Who makes these?

[shuffy]

I am not a seller! Who does not trust can buy and be convinced it.

[FMEnjoyer]

Primarily this is a pirate radio forum. many pirates know if they put a sproggy rig on the chances of it being taken by Ofcom or the European versions of within a few days or max a week are very high. I was a bit concerned about a 500mW QN8027. But we are talking 200W using chips here and yet most people are quite fine by it.

We have Albert the pirate policeman who wants pirates to use non existent commercially designed FM stuff that costs only "just a few pounds to build. " Yet it exists absolutely nowhere except inside his own exceptionally clever mind.I know junk was used in the 1990s I have seen them, safe ? Safe ?some of the things I saw that were mains powered looked like they would fry you alive.

Yes the ideal never ever sprog for reasons of not being taken off as quick and because morally it is wrong to endanger anyone. And if you are simply selfish it might you or your family who needs and ambulance, fire, police or on a plane.

With radio northeasts input which is very good on the chips at least we build a bit better picture QN are noisy in band, QN8007?. And as EFR has shown the QN8007 is not an entirely safe bet. The trouble is the QN8007 can be good in a small Chinese rig as Albert has stated as he said there was a PLL that used QN8007 and it was surprisingly good. Problem is the QN8007 in the GD-2015 has a terrible filter on the output, almost none as we see in photos. So the Chinese designer clearly thought QN8007 is cleaner, so we do not need much filtering on this and did not care about the sprogs EFR showed up clear as day.

If the GD-2015 had good filtering it would be tidy but they saved some pennies and messed it up ! Idiots, for a few pennies or cents.

Seems the BH chips cause a bit less broadband noise over the dial that is worth knowing. QN8007 also can sprog just as badly without proper filtering. And I am not RF filtering expert but I presume band pass and low pass ?

I find it a very odd place to be cause the Chinese chip based stuff is, so close and yet so far. The potential is amazing, simplification of stereo low power FM PLL FM. My first messing around with rigs were the absolute worst imaginable junk. Transistor Zenith electronics rigs that hummed, drifted, had ZERO filtering and changed frequency when you walked by them. If you heard music every now and then beyond 1km it was a miracle. BH or QN chip at 500mW ! 1Watt or 3 Watts as the Zenith (3W) was supposed to be, is better than that and is worth recalling.

Zenith must of been total output 3Watts across the entire Band 2 and beyond !

None of us were born yesterday some of the rigs on blocks must have been RF disaster boxes and probably still are today.

An extremely long time ago a station, ahem, used a 15 Watt VFO, by London tech into 50 ohm coax with dipole no balun so the coax must have been radiating. Still did 20 miles. Could not get good SWR so on site had to use the dual yellow trimmers attached to coils on the PA to try and make a match and get power up. Totally not knowing what was being done. Firstly there was a 50/75Ohm mismatch and almost certainly the coax was radiating messing the pattern up, it would probably do 30miles if had a balun at feed.

With hindsight we know more, a bit... but I find it correct that we should use quality kit as no one should interfere with anyone but also I think many people do not use quality kit.

In fact many use junk for whatever they are up to. I suppose this is the unregulated world of pirating.

A clearer picture of things comes about. Albert already knew most of this but did get a decent QN8007 chip rig so it is possible. Just not the GD-2015 that is the only one using that chip but with very bad filtering.

If you see 6+ coils on the output side then there is a chance it might be better. That is my non technical understanding more coils = more poles = less sprogs and harmonics.

I wish the Chinese would make a better job of the filtering that would at least help, surely wound bits of copper wire are not worth saving money on. Even 500mW QN8027 (terrible chip) have 6 coils - it needs it ! So why QN8007 GD 2015 missed them, cause the chip has better spec sheet they left it off and all the spurs and spurious come out to play after amplification, fools.

Just filter the outputs properly as a starting point. They will never sell more of those QN8007 GD-2015 boxes when they sprog like EFR shown. Without getting conspiratorial it is almost like they want us to sprog our radio band up.

At least we get a bit clearer picture. The 120W 200W chip based if they really are ? Are truly scary.

Stories and fantasies of "few pounds" non existing easy to use 500mW PLL Stereo exciters are no use to anyone. Actually much less use than chip rigs and that is just a fact.

[FMEnjoyer]

Is it that the Chinese cannot innovate anything? Only emulate, to be kind... or build something from a intended use suggested application sheet.

I am sure someone in China has the technical knowledge but they seem not to want to build anything that is actually good and works properly.
All the chip stuff seems like complete trash, the chips that have low spurious and harmonics they don't filter properly and the real junk chips like QN8027 has more filtering and still has noise and spurious as far as we know, in the end they are all rubbish.

Why have they not made a $40 Stereo 500mW PLL without a chip, like the fabled "few pounds PLL" that Albert speaks of in every other post ? With correct filtering. I don't understand it.It is a bit like everything is very close but at the same time very far for someone who wants cheap stereo non sprog stability, all very dissatisfying.

[EFR]

What I did look around these QN chips, they "work" if you filter output after chip before next stage, filter that next stage before PA and last lowpass filter. Replace these switching regulators with standart linear ones, and filter all stages well.


It wont still remove in band noise out of them, but price would be quite much higher.

Any cheap BH rigs on marked that can be crushed on SA?

[FMEnjoyer]

"Any cheap BH rigs on marked that can be crushed on SA?" not sure what that means EFR ?

[EFR]

Is there any cheap ones that You are interested and I can order and check the spectrum out of it.

[Novaro]

I never bought a qn chip transmitter except very small units with qn8027. It is like usb stick in shape with dimensions 6cmX2cm. Previously before some years in 2015 the same format transmitter had the rda5820 chip which was far superior.

I boosted the output with a Turkish amplifier very popular and cheap at the time to 15 watts and did not have any interference issues at all. I don't have equipment to be sure but the qn8027 and kt8030 i tested with the same amplifier blocked even the phones wifi!!!!

I gifted this little unit, i lost a second one somewhere and got other five from different sellers because i know with the Chinese products when you find something good you have to get a safe amount before they start to provide copies when original parts are out of stock. All five units came in the same shape the description said rda5820 but all came with 8027 chip and was good sound wise but horrible in rf output.

Lesson learned. I wish i had this unit again.

[Novaro]

The first bh chip a got is one of the very older units

https://www.ebay.com/itm/225471147765?m ... media=COPY

I believe is clean and have good sound. The second was before a month from ali express a 500mw unit.

The inside of the unit is this one

https://www.ebay.com/itm/226088467712?m ... media=COPY

i found it by comparing the back of the unit with the boards one. They are the same.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_EuZlEBO

I replaced the bb910 with kv1471 varicap i believe the sound is better now but maybe is only a false perception or a placebo!!!

[FMEnjoyer]

Is there any cheap ones that You are interested and I can order and check the spectrum out of it.

I was curious about GD-2015S which uses BH1414K as advertised anyway.

However I feel you are too generous EFR, I think overall we have understood despite the 'so close, but so far" situation these Chinese transmitters are unreliable in terms of components and build, way too variable, subject to both design and component change at sellers will so you have no idea what they will send you. No quality control, variable build quality and they change anything they want without saying at any time they need to to save pennies and sell them to you.

They are sadly just crap boxes likely to get you into trouble fast. Pretty much all of them. When chips are ok (QN8007 QN 8066 BH1414K) they remove the necessary filtering when amplified, as you saw with your own eyes and shared to us and if the chips are terrible QN8027 etc. they put 6 coils and they still sprog in band.

I suppose my hopes got the better of me and I now realize they are dangerous rubbish to use. Maybe it would be nice to own something quality even if unused in a box under the bed for a random rainy day where you don't mess the entire neighbourhood up with RF nastiness.

And as has been said already, this is into dummy loads, perfect matches, we know nothing of what happens to these circuits when running at 2.5:1 VSWR or there is some common mode on coax etc. And likely it will not be better it will even worse.

It is rare 100pct perfect TX conditions are met all of the time even though that is what to aim for, especially hobby people who may have very little tech knowledge, even less than I.

The market is ripe for proven quality exciter stereo PLL cheap with all connectors on board at least but maybe this market is miniscule and smaller by the day and why there is zero. Maybe that market cannot be fulfilled by either Chinese well designed (maybe they simply cannot design quality product, or build it, through lack of knowledge or will) or Euro designed. I hear only fairy tales, stories and figment of the imagination of few pounds PLL fantasies when it come to affordable non chip, PLL, Stereo, stable, non sprog exciters for a low price with connectors built in.

They don't exist.

A perfect storm making it a poor choice and FM dying off as well. As Shuffy said many want to do the stereo themselves, fair enough, for hobby style whatever that means only sprog chip junk is available.

I had terrible trouble with the PCS 2015+ and under mod just would not modulate high enough and it is mono, expensive to import here but that is UK's own fault and add on are way too overpriced.

I am not really worried as I have decided listening is more enjoyable and less risky anyway. There is simply nothing to redeem pirate radio anymore. Very sad but everything comes to an end, and where it ends there is something new whatever that may be for an individual.

[Novaro]

In 2009 i bought a Ramsey Fm 110b that used an analog stereo encoder and a mosfet at the output delivering 15 watts of power. I believe you mean something like that, a small box with encoder and pll in one board. The particular one had also a audio mixer with vertical pots like a console for audio input and microphone! It was an all in one approach just power it and make your show. i run the unit for 2 years as a community radio!

[FMEnjoyer]

I admit I was wrong again, Chinese are ultra advanced technology and design, just me being bad informed, again.



Their small FM transimitters are not good though, they also spend time doing other things, more profitable by far.