I always enjoy it when I get home and there is a little parcel containing something that I have purchased on Trademe or eBay waiting for me. Today it was my Sound Blaster Audigy 2, in one of those impossible to open Post Office plastic bags. I plan to test the Breakaway Audio Processor with it over the next couple of weeks. I am concerned that I do not have a PC with the horsepower to run it, but we should be bale to overcome that reasonably quickly.

Next Tuesday I have enrolled in the TSOLPFMBI (The Society Of Low Power FM Broadcasters Inc) J Pole building class. It should be a hoot.

Chris Knox

 A friend came to visit in the weekend, mainly to to catch Chris Knox play at the Waiheke Radio fundraiser, but we got to talk about synchronous FM. I initially argued that you could run two transmitters on the same pole synchronously under the 25km rule, effectively doubling  your e.i.r.p. He quickly refuted my claim by reminding me of the field strength measurement rule. Oh Darn. Back to synchronous though, I did a search and came up with a paperby my good friend Chuck Kelly. My friend, who has designed for Rakon and has a brain the size of a planet, hypothesized that modern crystal oscillators are accurate to 1ppm. This coupled with his transmitter design that uses a single oscillator to derive both TX frequency and pilot / 38kHz that synchronous transmission should be feasible. This will need some testing.

Oh dear, I have just won a broken Francis Francis coffee machine on trademe for spares to rebuild ours, which will win out, caffeine or wireless.