Re: [IRCA] El Cajon, CA ULR TP 2011-03-16 - audio on 1566, help w/ID?

[Stephen Airy <pianoplayer88key@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I'd like a variety of signal strengths, if possible (even if it still somewhat requires varying the physical separation between radio & oscillator) - preferably from very weak & barely "readable" (I'd probably have it a few feet away - would be used to beat with potential threshold TPs, as well as generating a target to tune the Select-A-Tenna), to extremely strong & overloading the radio (would be right next to it).
I do have a couple radios I had been using with their local oscillators.  However, my 1990s Panasonic RQ-SW20 (450 kHz IF) only tunes down to 522 kHz in 9 kHz step (520 kHz in 10 kHz step), making it really only usable for finding TPs down to 972 kHz, and my 1960s Zenith Royal 705, whose local oscillator did generate a somewhat stronger signal than the Panasonic and could be "dialed" a few hundred Hz off frequency, currently has a broken local oscillator lead.  Also, I was wanting to use this down to at least 153 kHz, and would like to be able to fine tune it, so I was preferring analog tuning (drift free would be nice).  (If I used something digital, I would like to be able to tune it in very fine increments, like a piano tuner touching up a piano during the intermission in a concert.)

--- On Thu, 3/17/11, Nick Hall-Patch <nhp@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Nick Hall-Patch <nhp@xxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IRCA] El Cajon, CA ULR TP 2011-03-16 - audio on 1566, help w/ID?
To: "Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America" <irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thursday, March 17, 2011, 9:47 AM


> 
> 17.3.2011 13:37, Stephen Airy wrote:
>> 
I don't know how weak a signal you want Stephen, but many of the inexpensive radios (pretty much all made before the advent of the DSP ultralights) broadcast a good local oscillator signal at 450 or 455kHz above the frequency indicated on the radio dial.   If you have such a radio with an accurate digital display, then you can use that as your oscillator, simply adding 450 or 455 kHz to the indicated display.

Nick

>> As for generating a weak signal on/near target frequencies to aid in finding TPs, does anyone know of an inexpensive (the lower the better even if I have to buy used - prefer that it be considerably cheaper than the PL-606), portable (battery-powered&  small but doesn't have to be pocket size) device I could use that would be better suited for uses like that (coverage from at least 150kHz to 1.8 MHz, up to 22 MHz is a bonus, also strong enough to hit a solid 98/25 on the PL-606's RSSI/SNR display when within about a foot of it, and an RF gain control for when I need less power)?  Ability to plug in an audio source and transmit that over short range (maybe a hundred feet - for other testing purposes) would be a nice bonus, or even modulating the carrier with a tone whose frequency could be set by the user (when chasing TPs, though, it would only transmit an unmodulated carrier).
>> 
>> (There's a few other things I wanted to ask about, but this post is getting longer than I would like (even though it only takes a small portion of the screen when running full screen at 1920x1440 and browser zoom at about 70%), so I'll save those for another post sometime.)
>> 
>> 73,
>> Stephen
>> El Cajon, CA - Grid DM12MS, SE quadrant ; within 1 mi of 32°45'40"N 116°56'50"W
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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