1860 Broadcasting

[KA3EKH]

What is this thing on 1.860? , thought broadcasting was not permitted on the Ham bands. Its sounds like armatures who want to play broadcasters. The one way broadcast incorporates several items and is well produced and would assume it's legal because it’s a bulletin thing relevant to Ham radio? With the internet blogs, web pages and reflectors is there any point to this sort of thing? These kinds of thing take place on other bands or on SSB also? What happens if you have a QSO going on 1.86 before these things starts? Do they just transmit over you? After all they have a broadcast schedule and supposedly a waiting audience? And can I just record some long ongoing rant about armature radio and randomly broadcast it too? this can be a whole new way of operating for me, who needs to bother with calling CQ or finding another station to work just go ahead and record a wave of your call with a five or ten minute description of your station, QTH and the weather and randomly transmit that. Kind of like a weird voice version of APRS

[WA3VJB]

Hi Ray,

Have you been reading QRZ.com ?

If not, you should.  This recent thread provides answers and context you may find useful.

http://forums.qrz.com/showthread.php?336487-WA0RCR

It's interesting that Vern can be there nearly 30 years without much question, and then in a matter of weeks we've got yours and the thread on the Zed.

What is this thing on 1.860? , thought broadcasting was not permitted on the Ham bands. Its sounds like armatures who want to play broadcasters. The one way broadcast incorporates several items and is well produced and would assume it's legal because it’s a bulletin thing relevant to Ham radio? With the internet blogs, web pages and reflectors is there any point to this sort of thing? These kinds of thing take place on other bands or on SSB also? What happens if you have a QSO going on 1.86 before these things starts? Do they just transmit over you? After all they have a broadcast schedule and supposedly a waiting audience? And can I just record some long ongoing rant about armature radio and randomly broadcast it too? this can be a whole new way of operating for me, who needs to bother with calling CQ or finding another station to work just go ahead and record a wave of your call with a five or ten minute description of your station, QTH and the weather and randomly transmit that. Kind of like a weird voice version of APRS

[k4kyv]

Vern does not fire up on top of ongoing QSOs to start his broadcasts (or to be politically correct, bulletins).  He begins his transmission early in mid-afternoon, after checking the frequency, before it becomes busy.  I doubt he has ever found the frequency occupied at that time of day; the only likelihood would be for someone in the St. Louis area to make it a point to beat Vern to the  frequency and  start a routine QSO.  In that case, he would probably just QSY up or down a bit, until the frequency became clear.

He used to transmit 7 days a week, but in later years curtailed operation to Saturday nights only, because of the difficulty in finding a reliable control operator when he was absent, and his job and family began to take more of his time. He decided early on that a Radio Shack timer wouldn't cut it for his operation.  

Vern also operated a "Gateway 160m Net" on Wednesday evenings, same frequency.  I don't think the net has been active for many years.  Interestingly, as net control station he transmitted AM, but nearly all the other participants transmitted SSB.

He runs Newsline and other "amateur radio bulletin services", as well as originating some of the content on his own.  Those bulletin services are primarily re-transmitted over 2M FM.  Vern is about the only one who regularly transmits them on the lower bands.  At one time, Newsline and/or one or more of the others specifically made it a policy not to give anyone but Vern permission to relay the programs on the lower bands, in an effort to thwart their use by that other station up in Maine, but I believe he re-broadcast some of them anyway.

Those who don't like Vern's bulletin service can lay part of the blame on me.  Back in the early 80s after the FCC returned most of the 160m band to amateurs and lifted the special power restrictions, Vern decided to upgrade his station.  He put up a tall vertical tower (not quite a quarter-wave as I recall) with an extensive ground radial system, approaching the standards of a commercial AM broadcast antenna.  The one thing he lacked was a suitable base insulator.  I happened to catch an ad in the Yellow Sheets, a used broadcast base insulator for sale at Madison Electronics in Houston, TX.  I contacted Vern either over the air or via telephone, and he was able to purchase the insulator and use it with his tower.  I believe his tower is a Rohn 25, and the base insulator was made specifically for that tower.  As I recall, he purchased the same special base section that I use with mine, back before the price of that section went astronomical.

I don't regularly listen to Verns's broadcasts for their content, but the station makes a good propagation beacon for 160m propagation on Saturday nights, and sometimes a story grabs my attention.  Nowadays, those bulletin services probably reach more listeners via internet than via radio, with the demise in popularity of 2m and repeaters.  Vern's 160m broadcasts are likely the only remaining over-the-air source of the bulletin services available to many hams across the country.

[KA3EKH]

Went and read the thread, did not know it's been there for that long. I have only started playing around with 160 in the last year or two after modifying a broadcast transmitter for 1.885 and in the process of listening up and down the band a little this thing on 1.86 showed up. Quality of audio was so good at first thought it was second harmonic of broadcast station or overload of my receiver but after listening realized what it was. The two or three times I copied it there was a very strong signal at my QTH on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. 

[WA3VJB]

Yeah, it's good listening.

In my view, he is representing the AM community in a subtle way, encouraging listeners to the mode from within the hobby.  I continue to run across people down low on 80m who are tuning in AM for the first time.

Among bulletin stations, I wish he would expand and take the place of the one from Newington on 7290kc.  The club that runs W1AW refuses to match their Considerate Operator's Guide by using the compatible mode of AM for their transmissions on that frequency.

It would have been a nice gesture to back what they claim is support for our part of the hobby.

[wd9ive]

I've always enjoyed Verns broadcasts on 1.860 and as Don said it makes a nice and reliable beacon.
Verns been doing it for so long, it's in a way comforting to me when I hear it, knowing he's still out there sort of like when you hear WWV

[Sam KS2AM]

"armature" radio 

[K5UJ]

Yep, I also use WA0RCR as a way of telling how band condx are.   

Yet another thing I like about his operation is that it is (as far as I know) the last remaining defacto clear channel medium wave AM operation in North America.  In other words, there are no broadcast class 1-A stations that genuinely have a channel to themselves, the last one being WLW on 700.  But, WA0RCR when he fires up and continues, has 1860 to himself with his ~370 watts and a 90 degree tower and 120 radials.  the tower is on a pier with a dog house ATU and fed with LDF4-50. 

Why am I pointing this out:  Because given the degree to which Vern covers a good part of North America at night in the winter time, it indicates what a genuine broadcast clear channel station was capable of back 40 or 50 years ago with 50 KW and a 190 degree tower in a lower part of the bc band with a non-shared channel.

[WU2D]

How do you cure a constipated Armature?

Ans: Milk of Magneto.

[KX5JT]

How do you cure a constipated Armature?

Ans: Milk of Magneto.

Bah dum dah cheee!!

[KA3EKH]

I hate my automatic spell checker but without it you would realize what a moron I am!
Same sentence without it.
I hate my atomic spel checkar but with out it you wood reelsize what a moore on I be.
 Also sometimes stupid computer has no idea what I am trying to spell, i.e. Amateur vs. Armature then there are theses thing called homonyms, still have no clue what the hell they are.
So let me apologize in advance for anyone who cannot tolerate my grammatical errors, on a email reflector I am on I have received comments along the lines of if I see it was written by you I automatically delete it, and why don’t you invest in spelling & grammar checker.
Ray F

[WA3VJB]

Oh man, don't be talking trash about the homonyms now.

Bad enough when I listen to Rush Limbaugh.

[W3RSW]

Hey, I like Rush... at least when he tries real hard to reign in the ego and gets down to business.  His monologs are right on target.

You have to know, as he says, "I'm an entertainer and this is a show."

-And at least, as you say, "you listen."