Today - I am going to test my Procaster, Hamilton AM1000, and Talking House. My goal is to compare apples to apples to apples. I want to hear the best signal I can from these fcc certified transmitters. I want to use them in a way that complies with the FCC rules, and without any of the controversial stuff (Talking House ATU is not being used, I am not using ground radials per se, no long grounding, and no synchronizing hamiltons).
My test is purely practical. No test gear other than the stock radio in my 2013 jeep compass.
I have the dirtiest airwaves of anywhere I think, given that I do live in an area saturated with the standard AM Broadcast, a huge concentration of Amatuer radio enthusiasts, the companies that are testing various wireless technologies (I am in Sunnyvale, CA). The cleanest LEGAL band I can find is 1630 AM - 1710 would be cleaner, but I do not know how to attenuate 20db below blah.. so I am not gonna try it.
The testing ground is simple:
MAST: I dug a 3 foot by 10 inch hole in the ground, dropped a 4 foot pole into it, and filled it with quickcrete.
MOUNTING: The transmitters will be mounted to the resulting 1 foot pole, hanging out about 7 inches over the bare ground.
ANTENNA: The antennas are the one that comes with the Procaster, a 102" stainless whip for the rangemaster, and an almost 10 foot 3/4" copper pipe for the Talking House.
GROUND: Just outside of the quickcrete blob is an 8 foot grounding rod. I will use the shortest bit of 18awg copper wire I can to attach the grounding to the rod.
AUDIO: Behringer 2222 mixer using a computer and Airtime as the music source, mic and cd players will be present, but we will see if I have time to play with all that mess.
PROCESSING: I do not have a ton of processing gear, so I am still trying to figure out what Ill use. If I do not have adequite gear for the hamilton and talking house, ill decouple the onboard processing from the procaster to make it as fair as i can.
I'll post results as they happen.