling from these devices acting as antennas. Also, since you’re radiating RF, and depending on your power, you’ll have to ability to possibly light the older type florescent light fixtures, neon type lamps, etc. On CW, these lamps will go on and off as you key; with AM they’ll light when you flip the transmit switch and modulate in intensity as you modulate the rig. 

On the lighter side, if you hear of your apartment neighbors calling for an exorcism of their apartments, it might be because of the RF radiation. Many hams have been successful operating rigs in apartments with modest power and even indoor antennas or verticals on a window patio or even stuck out the window. However, each case probably has its own unique circumstances of location, wall and floor thickness, community-type behind the wall and floor wiring, appliances, and neighbor tolerances. In my opinion, I would try, as others suggested, a stealth type outdoor antenna, if possible, and run very modest power to test the waters. It’s that’s not possible, I would choose a wall or area that faces the outside wall to mount an indoor antenna and again run very modest power to test the waters for a few days to gauge neighbor reactions. Testing neighbor reaction might be difficult, but it’s best to it in a stealth mode. You probably don’t want to announce to all that you’re running a ham rig, because then you become the culprit for every wavy line or noise that appears on their TV or stereo, and probably every appliance malfunction. Some method of good grounding of the equipment also needs to be considered in an apartment. Apartments probably have very little in the way of providing a ground connection that’s suitable for equipment generating RF.

Here's an article located in the ARRL T.I.S. pages that might help:
Antennas and Grounds for Apartments

Here's a list of several more articles that might be helpful:
http://www.arrl.org/tis/info/limited.html#limited

[flintstone mop]

The flames may start flying after I mention that MFJ (MFJ 1625) QST did a product report on it. Its a nice antenna for "cliff dwellers". It clips to a railing on a balcony. There's a tuner included. How much?? Will it handle 100 watt AM carrier??
Remeber MFJ means "mighty fine junk"
Their products are very good quality
Fred

[W2JBL]

 it helps a ton if your neighbors are all scared of you. i run up to 250W carrier/1000W PEP from a three family house during the week, and no RFI complaints. but my neighbors tend to cross to the other side of the street when walking by my apartment if i'm outside...  i have had good luck with outside "stealth" wire ants from hotel rooms and apartments over the years. 100 watts like a DX100 is all you need with a decent antenna.

[AF9J]

This topic also affects me, since I live in an apartment. My landlady knows I do hamming, and has no problem with it, but basically told me not to push the envelope by running diploes out to the few trees that are in the backyard.  I tried, very short loaded dipoles on my 2nd story balcony.  They were a bust on the low bands.  So, in desparation, I did something I haven't done in 10 plus years, I loaded up the rain gutter (I live on the top floor, and on my side of the building, the rain gutter is  basically 3 stories up, and 125-150ft long), and dug out my old MFJ Artifical Ground, and pulled out the big honking current  choke I wound around an old iron core (when I was a General in college, in the 80s) for RF feedback suppression!  The setup works pretty well, and so far no complaints (knock on wood, you know as well as I do, that if there are any joints in the gutter with poor electrical bonding, they can give you some nasty diode effect, and act like a nice big harmonic generator).   

Yes most people probably use cable or dish for TV in my building, but don't forget other problem sources: phone lines; and speaker cables for both stereos and compter speakers.  Those things can pick up just about anything.  I had a hassle just running QRP in other modes from an apartment, back in 1998, when my neighbor (who knew I was a ham from her brother-in-law [who was also a ham]), told me she could hear my signal in her computer speakers!  Most consumer electronics is a joke, when it comes to RFI resistance.

I also have noise issues:  those wonderful 250kV powerlines, that pass only 100 yards east of my building; mini fluorescent lights used in the hallway, and outside lighting to save energy.  Oftentimes my noise is S9 on 160 & 75.  Ah yes, such is life.

73,
Ellen - AF9J

[kb1jcy]

i live in one of your typical New England "triple deckah" with three tenant units and one landlord unit.

I should state that my landlord is generally supportive of my hamming. She'll do what she can to keep a good tenant. She's given me her blessing to string up a wire dipole between the trees as long as I don't damage them. She also stipulated that whatever feedline I run must not get in the way of her mowing the lawn. Still RFI is a concern.

Here's some photos on Flickr for you to consider:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7332265@N07/

What concerns me is that if I had to run ladder line near the fence, that would be a recipe for RFI disaster. Is there a way around this? Would it be smart for me to run coax out to a balun a few feet away from that fence.

Following the path that the clothesline follows, I have 48 feet to work with. Not sure what band that tunes to. I would have to do something end-fed.

Not shown is a bunch of backyard. In the backyard, there is a span of about 100 feet for some sort of 80/160-ish dipole. Need to discuss that with the landlord.

Also not shown is about 70 feet of chain-link fence waaay in the back which defines the boundary between her property and our neighbors. How do you load up chain-link fence?