John, WA5BXO wrote:
As I understand it the trick, that the FCC was to prevent, and someone was
trying to get away with, was to run a 304TL with about 100 Volts on the
plate in a GG configuration. Forward bias it to a high plate current like
1
Amp, so that it acts like a switch that is on. Then drive it with 5 KW
PEP.
It may have been some other some scenario as this but I think you get the
picture.
I had never heard of that, but it makes sense that someone might try it.
Then there was the trick that a gentleman up in 3 land, I think, was
going to run the high level double sideband reduced carrier generator type
rig but he was not reducing the carrier just increasing the SBs via an
extra
upside down tube, as it was commonly called. The sideband power would
continue to go up without distortion (if copied on a proper synchronized
product detector) after the first tube was over modulated in the negative
direction. The voltage and power would be diverted to the upside down tube
where sideband power would continue. There was trouble with the specific
rule interpretation at the time in the FCC. Of course any of us today,
would
be able to see that the upside down tube's audio plate current and audio
voltage must also be counted as part of the input power. But the FCC was
having trouble deciding, at least as I understand it. At any rate, I think
they got him for being outside the 40 meter band limits. You may remember
more of the specifics on this Don.
I knew the gentleman personally. It was Fred, W3PHL, near Phila, PA. I met
him at many hamfests, and visited him one weekend back in about 1971. I saw
his rig, but by that time he had converted it to a big SSB linear. He liked
to ragchew with VK's and ZL's in the pre-dawn hours on 40m, using a 120 ft.
high beam. He not only fought the FCC, but had to deal with a tower case as
well (which he won).
The loophole in the regulations was that the definition of power was DC
input to the final. With the upside down tube circuit, he ran about 600
watts DC input, and then applied several kw of audio. The rig was basically
a high-level balanced modulator, but with DC applied to one tube, which
effectively unbalanced the modulation, he claimed it was a plate-modulated
AM rig, and that the legal power measurement was limited to the DC input to
the final.
The signal was double-sideband reduced carrier, with several kilowatts in
the sidebands and less than 500 watts carrier power. Althhough a
synchronous dectector would have have taken full advantage of both
sidebands, most of the people he worked actually used SSB receivers, and
simply copied either USB or LSB, and used the carrier only as a pilot
carrier for setting the frequency on their receiver.
The FCC couldn't make up its mind on how to deal with the issue, even
though they could have cited a rule on the books that limited modulation to
100%, and they could have said he was modulating over 100% in the positive
direction, regardless of the fact that the signal was clean. Instead, they
ended up citing him for splattering outside the 40m band. He liked to
operate at 7290, and even though he had engineering data to prove that his
signal met all FCC specifications regarding spurious sideband products, they
said that the rules allow no detectable signal whatever outside the limits
of the amateur band, and he had detectable sideband products above 7300,
even though they might have been 50-60 dB down.
I understand this whole thing was part of an ongoing feud between Fred and a
SSB group that was competing for the frequency, and the issue was brought
up when the SSB group complained to the FCC. They suspended Fred's licence
for six months based on the citation for out-of-band distortion products.
The FCC referenced that case when they railroaded through their p.e.p. power
rule.
Don K4KYV
_______________________________________________________________
This message was typed using the DVORAK keyboard layout. Try it - you'll
like it.
http://www.mwbrooks.com/dvorak/
http://gigliwood.com/abcd/
