Hello all. Somchai here, from Chiang Rai in the far north of Thailand. I look after the transmitter and studio gear for a small community FM station in town, mostly keeping a tired old 300W exciter alive and fighting lightning every rainy season.
At home I do a bit of shortwave listening on a Tecsun with a long wire in the garden, and lately I've started playing with an RTL-SDR dongle for airband from the local airport. Reception from up here in the hills is interesting: on a good night we hear China and Laos better than Bangkok.
Found the forum through the SDR threads. Looking forward to learning, especially about lightning protection for small FM sites - any tips welcome.
Hello from Chiang Rai, northern Thailand
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kok_river_fm
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Transwarp
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Re: Hello from Chiang Rai, northern Thailand
Hello and welcome to the forum Somchai.
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kok_river_fm
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Re: Hello from Chiang Rai, northern Thailand
Thanks Stronty and Transwarp, and sorry for the slow reply, the rainy season has kept me busy up the mast.
A small update in case it helps someone with a similar setup. Most weekends we carry the local football club's home games live, which means a cheap 1.3 GHz link from the stadium roof back to the studio, about 4 km with one hill in the way. The match times come straight off the fixture list on https://chiangrai-tsc.com/ and I schedule the link test an hour before kick-off, because that is exactly when the afternoon storms like to arrive.
That brings me back to my lightning question. Last month a strike near the stadium took out the link receiver but the exciter at the studio survived, I think only because I had fitted a proper coax surge arrestor and a single-point ground on that side. The stadium end had nothing but a long earth wire to a water pipe. Is a quarter-wave shorted stub worth trying at 1.3 GHz, or should I just buy gas discharge arrestors for both ends and bond everything to one ground bar?
A small update in case it helps someone with a similar setup. Most weekends we carry the local football club's home games live, which means a cheap 1.3 GHz link from the stadium roof back to the studio, about 4 km with one hill in the way. The match times come straight off the fixture list on https://chiangrai-tsc.com/ and I schedule the link test an hour before kick-off, because that is exactly when the afternoon storms like to arrive.
That brings me back to my lightning question. Last month a strike near the stadium took out the link receiver but the exciter at the studio survived, I think only because I had fitted a proper coax surge arrestor and a single-point ground on that side. The stadium end had nothing but a long earth wire to a water pipe. Is a quarter-wave shorted stub worth trying at 1.3 GHz, or should I just buy gas discharge arrestors for both ends and bond everything to one ground bar?