A new breed of transmitting devices could soon revolutionize the world of amateur radio. At the moment it is only possible for ham radio stations to use the short wave bands with a special licence. For this they have to go through the burden of taking exams, be controlled by the FCC and the ARRL and a lot more negative stuff which compromises fun…
The invention of the non-transmitter could open these capabilities to everyone, without hassle. A non-transmitter is a device which is capable of generating electromagnetic waves without being a transmitter. A new class of devices called PLC (Power Line Communication) and SMPSU (switching Mode Power Supply Unit) devices are capable of doing this. They are not transmitters, and so they don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the FCC. The trick is that they are not transmitters until they are connected to an antenna. So to use them properly as a transmitting device you connect them to a non-antenna. The biggest contender for the non-antenna predicate is already built into your house, it is called mains wiring.
The difference between an antenna and a non-antenna is quite obvious. For the average ham, a piece of wire of, say 10 meters length is an antenna which will enable him/her to contact New Zealand with a transmitting power of 5 Watts. Your mains wiring is different. It contains at least 100 meters of wire, so it is a non-antenna.
This opens a host of new possibilities. As this is a non-ham affair, you could use the non-ham part of the spectrum to fulfill a lot of communication needs. Think about using spread spectrum between 21.35 MHz and 28 MHz, using your non-transmitter to disseminate videos, starting a spy communication network, etc. etc. The only thing you have to do is make sure you are using a non-transmitter, and connect it to a non-antenna.
I have already started to upgrade my neighbours’ switching power supply, which has a free running oscillator, to use a PLL. I will modulate it using GMSK and Reed-Solomon coding on top of a Spread SpectrumDirect Sequence coder using a nice pseudo random algorithm to fit my special PLC SDR receiver… connect it to my non-antenna and see if I can work some DX firsts on the new PLC bands… Yeeeehaaaah…..
pa0r 