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Swing Kit Vs. NPC (ept3600)

Tall man, love reading this shit. I don't have time to transmit much less experiment. So I'll have to take your word.

I rarely quote anybody.....

As for exceeding 100% positive peak mod without exceeding 100% negative peak mod........every AM broadcast station in the country is doing it with about 125% positive mod. I once had a Nautel AM transmitter that would POP!! on voice peaks due to a modulator fault. I replaced the mod controller unit and tested it. I used a 20hz tone at up to 300% positive peak mod to really hammer it and make sure all was well. I had the standby tx on the air and the Nautel on the dummy load. B3cause we had a narrow band short antenna I also tried it into the actual antenna. I cannot imagine what some of our listeners thought hearing a REALLY LOUD HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM from their beside radios at 3:00am. :p
 
The diode installed in the two different locations has the same effect, all it does is raise the carrier at an audio rate to keep it from pinching off. You really never have more than a ℅100 modulation in the position direction. Since the scope only sees voltage you have to use a pretty decent spectrum analyzer so see the carrier rise and fall with modulation.

I have to say this is exactly what I've seen on most of the "NPC" CB mods. Although, I've been able to see it on the scope because many rigs keep the carrier held at the higher point after modulation, just long enough to see what it's actually doing once you know what to look for.

Real NPC as used in commercial AM stations requires fairly aggressive clipping of the negative peak, followed by filtering. It never changes the carrier level to prevent cutoff. It is also true that many AM receivers with simple detectors will start to distort when the signal reaches more than 150% positive peaks. But even 125% positive peaks are a bit louder to the ear than a symmetrical AM signal.

I would say the bigger concern is correct use of the regular AMC circuit in the radio and resisting the temptation to completely disable it. Back when I had a customer that wouldn't accept anything less than a fully clipped modulation limiter, I'd simply increase the range of the AMC by changing resistors so that it would activate just before the modulator started showing signs of distortion.

Yeah, it still hit negative peak cutoff but it's a big improvement over the complete mud you get when the modulator itself is flat topping on every audio peak and the words start running together. If you can't get them to reduce the modulation to where it's clean on the scope, you can still reduce distortion and improve the sound quality without shaving enough of them "swing watts" off that they will complain.

There is a point where you just start over driving everything from the mic pre-amp through the final stage. No more power is created, only increased distortion. You want to prevent that condition from happening. The customer might even notice that the little bit of compression this gives, does increase talk power by allowing any extra gain to bring the average modulation level up before distortion becomes objectionable.
 
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Why do you remove R276, as this disables the AMC? AMC ONLY reacts to negative going voltage swings, not the positive.
 

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