Not surprisingly, threads dealing with unlicensed operations are a common occurance here. They range across the spectrum from people wanting to transmit for miles to people wanting to transmit from one side of a lab bench to the other. What many/most of these posters lack, in addition to what they are asking specifically about, is any awareness/knowledge of whether what they are doing is even legal.
It would seem like a really useful sticky would be something that peeled back the onion at least a bit and talked about the general guidelines for the kind of operations that are permissible for an unlicensed transmitter. Yes, these are going to vary from country to country, but there are probably some pretty common qualitative things they have in common.
In particular, I'm thinking of something that would give people a pretty good idea of how they can operate and either make measurements confirming that they are in compliance or limit their design in such a way that it ensures compliance even without making measurements.
As an example, one of the things I would like to do in the next few years is develop some hands-on electronics labs in which students build simple transistor-based transmitters and receivers using different modulation schemes. From a practical standpoint, it would be nice if this can be done in a completely unlicensed way and since the range need only be sufficient to get from one side of a room to the other I think that should be possible. But I will want to design the labs so that I have confidence that the students will be in compliance.
I did some searching a few years ago and found some stuff, including some on the FCC website, but I didn't find much that would have been useful for a simple experimenter to use in order to ensure compliance.
Any of you hams interested in throwing something together -- even if it's mostly links to sites where this information resides?
It would seem like a really useful sticky would be something that peeled back the onion at least a bit and talked about the general guidelines for the kind of operations that are permissible for an unlicensed transmitter. Yes, these are going to vary from country to country, but there are probably some pretty common qualitative things they have in common.
In particular, I'm thinking of something that would give people a pretty good idea of how they can operate and either make measurements confirming that they are in compliance or limit their design in such a way that it ensures compliance even without making measurements.
As an example, one of the things I would like to do in the next few years is develop some hands-on electronics labs in which students build simple transistor-based transmitters and receivers using different modulation schemes. From a practical standpoint, it would be nice if this can be done in a completely unlicensed way and since the range need only be sufficient to get from one side of a room to the other I think that should be possible. But I will want to design the labs so that I have confidence that the students will be in compliance.
I did some searching a few years ago and found some stuff, including some on the FCC website, but I didn't find much that would have been useful for a simple experimenter to use in order to ensure compliance.
Any of you hams interested in throwing something together -- even if it's mostly links to sites where this information resides?