Ye old analog antennas atop the Empire State building

[MicMaven]

's. On a whim I bought a Kenwood R-5000 Rx and installed an Eavesdropper trapped dipole antenna for the SW bands on my roof.
Dunno if it's worth sending to someone to test/repair.
The Eavesdropper is wound up in a box somewhere in the garage.

Ha! Great! I once owned both the R-2000 and R-5000 and STILL have an Eavesdropper antenna in my attic! I also have a similar, yet brand new Barker&Williamson ASW-C trap dipole which has never been deployed. I have no idea how many other antennas I have had just for listening, let alone transmitting, too. Maybe you remember the Wellbrook Loop (from the UK) and other receive antennas by SONY, TECSUN, and other manufacturers. I even have an active whip antenna in my front yard, obscured and protected from the elements and from marauding children and killer bees in the neighborhood, by another fake rock.

Shoot, I even have a couple of (rather minor) design ideas included in a couple of commercially produced antennas made in Germany by an outfit called "Ariel-51" (great pun, eh?) They used a couple of my ideas in a low power, portable off center fed dipole. Did I mention, they were minor ideas? Heck, I even won two of the seven awards presented by an Ohio comapny, DX-Engineering, Inc., using its parts in my own antenna designs. That was fun - and spending the prize money was even better!

I attach images of an active antenna in my front yard, and a recent view of my backyard antenna farm - showing a number of antennas - all of which are home brewed (to keep this thread on topic!) The big vertical and a couple of small, sneaky UHF antennas are located behind the spot where I took the photo and are not shown. (As you can imagine, I have a very understanding wife! )

What exactly is up with your R-5000? I am not sure whether it is worth fixing or not - it usually depends on the availability and cost of parts. It was a solid rig in its time, although it runs hot on AC power, cooler on DC power, and on some examples the front panel ten-key pad suffers from "key-bounce" - mine did not, but many do - but it is no big deal as the radio works great without it. I really enjoyed my R-5000. I now have a current Kenwood TS-890 on my desk, and I am the ersatz Net Control Operator for the "TS-590 Owner Net" on 40 meters. At one time, I had several Ten-Tec transceiver, and still have a TT Centurion linear amplifier and Model 238C antenna tuner. Good stuff, Maynard. Happy Trails to you. James

 

[Brian Roth]

Ha! Great! I once owned both the R-2000 and R-5000 and STILL have an Eavesdropper antenna in my attic! I also have a similar, yet brand new Barker&Williamson ASW-C trap dipole which has never been deployed. I have no idea how many other antennas I have had just for listening, let alone transmitting, too. Maybe you remember the Wellbrook Loop (from the UK) and other receive antennas by SONY, TECSUN, and other manufacturers. I even have an active whip antenna in my front yard, obscured and protected from the elements and from marauding children and killer bees in the neighborhood, by another fake rock.

Shoot, I even have a couple of (rather minor) design ideas included in a couple of commercially produced antennas made in Germany by an outfit called "Ariel-51" (great pun, eh?) They used a couple of my ideas in a low power, portable off center fed dipole. Did I mention, they were minor ideas? Heck, I even won two of the seven awards presented by an Ohio comapny, DX-Engineering, Inc., using its parts in my own antenna designs. That was fun - and spending the prize money was even better!

I attach images of an active antenna in my front yard, and a recent view of my backyard antenna farm - showing a number of antennas - all of which are home brewed (to keep this thread on topic!) The big vertical and a couple of small, sneaky UHF antennas are located behind the spot where I took the photo and are not shown. (As you can imagine, I have a very understanding wife! )

What exactly is up with your R-5000? I am not sure whether it is worth fixing or not - it usually depends on the availability and cost of parts. It was a solid rig in its time, although it runs hot on AC power, cooler on DC power, and on some examples the front panel ten-key pad suffers from "key-bounce" - mine did not, but many do - but it is no big deal as the radio works great without it. I really enjoyed my R-5000. I now have a current Kenwood TS-890 on my desk, and I am the ersatz Net Control Operator for the "TS-590 Owner Net" on 40 meters. At one time, I had several Ten-Tec transceiver, and still have a TT Centurion linear amplifier and Model 238C antenna tuner. Good stuff, Maynard. Happy Trails to you. James


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My journey in electronics began at age 8/9/? when someone gave me a functional Philco wooden cabinet "tombstone" radio made in the 1930's. It had two bands...MW and SW. I was hooked. BTW I still have that same radio in a box in my garage....used it as an ornament in my house for many years along with many other wood cabinet radios I've collected. AFAIK the Philco still "speaks".

My first soldering project quickly followed (Dad kinda helped....mainly so I didn't burn my fingers at age 9 or 10...) and it was a Knight Kit Ocean Hopper regenerative receiver. It actually worked!! Now I was VERY hooked.

I'm jabbering now....a few years later I got my Novice ticket. Used a forgotten brand Rx a local ham gifted to me with a Tx I built from...????....ARRL handbook or magazine plans. Tx chassis was an aluminum cake pan. Never went past Novice since I barely passed 5 WPM Morse and back then General Class was 13 WPM. Novice couldn't be renewed and Technician (?) class was VHF with a 5 WPM Morse test.

Next radio project was running a pirate FM station from my bedroom. lol

ANYWAY....many other RF adventures came after that.

As for the R-5000, it turns on just fine and seems as if it should work. Crank up the volume and I hear what should be typical noise floor. BUT I don't even hear the local AMs (or WWV) with a random wire antenna slung in the living room. I did catch a weak signal on a SW band from a gospel (?) station in TN or KY. Can't recall what freq....maybe in between 80 and 40 Meters?

I need to fire it up again and take better notes. Seems as if the front end could be fried. It used to be a kick-a$$ Rx with the Eavesdropper.

I love your ingenuity with the antennas. Are you in a HOA that forbids antennas?

73s.

Bri

 

[PermO]

Interesting project! As I recall, you work in the broadcast business....or am I thinking of someone else from that region of the world?

Bri

Yes, that was me, spend 25 years in broadcast as tech and operator. I'm a freelance tech so I take any kind of work as long as it fits my skills. I used to be the rack guy that stays on ground level, but more and more work gets installed at height. So I already passed 50 years of age and got my climbing license and safety gear. Last year I did maintenance on maritime radar systems.

 

[MicMaven]

two other tower climber videos I ran across awhile back.

Holy Crap, Batman. Climbing above the clouds says it all for me. Yikes! / James



[PS - Good diversion, Mr @pucho812 ) / JR

 

[PermO]

View attachment 20230911_114411.mp4

Coastal Radar tower Zandvoort near the F1 circuit.

 

[pucho812]

While not an antenna it is broadcast related. Never have I ever moved a heavier piece of rack gear in my life

 

[Gold]

Any old pirate radio dogs around here with stories? I caught the end of the scene in NYC when I arrived in the mid 80's. Kinda like graffiti artists.

 

[Brian Roth]

My forays into pirate radio were pretty mundane. In late grade school I had built an AM "transmitter" circuit from one of the electronics magazines and connected it to the longwire I had in the backyard for broadcast band and shortwave listening. I covered maybe a block.

In high school I had an FM station in my bedroom connected to the FM antenna I had on a rotator at 30' height (I used that antenna for DXing on FM). Obviously directional but I could aim towards friend's houses and they could hear me up to 2 or 3 miles away.

Both "stations" were One Turntable and a Microphone....might be a cool song idea there...<g>

Here's a kinda pirate story from 1985. There's a motorsport for boats often referred to Thunder boats and they do events around the country.

https://apba.org/unlimited-category.html

Somewhat akin to drag boats, but these guys race in an oval loop of a couple miles at up to 200 MPH. Oklahoma City was on the itinerary and a friend owned a PA rental company who was contracted for the event. He found out that besides the main event area there were two (three?) other bleacher areas scattered around the lake.

He was going nuts trying to come up with a solution to get the "track announcer" and filler music to those remotes. Another friend of mine worked as Chief Engineer for one of the FM rock stations in town. He had a spare "exciter" from the station...a box that would accept analog audio and spit out 10 Watts on a selected FM frequency. That unit then fed the main transmitter which cranked the output to 50 kW.

We set up the exciter to an unused local FM channel and fed a FM antenna from Radio Shack. Similar antennas were at the remote sites and fed a FM receiver tuned to the frequency and then into power amps and speaker stacks.

Worked quite well. Driving around the lake area I could pick up the broadcast way beyond the lake.
Definitely illegal according to the FCC...but the statute of limitations ran out decades ago...lol.

Bri

PS...those boats were amazing. Many/most used Rolls Royce V12 aircraft engines with no mufflers....hence "Thunder Boats".

 

[MicMaven]

Re: Pirate Radio ...

I admit receiving several pirate Short Wave transmissions over many years . . . but invoke the the 5th Amendment right to remain silent concerning any other transmissions . . .
Anonymous

 

[Gold]

I know someone here in NYC who was heavily involved in Pirate Radio. He has some wild stories. He says the FCC enforcement agents knew him by name. It sounded like a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Now you can hear whatever you want whenever you want. Not nearly as exciting.