When I purchased the contents from the drive-in back in May, one of the things I got was a "Ramsey FM-25" FM stereo transmitter. I know it was a kit because they (Ramsey)still list it on their web-site for $129.95.

I ordered an AM kit from them last week and I'm gonna give it a try.

What types of transmitters have any of you other "drive-in" guys used and what should I look out for when purchasing a transmitter?

This kit is recommended for advanced skill levels only. It's too complex for amateurs.

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Running five years without getting caught is amazing. Your rig must have been putting out a pretty "clean" signal that didn't cause anyone interference, and the commercial stations didn't view you as competition. Surprised the FCC didn't confiscate the transmitter.

Drive-ins need to "keep their noses clean" and not let the signal carry far outside the lot. Neighbors are likely to complain if too many young teens are watching and listening to "R" rated movies adjacent to the theatre.

Take a look at Decade Transmitters. www.decade.ca

I have heard their transmitter on the air. Very clean. It's a nice unit. What's what I would run.

I have seen other units but have not heard them on the air.

I haven't used it, but the Smart DIT model processor looks real good! It offers AM,FM,Field Amp,monitor,and concession outputs. Hats off to Smart for creating a product just for the drive-ins.

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Josh

the Satellite Home Viewers "Improvement" Act which provides that you can legally receive tv stations only from your local "designated market area" even tho the technology makes it possible to receive everything from ALL major markets ... we can hear radio stations from all over on the Internet, why not tv???

...and then the latest tightening of the bankruptcy laws so the poor suckers can't get out of the usurious interest rates and exorbitant fees charged by American Banks who today in my opinion are Public Enemy No. 1 of the American People. Even the Mafia Board of Directors of The Godfather would be embarrassed to charge what these banks get away with!!!

"Pump Up The Volume" was a good movie about a kid running a pirate station, and at the end we saw the mighty Feds assembled with the fat pompous bureaucrat in his limousine beating up on the kid and hauling him off to prison.

We're in a bad way.

The Miami area has a lot of pirate radio stations and the bandwidth is very crowded, both on AM and FM. One pirate station in particular set up shop right on top of the best station around, a public station operated by a local university.

Apparently the pirates felt more secure trying to drown out a public station than a private station, who would immediately trace them, inform the Feds, and push to aggresively prosecute. That pirate station would suddenly come on air in the middle of an interesting program on the university station and peg the needle over them, blasting Creole (C)rap. They didn't realize the public station manager was getting multiple complaints and was was mad enough to do the legwork to get them shut down.

It took a couple of months to bust the station, but when they did the bust and caught the guys, there was all sorts of stolen electronic gear found in the house. Nice guys, eh? They ended up adding to our cost of housing inmates.

Pirate radio is one thing in Montana or the wheat fields of Alberta, where a lot of the band is open, but it has no business in the cities. All AM stations in rural areas as well as cities have to be careful during nighttime because of the changes in propegation that could cause them to interfere with a station miles away.

For many years my dad was chief engineer of a high powered AM station with a directional array and three huge freestanding sticks. He prided himself in keeping signal strength as close to the designated limits as possible, which is no small trick, when rain and atmospheric changes can affect conditions.

Although pirate radio was rare in those days, he would have regarded those pirates with about the same respect as someone here would regard someone trying to open a theatre showing 8mm film. Pirate junk adds noise to the spectrum and turns off many listeners. If you run a pirate station for a drive-in, please keep the signal down and verify that you aren't interfering with a station trying to follow the rules.

Oh yeah, FWIW, Miami AM regularly gets drowned out by the jamming equipment in Cuba. During the night when the U.S. stations have to reduce power, the signal will still reach Cuba. Castro then fires up the jammers to keep his people from hearing the U.S. news. About an hour after sundown, the local all news and traffic station can't be heard ten miles away from the stick because of the jammers. Nice, huh?

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What exactly to the reg's say?

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