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Originally Posted by heathkit tv
Wow Jeff, sounds like you learned your lesson!  
Anthony |
Anthony, I don't quite follow you; in fact, I think you must have misunderstood me. The small radio station I had from 1970-72 was entirely legal, no license required under Part 15 regulations (the transmitter, a 3-tube Lafayette KT-195 "wireless broadcaster", only had 100-mw [0.1-watt] input and probably much less output). The station only reached 500 feet, give or take, and was located in my basement to boot, so I was playing records and things to myself most of the time. (The best reception report I ever received was in the spring of 1971 when a kid told me he'd heard the station down at the end of the street, just a short distance from my home at the time.)
That little station, which had many different callsigns (WADE, WNBQ, WYYN, et al.) and operated all over the upper half of the AM radio dial (1000, 970, 1330, 1460, etc. KHz--I used to operate on the dial positions of daytime-only stations after they would sign off for the night) was loads of fun while it lasted (I had to take it off the air in mid-1972 when I moved--it had nothing whatsoever to do with the FCC), but I had a lot more enjoyment when I got my first amateur license in the summer of '72, 32 years ago; I still enjoy ham radio today with a 100-watt rig (and a 1.5-watt battery-powered hand-held radio working through an automatic relay station), and am able to transmit a
lot further than 500 feet, even using an indoor antenna.
That story about radio station WBBH appeared in
Electronics Illustrated magazine in, IIRC, 1967-68. It may have been fictional.
Again, I need you to understand that my small AM station was operating entirely within the letter of the law, and I personally wasn't doing anything illegal by operating it. (I also had small 0.1-watt CB walkie-talkie transceivers as a kid; never got in trouble using them, either.) If I
had been convicted of operating an illegal high-power AM broadcast transmitter, I would not have been able to get an amateur radio license or to have my present license renewed; the FCC does not permit anyone who has had previous run-ins with them (or convictions of certain other crimes) to obtain any kind of amateur license. This has been in effect as long as the FCC has been around, so it's nothing new.