A lot more complicated than a Pantry Xmitter

[Mike Watterson]

So is he on to something?  Will it have value to folks who have old radios?  The general tone here is negative.
There have been multi-freq pantry transmitters made but although it allows the radio to be tuned to different 'pseudo' stations it wont be an authentic experience as he is trying to create.

thanks Gary

It's more for archival / demonstration / museum use if or when more or all MW & LW stations are gone. Recordings of past times. Hence 14bit to 18 bit serious ADCs or SDRs and storage not an issue. You don't actually need an SDR, simply a good enough ADC, band filtering and an aerial.

It doesn't make any sense for regular listening. One way to simulate live radio on AM is to monitor the radio LO. A controller has a table of frequencies to stations and then controls a satellite receiver and a modulator driving an inductive loop to couple to the Radio RF. Inter station noise and signal strength can be simulated.

A "multiswitch" can connect to 4 x LNBFs on a 1m dish and pick up over 2,000 radio stations from four satellites. The basic model can feed 12 or 16 satellite receivers. This kind of system can do up to 16 satellites (probably using 3 to 5 off 80cm to 1.2m dishes) and the quattro feeds to a multiswitch can be amplified/split (as each is only 1 band and H or V) to easily feed 256 multiswitches each with 16 outputs.

I've a multiswitch with 5x LNBFs, 1.1m dish c/w transverse curved arm and a 12 out multi-switch. Used to have 4 in and 16 out.

A sky box will work as long as the quattro LBNF pointing at 28.2 is on the first port. Most of my sat boxes are Turkish HD with HDMI, SCART & 3.5mm jack, USB stick/HDD recording and cost €45 each. They work with single LNB, 4 port or 8 port switches (either simple or multi) or USALS/GotoXY motor drive.
I have 1 x Manhatten replaced by tuner on TV, so in store. The Skyboxes given away. A Humax HDR in store because switching between Freesat & non-Freesat a pain and only records on Freesat, even manually. Multiple coax to four rooms.
Three Turkish boxes have €6 or €10 FM transmitters sold (CE mark) for phone or MP3 to car radio. So every VHF-FM radio has three extra channels, 88.1, 88.5 & 92.7.

I might rig up a controller, About 12 years ago I did a PIC with 433MHz TX and keyboard which signalled to one with 433MHz RX (scavanged from video senders & then I bought modules) and IR TX. An RX from VCR on laptop serial port was used to learn the original codes.