Joerg said:
The other party to air traffic communication are aircraft. Those happen to
roam about quite a bit
Seriously, disregarding the airstrip that's almost next to the office here
we are also roughly in the flight path for Mather Field. Altitude above
our building maybe 1500ft, give or take. If Fedex, DHL and other pilots
would report some weird shhhhht noise everytime they pass a certain spot,
guess what would happen?
One of the nice things about AM, and the reason they use it for aviation, is
that power wins. If two signals are colliding, the more powerful one will
always be heard.
There are various "unicom" frequencies around the US, which are used by
pilots at uncontrolled airports for announcing positions in the traffic
pattern. Since the frequency space is not all that big, they tend to
overlap. You can often hear folks announcing at airports up to 100 miles
away. However, there is never any problem, since the near transmitters just
blast over the far ones.
I'm guessing the regen receiver outputs less than one mW through its power
wires. That isn't going to be a problem for anybody unless the OP decides to
start messing with the design, and somehow manages to build a far more
effective transmitter. If he puts it into a metal box, he'll be safe.
OTOH, he'll never get it working in the AM aircraft band, since the circuit
itself really sucks.
He should instead buy something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Blue-Emergency-...tcZphotoQQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
For 35 bucks buy-it-now, not a bad deal. It also does weather, AM broadcast
band, FM broadcast band, and shortwave, and even works from a crank so you
can work out while listening to the ATC folks vector jets around.
If the OP really wants to hack at something, I'd suggest an old Cessna
transceiver. Just don't plug in the microphone, and power it from 24V.
Should be fun to play with. This actually will get you arrested if you mess
up and jam a frequency, though. There is one on sale at eBay now for $10,
but it'll go for more.
I landed at Mather once when it first went GA. Very creepy. The runway is so
wide that it feels like you are much lower than you really are. A 172 feels
like a gnat on a surfboard.
Regards,
Bob Monsen