Amos Keag wrote:
Finally, the USA is succumbing to a creeping Socialism. This is contrary
to the words of John F Kennedy: "Ask NOT what your country can do for
you; ask what you can do for your country."

Methinks you completely missed Kennedy's meaning. Here's Ayn
Rand's take on that statement: "Ask NOT what your country can
do for you ...", translation: Stop expecting the federal government
to preserve and protect your individual constitutional rights;
"... ask what you can do for your country.", translation: give up
your constitutional rights, including your life, liberty, and
possessions, in order to benefit the welfare state.
--
73, Cecil http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

Reg, G4FGQ wrote:
"It is also interesting that the whole system is technically regulated
by State and/or Central Government."

In the beginning, there was no regulation. There were only wireless
experimenters. Marconi invented the antenna which made the signal go
far. Marconi`s antenna may have been seen as an elevated capactor plate.
When the transmitter and receiver were each equipped with a plate, you
had a coupling capacitor with the earth for a return path. The capacitor
carries displacement current while the earth moves electrons.. Then,
Marconi discovered the capacitor leads worked well enough without the
plates, so plates were omitted.

Marconi was soon using wireless for ship to shore communications. It was
essential to safety of life at sea. When the Titanic sank on April 15,
1912, it had a Marconi operator aboard. The world was immediately aware
of radio. Inept radio communications during the loss of the Titanic
prompted the U.S. Congress to pass the Radio Act of 1912, which expanded
on the Wireless Ship Act of 1910 which required all seafaring vessels to
maintain 24-hour radio watch and keep contact with nearby ships and
coastal radio stations.

All radio communications were in code until Reginald Fessenden invented
wireless telephony in 1906. In the early wireless days a lidtener had to
understand code to make sense of wireless.

The Radio Act of 1912 assigned three-letter and four-letter codes
(call-letters) to radio stations and limited broadcasting to 340 meters.
This jammed the signals. From the beginning, the U.S. Federal Government
declared sole jurisdiction over radio as the waves don`t stop at state
lines and must involve international cooperation. It`s the "Interstate
Commerce Regulation Power" of the Federal Government.

In 1920, KDKA in Pittsburgh, a Westinghouse station, transmitted the
first commercial radio broadcast.

In 1922, the U.S. Commerce Department allowed powerful stations to use
400 meters, as long as they only broadcast music.

In 1925, A,C. Nielsen began reporting audience shares to advertisers,

In 1925, the first soap opera (The Smith Family) was broadcast.

In 1926, RCA, General Electric, and Westinghouse established The
National Broadcasting Company (NBC). NBC operated two networks of
stations (Red & Blue).

In 1929, William S. Paley founded The Columbia Broadcasting System
(CBS).

In 1931, there were 40,000 U.S. TV sets, including 4,000 in New York
City.

In 1933, Edwin Armstrong introduced Frequency Modulation.

The Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communicationsd
Commission which regulates broadcasting.

In 1936, The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) debuted the world`s
first television service with three hours of programming a day.

In 1937, Edgar Bergen and Charlie MCCarthy debuted on NBC TV.

We live in interesting times.

Advertising pays for broadcasting in the U.S. except for some public
support of non-commercial or almost non-commercial stations.

Program time devoted to advertising on commercial stations was limited
by the FCC to just a few minutes per hour before Carter became
president. He started the deregulation process which has now run amok.
Commercial announcements were the topic of "Saturday Night Live".
Satirically, they entertain.

Mrs. Thatcher may have sold the BBC`s distribution facilities, but since
BBC has done so well programming, I hope the production facilities are
still in the hands of those responsible and that they continue and grow
their product.

Who bought the BBC`s transmitters depends on how big the bargains were.
If a windfall was readily available, I suspect the Queen, her relatives
and allies may have been the buyers. Like Russia, I suppose, except with
more care that the buyers seem not to be profiteers.

My daughter lives in London and pays her tax to support the BBC. She now
owns a 99-year lease on her flat in Westminster. Only leases are
available. The right people are the ownwers and they aren`t selling. Her
married name is Edwards too, but her husband is an American. They are
both lawyers.

Best regards, Richard harrison, KB5WZI

On Tue, 8 Nov 2005 14:11:07 -0600, (Richard
Harrison) wrote:

All radio communications were in code until Reginald Fessenden invented
wireless telephony in 1906. In the early wireless days a lidtener had to
understand code to make sense of wireless.

Hi Richard,

Oddly enough, just before a Nanotechnology seminar, I was recently
browsing:

"The Radio Amateur's Handbook
A Complete, Authentic and Informative
Work on Wireless Telegraphy and Telephony"

by A. Frederick Collins
Inventor of the Wireless Telephone, 1899

To William Marconi
Inventor of the Wireless Telegraph

"The wireless telephone was invented by the author
of this book at Narberth, Penn., in 1899, and his first
experiments the human voice was transmitted to a
distance of three blocks."

Awarded Gold Medal for same, Alaskan Yukon Pacific Exposition [now the
campus of the University of Washington from which I have just returned
from minutes ago], 1909.

....

"After Marconi had shown the world how to telegraph without
connecting wires it would seem , on first thought, to be an easy
matter to telephone without wires, but not so, for the electric
spark sets up damped and periodic oscillations and these cannot be
used for transmitting speech. Instead, the oscillations must be
of constant amplitude and continuous. That a direct current arc
light transforms a part of its energy into electric oscillations
was shown by Firth and Rogers, or England, in 1893.

"The author was the first to connect an arc lamp with an
aerial and a ground, and then to use a microphone transmitter
to modulate the sustained oscillations so set up. The receiving
apparatus consisted of a variable contact, known as a pill box
detector, which Sir Oliver Lodge had devised, and to this was
connected an Ericsson telephone receiver, then the most sensitive
made. A later improvement for setting up sustained oscillations
was the author's rotating oscillation arc."

This volume is available at Project Gutenberg as an e-book. Collins
goes on to describe the "boys" who monitored shipping transmissions
and often joined in:

"boys began to get great fun out of listening in to what the ship
and shore stations were sending and, further, they began to do a
little sending on their own account. These youngsters, who caused
the professional operators many a pang, were the first wireless
amateurs, and among them experts were developed who are the
foremost in the practice of the art today."

It should be noted that "hackers" of a decade ago now fill much the
same description, and have been similarly elevated.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Cecil Moore wrote:

Amos Keag wrote:

Finally, the USA is succumbing to a creeping Socialism. This is
contrary to the words of John F Kennedy: "Ask NOT what your country
can do for you; ask what you can do for your country."


Methinks you completely missed Kennedy's meaning. Here's Ayn
Rand's take on that statement: "Ask NOT what your country can
do for you ...", translation: Stop expecting the federal government
to preserve and protect your individual constitutional rights;
"... ask what you can do for your country.", translation: give up
your constitutional rights, including your life, liberty, and
possessions, in order to benefit the welfare state.

YEP!!! Socialism.

Richard Clark, KB7QHC wrote:
"---by A. Frederick Collins inventor of the Wireless Telephone, 1899."

Collins apparently connected an arc lamp to an arial and ground, using a
microphone transmitter to modulate the oscillations it set up. I suppose
a carbon button in series with the d-c to the arc would do that.

Success has many authors. The airplane had many builders around this
productive era, but it is the Wright brothers that are credited with the
first practical success.

Fessenden was a Canadian who happened to be Chief Engineer of the Radio
Corporation of America, successor to the American Marconi Company.
Fessenden holds more patents than aqnyone except Thomas Edison, who once
employed Fessenden. Fessenden`s modulation method was control of the
excitation of an r-f alternator by a magnetic amplifier which he
modulated with audio, speech, music or whatever, even dots and dashes.
Modulation of high r-f powers was commonplace. Hundreds of kilowatts
were produced and modulated by the Fessenden method. A relic of the era
in Sweeden is still revived annually for demonstration, I believe.

Best regards, Richard Harrison, KB5WZI

"Richard Fry" wrote in message
...
"Dave Pitzer" wrote
... Is there any place I can find polar graphs of commercial
broadcast station's antenna patterns?

___________________

Dave,

Here http://www.radio-locator.com/ is a link to a website with calculated
coverage areas/contours for US AM broadcast stations. The contours are
based on their licensed radiation patterns (directional or not), AND
ground conductivities for the geographic regions concerned.

The polar radiation patterns of these stations most probably don't look
much like these plots, because of the heavy influence that ground
conductivity has on received field strength along the various azimuth
bearings.

Even the real coverage contours of AM broadcast stations using omni
antennas usually are anything but omni, due to the effects of varying
ground conductivities around their various azimuth sectors and ranges.

Have fun.

Just a FYI...the contour maps at Radio-Locator.com are WRONG....the LOCAL on
FM maps is actually the distant or Service Contour (1mv or 60dbu
level)..LOCAL is defined as City Grade or 70dbu or 3.16mV level...which they
do not show..On AM, they show lower levels on the map as well...If you want
to really know what the signal level should be, draw another circle or line
inside the LOCAL one they show...about the same distance between the LOCAL
and Distant they show...Your line drawn will be local, their local becomes
Distant and their Distant becomes Finge...
Their Fringe is now DX

Chris
WB5ITT

"CWB" wrote:
Just a FYI...the contour maps at Radio-Locator.com are WRONG
....the LOCAL on FM maps is actually the distant or Service Contour
(1mv or 60dbu level)..LOCAL is defined as City Grade or 70dbu or
3.16mV level...which they do not show..On AM, they show lower
levels on the map as well.
_____________

Their maps DO correctly show the distances to the contours for the field
strengths they identify. Radio-Locator picked different field strength
values for the "local" etc contours than those used by the FCC, but that
doesn't invalidate the Radio-Locator maps.

And their choices are reasonable. For example on AM, a 2.5 mV/m signal
(Radio-Locator's local contour) does provide good service to a typical cheap
table radio inside a home in an urban setting.