Legal limit at antenna or shack?

[k4kyv]

Angels dancing on the head of a pin. Until someone actually does this, it's just more typical bulletin board BS.

Agreed, the whole thing is a non-issue.  In the case of an actual FeeCee inspection, I doubt they would really care where the power meter is inserted, as long as the meter reading meets their criteria. And chances are if they did make it an issue, they would most likely let the op off with an official warning or informal friendly advice, except for cases like our friend up north, where the op has gone out of his way to piss them off.  Even then, as we have seen, years may pass before any real enforcement action is taken, if ever.

At one time, up until about the 1980s, they were very picky and would sometimes go to great extremes to split hairs. That's when the FCC had few restraints on their budgets, and manned monitoring stations were scattered all over the country.  Monitoring station duty must have been extremely boring, and the personnel were most likely thrilled to find any kind of action anywhere, so they would scan the spectrum looking for any infraction they could find to break up the monotony. To-day, the monitoring stations are said to be fully automated, and activated only in response to actual complaints or reports of abuse, and the FCC is on a much tighter budget than in years past. Another difference is that back in the days when the FeeCee stayed permanently poised in attack mode nervous as a hornet, the HF spectrum was of prime strategic and commercial importance in that pre-satellite era, and in the name of national (Cold War) security was to be protected at all costs.

To-day, hardly anyone gives a rats-arse about HF, with nearly all the important stuff conveyed by satellite, cable and the internet. Listen between the ham bands and SWBC bands and observe how empty the spectrum is. A generation ago, those frequencies were as crowded with everything from dittilies and strange sounding data modes to voice and CW, as 75m used to be on a QuaRMtest weekend night.

Start beaming up signals and fooling around with satellites these days, and see how long it takes for the "authorities" to come down on you with full force.  Remember the guys in Brazil who were caught hacking idle US military satellites and using them to carry on private communications? The same goes for hacking web sites. People are getting prison sentences not only for hacking government and corporate sites, but for something as innocuous as guessing or discovering another person's Hotmail or Yahoo e-mail password and hacking the account just to play a joke, or for being caught with a simple jpeg on one's hard drive that purportedly depicts "child porn".

Regarding the original question, bottom line: much ado about nothing.

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

People are getting prison sentences not only for hacking government and corporate sites, but for something as innocuous as guessing or discovering another person's Hotmail or Yahoo e-mail password and hacking the account just to play a joke, or for being caught with a simple jpeg on one's hard drive that purportedly depicts "child porn".

And rightly so. Whether corporate or private individual, last I heard it wasn't considered "innocuous" to break into any account, home, business, vehicle, or anything else that doesn't belong to you. I seriously doubt too, that there's such thing as a 'simple jpeg' of child porn.

All of which has nothing to do with the original question, so why bother? We're not here to discuss the ills of society and government.

The FCC rule is perfectly clear about power measured at the transmitter. Adding feedline, tuning networks, to the discussion, or otherwise looking for ways to avoid the obvious is nothing but a recipe for disaster should the FCC come a-knockin'.

Regarding the original question, bottom line: much ado about nothing.

Which does indeed make the rest of it simply more bulletin board BS.

[Steve - K4HX]

Hey Todd! Are you saying you would call the police if someone broke into your house as a joke?

[Todd, KA1KAQ]

And the medical examiner, if they were stupid enough to try it while I was here. Waiting for the police to call would just give the perp longer to bleed on my property. Nothing innocuous about that.

And power output would still be measured at the transmitter.  

[The Slab Bacon]

Bla, Bla, Bla, this whole power thing has been discussed ad nauseum so many times. It is what it is. Get over it.  

As Brentina sez: "Run what ya brung" and dont worry about it.

Always try to run "near legal limit" whenever possible.

Note: "near" does not specify which side of.....................

    

[w2ibc]

Personally I wouldnt push it just in case. id just upgrade the feedline and antenna and stick with the legal limit

[k4kyv]

Let those would lose sleep over it take oxycontin or other appropriate medication. The rest of us have more serious issues to worry about.

[Opcom]

I wanted absolutely no mistakes on what was going up the tower and to that end I ordered my cables from Hutton Communications. Hutton supplies commercial interests with whatever cables are needed and the ends are put on correctly.

They supply the wire and use a local contractor who specializes in putting on ends that are soldered on perfectly. I would guess other cable suppliers local to you who offer made up cable assemblies could do the same.

The cost was the price of the cable plus connectors plus about $20 per end. I considered it a wise investment because I also have very little experience in doing it properly.

[KF1Z]

The only band we are limited by ERP is 60 meters.

There you CAN use feedline and antenna losses ( or gains ) to calculate your "legal" power output.

[k4kyv]

If you designed and built your own transmitter from scratch, the output terminals are wherever you say they are.

OTOH, if you are an appliance operator, the output terminals are where the manufacturer's instruction manual says they are.

[W1RKW]

If the FeeCee gave a crap, they'd clamp down on the 11 meter crowd.

[flintstone mop]

I wanted absolutely no mistakes on what was going up the tower and to that end I ordered my cables from Hutton Communications. Hutton supplies commercial interests with whatever cables are needed and the ends are put on correctly.

They supply the wire and use a local contractor who specializes in putting on ends that are soldered on perfectly. I would guess other cable suppliers local to you who offer made up cable assemblies could do the same.

The cost was the price of the cable plus connectors plus about $20 per end. I considered it a wise investment because I also have very little experience in doing it properly.

Right on OPCOM....I had a helluva time convincing my last employer, who did everything on the cheap, to order cables for tower jobs WITH THE ENDS terminated and tested.
My last REAL job there was no question about getting it done right the first time. We didn't care how much it cost. We used TESSCO. NEVER a problem. Always had 1:1 swr on our 450 stuff and trunk radio 900 mhz.
Fred

[DMOD]

Under 47 CFR Part 73 for AM broadcast services Subpart A, 73.51, The FCC treats the emission components as a "system." And by that I mean, the transmitter to ATU to antenna chain is allowed certain powers by class.

Depending on class of station and power output, they will allow anywhere from 1.053 to 1.08 times the transmitter output power to account for losses say in the power divider, coax, ATU, etc.

However, In Part 97.313 of the "Hamcodes," no such allowances are given and it specifically says 1200 W PEP Transmitter power, which by most engineering definitions, means the output power of a transmitter when two tones of differening frequencies (within the audio passband) are mixed in phase and viewed on an oscilliscope in order to measure P-P, Peak, and max rms voltages. (Of course, at the same time, they must meet spectral purity requirements).

The only band we are limited by ERP is 60 meters.

There you CAN use feedline and antenna losses ( or gains ) to calculate your "legal" power output.

And the only exception to the rule.

But we all know that for AM, a 4XCarrierPower = an equivalent PEP value, which for AM means that for a carrier of 300 Watts average power modulated 100% is equal to 1200 watts PEP. So keep those mod prcentages up there folks.

I prefer the earlier times when you could input 1kW of DC power and get 650 Watts RF out, which at 100% modulation would give us 2,600W PEP.  

Always try to run "near legal limit" whenever possible.

Note: "near" does not specify which side of.....................

 

Words to live by.  

Phil - AC0OB

[k4kyv]

However, In Part 97.313 of the "Hamcodes," no such allowances are given and it specifically says 1200 W PEP Transmitter power, which by most engineering definitions, means the output power of a transmitter

The point I have been trying to make is that there are no specific "engineering definitions" that state exactly what constitutes a "transmitter" and what constitutes ancillary equipment.  That would be defined by the manufacturer in the case of a type-accepted commercially-built transceiver or amplifier.  But in the case of a homebrew transmitter, the builder can arrange the components and stages of circuitry wherever he pleases, and it is not for anyone else to tell him how he constructed the transmitter he designed and built.

The driver stage can be in one box (or open bread-board), link coupled to the final amplifier stage in another.  Likewise, the first stage of the rf matching network can be in one box, link coupled to the final stage of the network in a separate box, or out in the open.  The final tube could be in one box, with an external lead running directly from the plate cap of the tube, carrying HV and all, to a tank circuit on a separate shelf or in a separate box. In the case of a  ground-mounted vertical, the transmitter could be located right at the base of a tower, to feed the antenna without any feed line at all. The whole transmitter can be in one box, or spread out in stages over several boxes, using link coupling between the stages.  The final amplifier stage could even be located in a weather-proof box bolted to the top of the tower, tuning done using reversible DC motors, with the plate tank circuit connected directly to the antenna using no feed line at all.

In any case, it is up to the person who designed and built the transmitter to declare what is included in the "transmitter", not some outsider who is totally unfamiliar with the configuration of a unique piece of apparatus.

By definition, "antenna feed line" means the final set of wires, (usually) fed by a pair of terminals, that runs directly between the final component of the transmitter output network and the radiating antenna, with nothing else in between.

I would not hesitate to let that stand in the case of a FeeCee inspection.

[DMOD]

The point I have been trying to make is that there are no specific "engineering definitions" that state exactly what constitutes a "transmitter" and what constitutes ancillary equipment.

I understand the point you were making Don and I think you're right as I couldn't find any specific FCC paragraph that defines an integrated transmitter. The closest definition I could find with respect to this discussion was 73:14 (in the AM section of 73):  

Last radio stage. The radio-frequency
power amplifier stage which supplies
power to the antenna.

I suspect they (FCC legal buzzards) would use some IEEE definition like; "the apparatus that generates radio waves, modulates their amplitude or frequency, and transmits them."

WBZ here we come.

Phil - AC0OB

[Steve - K4HX]

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