Thursday March 31, 2021 9:32 PM CDT -- Mark speaks in reply to my earlier post about AM & FM being King of the Dashboard:
Listening to CDs is an on the way
out as a way of listening. My 2020 Kia forte doesn't have a CD player.
Cars come with a USB input or Bluetooth pairing with your phone. I
don't care about or use that but that's not the point. The point is
that the radio was compared with an already past way of listening
to music. Of course more listen to radio than CDs in a car. I would
bet that more are pairing with their phones to the car system than
listening to the radio. That wasn't included in the study unless I
missed it as I didn't read every line....just skimmed through
it.
So I think the article is not accurate.
We need to have people having radios in their homes as part 15
radio is at it's best with AM, in a stationary area in range. Some
do sit in the car in the driveway but for the most part you drive
in and out of the area in a few minutes. Living over a large plaza
parking lot would be good.
- Mark
Carl
speaks back: Sounds about right, Mark. I would agree that CDs in
the car is past its time and CDs themselves have faded, although I just
read that CDs, along with vinyl records, are making a comeback because
a writer says so. If I can find that article again I'll link it.
As far as phones tethered to the dashboard by Bluetooth, I don't
have a cell phone so that's not part of what I know about, except that
I wonder if people are willing to use their phones to hear streaming
radio because my impression is that people are obsessed with using
their phones to text, make voice calls, and check e-mail, which perhaps
they couldn't do if something was streaming. Plus there are so many
zillion stream stations that I don't know how someone picks a station
for long term listening. There is so much media out there that our
brains are starting to flicker.
Thursday March 31, 2022 4:24 PM CDT -- It's All Coming Together --
As
soon as one more consultant gives his approval we've made a pick for
the new Wi-Fi router we've been planning for handling digital traffic
here at the Internet Building. Then it will be on to other
projects such as a flying drone camera not just for tower inspections
but also for rooftop surveillance to make sure no bats have gained
entry to the attic, check the sidewalk for grass in the cracks,
and capture license plate numbers of drivers using their windshield
wipers with lights off, many of which we saw yesterday. And we
wonder about adding memory to our computers but worry about two things:
there's a chip shortage possibly impacting memory availability and
there's the fact that our present computer system works perfectly and
may not benefit from expanded memory. We're very indebted to those
who've shared their expertise as we build a bigger and better KDX.
Thursday March 31, 2022 3:59 PM CDT -- Famous Last Words --
Some
of those that have gone before us took the effort to emblazen last
words onto their tombstone. The well known atheist Christopher Hitchens
left us with - "If I convert, it is because it is better that a
believer dies than an atheist does". The grave marker for poet
Charles Bukoski reads - "Don't Try". While I have no reason to
believe I'll ever die I enjoy playing with words and have this
statement in reserve - "I happened to be in the area and thought I'd
stop by".
Thursday March 31, 2022 12:39 NOON CDT -- What's the Matter -- Or
for that matter, does it matter? English would be good if
anybody understood it. I'm not content with it but were it not for
it The Blog would have no content. See what I did there? Content
and content. Sometimes hard to tell which. I know a witch.
She served me a potion and I haven't been the same since.
Maybe that's only a notion. A potion notion. Hell,
the idea of a nation is only a notion. Did I call at an inconvenient
time?
Thursday March 31, 2022 12:04 NOON CDT -- Listeners as Technical Details -- The
data base at the Radio Locator website features a 'Technical Details'
column which shows, among other facts, 'Number of Towers'. What I
would like to see is one more detail for part 15 stations: 'Number of
Listeners'. In the case of KDX that number would be '1'. Of that I am sure because I am him.
Thursday March 31, 2022 11:29 AM CDT -- Free Speech Put to the Test --
The
Blare Blog has discussed the recent closing of RT America, the Russian
television service still operating in Russia, but until now we've said
next to nothing about the Russian radio network Sputnik, whose U.S.
presence has not been interrupted. In fact our KDX carries 'Political
Misfits' with John Kiriaku and Michelle Witte, a program openly
critical of Russia's war on Ukraine and equally blunt in criticism
of U.S. war crimes and atrocities that have gone on for decades. In our
view national patriotism does not require citizens to support criminal
operations within their home government, which is a signature mission
of right-wing Republicans. KDX is not alone.
This Radio World article informs us that the CD player is third in
dashboard popularity after AM & FM radio. Our KDX mobile unit has a
CD player that has never been used after many years. Only the radio
matters.
Thursday March 31, 2022 9:47 AM CDT -- Off Dial Radio --
These stations could do themselves a favor by adding part 15 transmitters. Am I right, or what?
Thursday March 31, 2022 8:16 AM CDT -- A Fork in the Bed --
The
well known baseball announcer whose name escapes me said, "If you come
to a fork in the road, take it". Well, a bed is a kind of road when
you're on it trying to decide whether to go back asleep or get up and
stick to a schedule. So, I stood, or rather lay at the fork in the bed
holding a kind of brain conference over the question. On the one hand
the dream I'd been having made me sleepy because it involved so much
confusion, but if I arose I could start KDX news on schedule and learn
how the Will Smith vs. Chris Rock situation was coming along.
In
the dream I was visiting a work place. It wasn't a radio station,
but was a somewhat shabby place of business where the walls were
made of exposed fiberglass insulation and the middle aged workers were
busily shuffling papers and running copy machines with their coffee
cups nearby. I picked up an old dull greenish mug and sipped some milk
then realized it wasn't my cup and wiped my lips. My problem was that I
didn't know why I was there and didn't know anybody so I walked out. In
the parking lot my car started but the way was blocked by construction
debris and pipes sticking up out of the ground. If I could maneuver to
the busy road I didn't know where I'd be going.
On the awake
side I started thinking about the word 'matter' since so many neighbors
have 'BLACK LIVES MATTER' signs. In physics the word matter means
'material substance' but if Blacks wanted their physical substance
emphasized the correct grammar would be 'BLACKS ARE MATTER'. The second
definition of the word matter is a state or condition as in 'What's the
matter with Bob?' But if the signs are conveying this sense of the word
the grammar would be ' BLACKS ARE THE MATTER'. There's a third way of
defining the word which relates to 'a general amount' as in 'The ALPB
existed for a matter of months'. This one is not an easy fit, but let's
try 'BLACKS ARE A MATTER OF THE POPULATION'. These thoughts were
happening because I was on a MATTRESS, which of course matters.
That's what did it. That's what put me back to sleep.
Wednesday March 30, 2022 2:55 PM CDT -- Mid Afternoon Climate Update -- The
campus of Home School College here in the mid-Mississippi River Valley
has been experiencing steady showers with no indication of storms but
the possibility of wind and lightning continues.
Wednesday March 30, 2022 12:07 PM CDT -- Meanwhile in Canada -- Mark on radio overload:
Just a comment about the AM
rule (15.219 U.S./RSS-210 Canada)....they didn't figure on loading coils and ATU peaking which
makes the 3 meter antenna work like a much longer one. Or setting up a system with radials or good grounding.
As for overloading the radio I have so much signal coming off the
Procaster especially with the artificial ground I devised inside
the cabinet that I have the problem of some radios overloading in
the room with the transmitter and what happens is the AGC can't
handle it and it just breaks up and distorts. Not all radios but
some. To fix this I detune one of the IF transformers and it
usually solves the problem. Newer radios with DSP don't do this. On
old tube radios with the loop antenna on the back you can just put
a resistor on the top lead going to the tuning capacitor and a
switch to switch it in and out like a kind of RF attenuation to
solve the overload problem.
- Mark
The
reason I came up with what I wrote in 'Where You At' (earlier this
morning) was because I had an experience similar to yours, Mark.
I noticed that my TECSUN PL-310 starts overloading if I hold it
close to the Procaster Transmitter. Radios elsewhere in the house or
yard pick up very comfortable KDX-AM signals without difficulty. It's
different with KDX-FM from the C.Crane FM2 Transmitter which does
fairly well with indoor radios but gets frinjee in out of
doors. (frinjee is a word invention copyright by The Blare Blog).
And you're right that many of us have found technical ways to
improve antennas that are not forbidden by the rules, another one being
placement of the transmitter outside instead of in the house, as you
allude with mention of ground & radials.
Wednesday March 30, 2022 11:41 AM CDT -- The Electromagnetic Dark Zone --
Wednesday March 30, 2022 10:13 AM CDT -- Fruit Talk --
Grapes are fruit but Grapefruit isn't a grape - Dr. Donna Cicada - Professor of Self Education
Wednesday March 30, 2022 9:56 AM CDT -- NEWS FLASH! --
PART 15 . ORG IS BACK ONLINE!
Wednesday March 30, 2022 9:20 AM CDT -- Where You At --
In
a blog posting dated yesterday titled 'I Stand Corrected' the
Artisan Blog makes the point that location of a transmitter
installation makes the most amount of difference to achieved range,
moreso than other factors. That makes a pivot-point for a somewhat
clunky transition to my location opinion that I tend to believe
explains why the FCC set the power and antenna limits in rule 15.219:
100 milliWatts with a 3-meter antenna for AM. As I see it the FCC
engineers expected the ordinary low power transmitter to be operated
close at hand, typically in the home and close to the operator,
therefore selecting a field-strength just shy of what it would take to
overload the average front-end of a radio receiver. My thought as to
why the field strength for FM micro-transmission, part 15.239, which
was decided at a different time and probably by different technicians,
takes a more cynical look. I would guess that these other engineers
learned from experience that human beings would often cheat upward by
figuring out how to get more coverage by adding antenna length or
upping the voltage which would explain why the permissible limits were
set ridiculously low. The cheaters would end up with somewhere around
what they'd have been granted had the rule makers taken a more trusting
view.
Wednesday March 30, 2022 8:18 AM CDT -- Whether the Weather --
The
day just turned very dark as if a great black curtain had been drawn by
the muscular hand of fate, rain drops from somewhere above tinkle
and pinkle on the metal encasement of the window air conditioner,
alongside the secret bird nest where the mourning dove cranks her neck
trying to decide how best to protect the eggs. And just inside the
window wall Mister Carl Blare types furiously to shorten the time until
the next coffee while also knowing that violent weather might compel a
move down where the washer provides a temporary emergency surface for
outwaiting God's stupid temper tantrum. I don't have time for this
nonsense there's a router to plan for and a breakfast probably before
anything else.
Wednesday March 30, 2022 8:14 AM CDT --
You can't stay anywhere. The whole point of life is to get somewhere. - Chauncey L. Fitzkilpatsky, professor Home School College
Wednesday March 30, 2022 6:33 AM CDT -- Redefining the Facts --
I've
long said that I'm not psychic and cannot tell you the future. But I'm
modifying my position by saying that I do not consciously know the
future but have many times wandered into it without realizing what was
happening. For example I invented the four-day work week while in
charge of setting the announcer schedules for an FM station decades
ago. Four day work weeks are only now being talked about in the general
workplace. I was the 2nd person in my circle of people to invent remote
working when I turned my audio equipment into a home recording studio,
now known as a 'project studio'. Credit for first place in that
category goes to a friend who set the example. In hindsight this goes
to 'knowing the right people'. What it's all led to is a new mantra now
declared: 'Where the Future Begins', which will be our sub-title for the April Blare Blog starting April 1.
Today
we're on weather watch as potentially severe storms may approach in a
few hours, although the prospects for the southern U. S. are more
unsettling with tornadoes possible.
Yesterday our in-house
radio station KDX was never started because it would have conflicted
with concentration at the task of chosing a new router for the
computer, the final choice still pending. For listening purposes we
spent the day hearing local stations and have the usual complaints. The
only two commercial talk stations spent hours jabbering about movies,
music and sports while the public station spent much more time
reminding that they were the public station with the slogan
'Understanding Starts Here', and continual mention of their own names
so we'd always know who was giving his or her name. There was very
little else in the way of program content, and it was noticed that
every hour was later repeated. The promise of 'Understanding Starts
Here' never got off to a start because I didn't understand what it was
that I'd end up understanding, unless it was all about knowing who was
talking at any given time. After a day of that stuff I was very eager
this morning to restart my own radio station. KDX... 'For the
Understood'.
Wednesday March 30, 2022 6:17 AM CDT -- Steve Gibson's Picture of the Week --
Security Now - TWiT.tv
Tuesday March 29, 2022 3:49 PM CDT -- Types of Lords --
The
first lord in many lives is the Lord God, a confusing term for anyone
who thinks critically, because God doesn't call himself 'lord' but his
son goes by that title and is of course an only child set to inherit
the Kingdom of Heaven where a few of us will end up so long as we obey
10 rules of conduct. Then we come to know the landlord who owns the
apartment where humans are allowed to live so long as they pay rent.
But the deep thinker wonders why we never hear about an airlord in
charge of everything above land, and it enters my mind that we could
start a cult and call ourselves the Air Lords because we broadcast on the air. All in favor open your beer.
Tuesday March 29, 2022 3:37 PM CDT -- The USB Wi-Fi Adapter --
The
original reason we ordered a Wi-Fi adapter was to be able to observe
the Wi-Fi activity in the vicinity of our building because we were
already experimenting with 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi audio transmitter/receivers to
send programming to our part 15 AM & FM transmitters. We obtained a
LINKSYS AC1200 Dual Band and hung it up near the ceiling with a USB
extension cable where it pulls in a huge number of area Wi-Fi systems.
When
we begin trials with a Wi-Fi router I expect it will be better to plug
the adapter into the back of the computer (lower location) so that
we'll be
competing against fewer users on the available 11 channels.
Tuesday March 29, 2022 2:17 AM CDT -- Offline Longer Than Planned --
It's
been over 6-hours since putting up a Parking Page telling visitors that
this website was 'briefly' offline. We got sidetracked into running
ClamWin, the open source anti-virus from SourceForge, and it's still
spinning away having found a few malwares tucked in the system
drive. Having lost patience, we are now boldly testing whether we can
start doing some browsing and blogging while ClamWin continues in the
background. Among interesting developments that are happening around
us: we received an e-mail from Mark at Part15.Org with a coment about
an Artisan Blog entry ("The Great Part 15 Fraud" - today)
regarding mischief at HobbyBroadcaster Forum, and this got me
recalling past grievances I've previously written about the
Extraordinary Dishwasher that imposes a regime of constipation at that
sorry forum. Here's what Mark has to say:
I don't have Artisan's contact
link here so I can't comment on his blog so I thought I'd give a
comment here. I assume you see his.....maybe
you can give me his contact for blog comments?
As for the Hobbybroadcaster
challenge I wonder what he had against the SStran kit? Here I
thought that comparison of the AM transmitters was a good
thing....a kind of "consumer reports" with unbiased tests with
everything set up as instructions to see how each fared.
But one part of Artisan's post
was inaccurate as it was disclosed where they got the
SStran......here's the info from the introduction of where the
transmitters came from.... "HobbyBroadcaster.net forum member Rod Hill provided his
personal SSTran AMT5000 for inclusion in the transmitter challenge.
We were unable to acquire representative samples of other kit
manufacturer's transmitters for the challenge".
But my opinion is since the SStran was a kit it is subject to the
kit builder skills, and performance could vary quite a bit from
person to person not to mention that adjustments in regards to
power into the final and the adjustment for class E operation is a
fine adjustment requiring know how and subject to error on the part
of the owner. I do agree that because the others are factory made
operating at designed specs without user intervention as compared
to the SStran which isn't, "tuned improperly" could have been the
reason for the bad showing. It was really a case of comparing
apples and oranges. There *could* have been fraud as too many
aspects of the SStran performance is relying on the person
operating it.
Me personally, I think that something built from a kit will not be
as good as something manufactured in a factory as the designer
designed it, all units operating nearly equally with the only
varying factor being the tolerance of the components.
I should mention in regards to
the AM transmitter challenge that the Talking House new and
improved version with the wire fared very bad even worse than the
SStran and it is a manufactured product but that is because of
something I've always known....the internal automatic tuner is not
near as accurate as an ATU tuned by the operator with a meter.
Youtube videos show how it never gets it right and installing a
manual ATU would make that transmitter perform like the others.
I think that comparing the
SStran and the Talking House to the others is not comparing apples
to apples.
- Mark
Tuesday March 29, 2022 7:28 AM CDT -- Router Comments -- Artisan Radio responds to our router inquiry:
Some comments re your proposed router.
Unless you have a laptop, I'd go with an internal PCIE WiFi adapter
-
they are much more stable and usually faster in real life.
There's no point in getting a dual band router if your computer
adapter
doesn't support that as well. Similarly, no point in having a
real fast
router if you don't have a fast adapter.
Dual band routers are ideal. the 5 Ghz band is usually much
less
populated than the 2.4 Ghz one, so you get less interference and
better
speeds. That being said, you won't get the range from 5 Ghz
that you
can from 2.4 Ghz. While the speeds at 5 Ghz are usually
listed at twice
that of 2.4 Ghz, you also won't get near those speeds unless
you're
located close to the router.
I use a Linksys (owned by Cisco) WRT1900 (AC1900) router that I
found
new for peanuts at a thrift shop. D-Link is also a
reputable
manufacturer. Netgear is well known but I've never been
really happy
with their stuff. I had one, well rated, that had to be
rebooted every
few days as it would hang up (I reboot the Linksys every few weeks
or
months, just to keep it honest). Most can be configured via a
web
browser and easily set up.
There are all sorts of technological buzzwords (gee, what a
surprise)
that are associated with routers. Beamforming, cloud-based
(avoid),
computer-like CPU specs and the like. In practice, for a
typical home,
not something to really worry about. If you buy new, you
generally get
what you pay for, so go for a well known brand that gives you
speeds
that match your computer WiFi connection and you'll be happy.
AC1200
would probably do just fine, ac1900 or above ideal.
- Dave
Tuesday March 29, 2022 7:15 AM CDT -- News Master -- This
morning instead of signing on the air and hearing morning news from my
own radio station, I stood around listening to local stations where two
stories in particular were being talked about. In a speech President
Joe Biden said, "For God sake this man cannot remain in power",
referring of course to Vladimir Putin, and at the Academy Awards Will
Smith slapped host Chris Rock for joking about Mrs. Smith's shaved
head. So, when I eventually get around to starting KDX maybe I'll slip
in a bit of fake news in which these two stories are brought together
by having Will Smith slap Vladimir Putin.
Monday March 28, 2022 3:52 PM CDT -- Brushing Up On Wi-Fi Routers
I
am fishing for advice and ideas regarding the employment of a Wi-Fi
router here where the Blog and KDX share a PC. The following is a list
of facts about the situation: 1. Our present Cisco router is
beyond its support date, still working fine, and wired by ethernet with
no Wi-Fi capability; 2. We want to be able to select between ethernet wired status or Wi-Fi for the sake of experimentation; 3. Prefer dual band 2.5 & 5 GHz Wi-Fi; 4. Already possess a Wi-Fi USB Adapter; 5.
Have found that some current model Wi-Fi routers are setup using
an App which I presume requires a Smartphone or Tablet, neither of
which we intend to obtain, wanting as we do to control the router via
the computer's browser in the standard way as it's been in the past; 6. The Internet Building where the router will be located is small and therefore does not require a mesh system; 7. We only need the common set of 4 ethernet ports for additional computer connections; 8. No special gaming features are necessary; 9. What else belongs on this list?; 10.
We are presently viewing YouTube videos, consulting Consumer
Reports, and gathering all input available about making a selection.
Any suggestions from Blog readers will be greatly appreciated.
Monday March 28, 2022 12:23 NOON CDT -- North Chicago's Pirate Station --
Monday March 28, 2022 11:59 AM CDT -- Wireless Megaphone In Time of Need -- Bill Baker on the job outfitting America with Emergency Stations:
Carl
Here are a few stories from The
Source newsletter that you might find
helpful:
Sweet
Signal in Alabama
FCC has allowed the City of Birmingham to place an Emergency Radio
Antenna 200 feet in the air to produce signal coverage that
blankets much of the city. How do other communities and even
the US Government intend to use conventional AM technology during
the most dire emergencies and future pandemics?
Portable
AM Radio Stations Prep to Deploy Statewide in
Illinois
ILEAS Mutual Aid Group hatches a plan to deploy AM radio resources
where needed in a first-of-a-kind statewide staging strategy. The
Prairie State sees its share of tornados, earthquakes and floods
and the potential for more pandemics or manmade mayhem. How will
the plan work?
Let me
know your thoughts, if you have time. Your feedback is always
welcome.
Thanks.
Bill Baker
Information Station Specialists theRADIOsource.com
616.772.2300 x102
In reply... I do have a few thoughts and plan to send feedback!
Monday March 28, 2022 11:07 AM CDT -- How I Did It --
Back
when I wanted to keep the advantages of Winamp's DSP Chain but also
realize everything Zara has to offer, I did it with Jasper's LineIn
PlugIn. My own memory is somewhat faded, but it's not hard to figure
out how to make it all work.
Monday March 28, 2022 8:46 AM CDT -- Losing Control of a Specialty Website --
Useful
lessons can perhaps be learned by going over histories of the
three part 15 forum sites to analyze their achievements and
shortcomings. An endless number of briefs stand to be written about
what we've observed since the early 2000's, and with good luck and hard
work it might be possible to craft a blueprint for a more ideal website
geared to bring back a shared popularity of legal low power
broadcasting. Having at least one strong, well managed part 15 forum
would be of value not only to station builders and operators, but also
to transmitter and audio equipment manufacturers who would benefit from
a stable showcase for their wares. Part15.org, the flagship of the
existing forums, has had its hayday (some people spell it 'heyday'
which doesn't make any sense, unless I'm wrong in thinking that the
expression is based on the day hay is harvested on the farm) but has
entered an unexplained eclipse. The former ALPB forum and its various
membership attributes was on the road to a potentially renewed future
under the Late Jim Henry but even as Jim Henry was under critical
life-risking surgery an ex-chairman went on a rampage expelling
the entire membership in a Trumpian fever that leaves him as the
Vladimir Putin of a one-man Ukraine. The third part 15 forum that gets
small mention is an enclave of paranoia so tightly guarded that through
the grammatically challenged anal retention of the 'only part 15
authority in his own mind' chief bottle washer it's difficult to know
exactly what each daily posting is all about and uncertain that anyone
is eligible to join. So where do we go from here? Here's an idea. Write
your own thoughts about what you've witnessed over the past
decade in low power radio web experience and submit to The
Blare Blog, or, if it rebounds online, to Mark at part15.org.
Monday March 28, 2022 8:29 AM CDT -- The Speed of Sound On Mars --
Monday March 28, 2022 7:52 PM CDT -- Monday Mull -- The
internet is a public space in which individuals are free to be
themselves, in the same way as driving on the road is a place where
drivers feel empowered to act naturally. Both online and on the street
certain people are inclined to be self-indulging trolls. An
authoritarian instinct wells to the surface and these types follow the
inclination to lord over others during unwatched moments when mommy and
daddy aren't looking. It's been a problem for the part 15 hobby website
we've been talking about, made especially villainous by slippery
two-facedness acting upright and proper under scrutiny but giving a
good punch the the upper arms of another when unobserved by witnesses.
A common trait of these bully-types is an adeptness at false charm,
shape-shifting into a 'best friend' mold so as to appear trustworthy,
but utilizing confidences gained by such worming in order
to downgrade their eventual victims. When exposed and shown in the
open the trolls disperse and blame everyone but themselves for being
shunned, when in fact they shun themselves because they can't return
without changing but don't intend to change because their shield of
righteousness is a mirror in which they see themselves as wronged.
Monday March 28, 2022 6:47 AM CDT -- Living In a Commercial Bath -- All
of us have been submerged in a commercial existence for a long time and
we tamely buy the messages that are sold to us. Movies and other media
have become indistinquishable from reality as they continuously project
a world of products and fashionable thinking. Even while alchohol and
cigarette advertising on media that goes into the home, e.g., radio and
TV, is banned by the FCC in a show of 'protecting the innocent',
every actor on the screen lights up a smoke or justifies a drink in
almost every scene. Actors pretend to be someone they're not which is
more interesting to us than knowing people who are nothing more than
themselves. Outside of the professional stage assuming the identity of
another is considered criminal but the films demonstrate criminality in
such detail that the mass public gains an education in where to hide a
body and how to outsmart the police while also being shown the
corruption and favoritism within the ranks of law enforcement. On the
hour we receive bulletins about the latest nuclear threat while the
rest of the hour carries second rate talent holding light conversations
about recent movies, the personal foibles of groomed actors and
ungroomed musicians, ball scores of sweaty athletes and self disclosure
about the new baby at home, seemingly unaware of climate collapse or
air raids. Fakely alternate mediums considered 'noncommercial' bring
tiresome fund drives for watered down public media or the Good News of
the Absentee Lord of the Universe also in need of your support. Listen
to your favorite podcast while you do your own podcast. You should be
able to do it all because the smiling people in the ads make it look
easy. Spend money and time until until you run out of it unless you die
first with plenty of life insurance.
Monday March 28, 2022 6:41 AM CDT -- Crowdfunding Supports Shortwave to Eastern Europe --
Sunday March 27, 2022 7:51 PM CDT -- More On Forums -- Dave is the name behind Artisan Radio, and here's what he has to say:
Read the messages from Mark and the responses on your blog.
I believe the Forums are dead. There are just so few
people
participating in Part 15 broadcasting AND willing to tell others
about
it. It could be fear of the FCC (or whatever governmental
authority is
in their locale). It could be that they're just used to using
other
mechanisms such as Facebook or Twitter.
What remains are the blogs. Even Hobbybroadcaster is more of
a blog
than anything else. The webmaster there initiates the
majority of posts
with a few others (mostly the same ones) piping in every once in a
while.
It's all OK. Lack of Forums isn't going to stop me (or you,
or anyone
else serious). And one thing I do know is that there is still
a lot to
learn in this 'business'.
I do the blog for myself more than anyone else. It helps me
order (and
sometimes to even recognize) my thoughts. If I want to read
someone
else's, I can go to their blog. Or website.
-Dave
Sunday March 27, 2022 6:52 PM CDT -- An Evening Update from Part15.org -- Mark has moderate views:
Hi Carl, Even if I did take it
over that wouldn't change anything. Who owns it has nothing to do
with activity.
I look and see the member list and who was active when and it's not
like no one visits. The owner hasn't been there in a month last I
looked. Guess he has me to look after things.
I may know how to start a group on Facebook as the instructions are
there but a forum like this I don't know how to do it and make it
known it's there. Probably fees involved? Even the other forum,
that used to be the ALPB is the same as part 15.org nothing there
either.
This is a good hobby! Pairing from your transmitter to a radio and
having a little station is better than pairing from your phone to a
speaker, in my opinion.
- Mark
It
is a good hobby, Mark, I believe it is the world's most
sophisticated hobby, with model trains and flying drones maybe in
second place. If people are too captivated by little hand-held screen
devices to appreciate the marvel of radio it is their loss and I also
do not know how to explain radio to them. We are doing all we can
do, it seems, and also have the Artisan Radio website, Blog, plus his
Part 15 Transmitters and Stream.
Part15.org offline AGAIN! Wonder why. Seems to be
happening quite a lot. It's bad enough that all part 15
forums....even the Facebook ones have very little activity but part
15.org was the one I first joined when I got into this hobby and I
think that with no posts and it constantly going off line it could
go completely and I wish I could do something to keep it alive.
As with all these forums I don't think hobby terrestrial radio is
dead or lost to streaming, I think it's because everything has been
talked about and we all can't think of new topics. Artisan tried
but only me and Timinbovey responded and when the discussion ended
it was dead again.....what do we do?
Seems only Hobbybroadcaster has life left and because the owner
keeps posting and a few keep replying. But the replies are blocked
from the public so we can't see it. And because of all the
restrictions to joining, and having to pay, only a few are there
but those few keep it alive. Part 15.org has hundreds/thousands of members and you'd think 2% of
those would post something but like I mentioned everything seems to
have been said.
We'll those are my thoughts. - Mark
Mark,
thank you for telling The Blog about this unhappy situation. Along with
you we want to see Part15.org survive and grow. I do not have a theory
about why response has fallen off so much. I worry that some of the
most active participants of the past have faded without explanation,
like Rich Powers of End 80 Radio, Ken from Friday Harbor Tiny Radio,
Barry and his wife who produced 'Little Things' from Blue Bucket
Radio in Busy, Kentucky, several members who moved on to run LPFM
stations they helped start, and many others whose names are stored
somewhere in memory. Perhaps you could reach J.P.Janze, owner of the
site, and negotiate to take it over so he won't be saddled with it
anymore.
Sunday March 27, 2022 12:06 NOON CDT --
A pea underneath the mattress is better than a pee on the mattress. - Unattributed
Sunday March 27, 2022 10:09 PM CDT -- Fine Lines --
On
second thought maybe there will be a book. We're following up on the
last post in which 'A Philosophy of Deception' was established, having
thought further on the matter. For example we envision an exposition
regarding the ethics of deception. Perhaps the starting point is the
question: is there a difference between deception and a lie? As it
turns out the answer is yes. Consider Plato's
Former
Vice President Dick Cheney knew about the Noble Lie and even showed off
a bit by referring to it in public. He also made a remark like "History
is what we decide it is." We also have the more folkish 'white lie'
which does not mean white people lying about Black people, but refers
to a 'good lie' intended to spare someone's feelings. But the practice
of telling lies about someone, Black or otherwise, is also important to
consider, usually called 'hate speech' whereas hatred otherwise gets
glossed over by false patronage toward groups or people considered
deplorable. Whole industries are founded on manipulation of facts.
There's advertising and official propaganda, serious career jobs that
require knowing the truth so as to construct counterspeech in denial of
it. Religion, yes, always. Religion is without equal implanting as it
does an entirely other world into mass imagination complete with a
suggested gamut of rewards and punishments that don't exist but which
are greatly feared or anticipated. Religious ferver, although instilled
and used as a measure of worthiness, is also used by the psychiatric
industry as evidence of mental disorder thereby marginalizing its
clients making them available for human testing of psychocentric
drugs. The invention of religion predates banking and credit cards
wherein the value on the ledger is counted as 'Grace' dispensed in a
currency known as 'Blessings'. The holy seek God's 'grace' and by
disobeying the dictats of their master find themselves in 'disgrace'.
We've probably made our point and have only to determine how many pages
it will take to merit a book.
Sunday March 27, 2022 7:52 AM CDT -- Notice of Expiration --
Let
it be known that my entire belief system, so carefully architected over
many years, hereby expires as the consequence of seeing through the
overriding deception that clouds all humanity almost beyond ever truly
knowing the masked reality in which life struggles. My place as a
philosopher of neo-pessimism is entirely supplanted by this higher
insight, not proving Schopenhauer wrong but finding his pessimism
incomplete; only a symptom of a greater truth; proving Camus also short
of conclusion with his recognizing the absurdity of life and death.
Those esteemed schools come to be stepping stones to the greater grand
deception permeating all existence. It's all about being deceived and
living by deception. Every system by which we operate is
deceptive, including parenting, education, religion, every person with
whom we relate deceives us while we automatically deceive in return,
and biology itself deceives as a means of spreading itself and as we
procreate we're deluded into believing that we individually are the
creative agency at play when truth be told we are only tricked by our
own chemistry. The deceptive life is necessarily a game in which a
person strives to succeed through better deception rather than lose to
a better deceiver. Bringing it all down to the question of part 15
radio, where do we go from here? The idea that the FCC is trustee of
the public airwaves is just another whopper. What I write is the truth
about deception, but only if you understand it. Nothing misunderstood
can be considered true. Always keep in mind that we are masters of self
deception and should be leery of trusting ourselves. I'd write a
philosophy book but this is basically all I have to say and it doesn't
come to enough pages to warrant a book.
Sunday March 27, 2022 7:42 AM CDT -- The Artisan Radio Test Stream -- According
to a yesterday posting at the Artisan Radio Blog a test stream was
running comprised of mystery stories but this morning when I went
looking for it no stream was found, which means that we missed the
test. I must say there's some interesting development work going on at
Artisan Radio regarding all aspects of building a radio service ranging
from the very technical to the complexities of copyright and
programming.
Saturday March 26, 2022 6:08 PM CDT -- No Caboose at Sign Off -- At
one time the freight trains of America were distinguished by a red
caboose hitched as the last car of the train manned by one guy whose
job was to keep security watch from a perspective the engineer couldn't
see from up front where he tended the engine. The caboose was a
little house on wheels with a chair, table, stove, and raised turret
giving view across the top of the entire train. Must have been a job like no
other before it was eliminated by modern automation electronics. Everytime KDX
signs off the air I'm reminded of the caboose, which for American radio
stations is the sign off announcement, except that because KDX is a
Part 15 station we are not required to say anything at sign off and
simply shut down when the last program completes, just like watching a
bare ass freight train rolling by absent a caboose. If this doesn't make sense just skip
ahead.
Saturday March 26, 2022 7:30 AM CDT -- Sidewalk Closed for Crack Maintenance -- Cowed
into adding a new unwanted duty to an already busy schedule, we are
spending valuable think time mapping out a plan of action to
include sidewalk crack awareness into the daily agenda. We've talked
about having a sidewalk drone that could be flown out for crack
inspection or perhaps a remote surveillance camera with zoom and tilt
features capable of viewing trespassing sprouts. This sidewalk thing
has been fobbed off on a complacent public already days away from
societal expulsion for cash shortage and falling into the hands of the
medical mafia. Not everyone is so well balanced and resourceful as a
Carl Blare, and he alone has a media voice to speak on behalf of a
beleaguered lay society now facing sidewalk offenses on their
permanent record. We'll be calling on Dr. Sigmund Sickie of Sickie
Psyche Services and Stag Pinstripe, consulting attorney from the firm
of Pinstripe, Stripmine & Shaft, to help our Blog readers with
mental health and legal crack management advice. CARL: So, Dr. Sickie, what would be a good starting point for people faced with this new crack responsibility?
DR.
SICKIE: Vell Cawl, ziss iss vewy musch vut I wite abowt in ma new
boock... 'Hellty Paranoia', I'whish id iss sumtyme healty to tink thay
trine to git ya.
CARL: And Stag, by the way how's your legal situation coming along?
STAG: I, ah, doen wanna talkabowd id.
CARL:
Well, I think everyone has heard about it, you're doing community
service on a charge of sex trafficking and your defense was a claim of
buying a woman to set her free from human bondage, is that fair to say?
STAG: Y'any beer, Carl? Wine?
CARL: Let's
just talk about the crack thing. What should people do to avoid being
caught for having grass in the cracks of their sidewalk? I mean, you
can't remove grass until it grows, so at least once in awhile there
will be grass in the cracks, and during that crucial time you could be
ticketed and fined.
STAG: Lodda time yoo juss pay'em off.
CARL: You mean like a bribe?
STAG: Noo, noo, ya doen come oud an sayid! God lunch ? (hiccup)
Friday March 25, 2022 3:48 PM CDT -- Transitional Music --
Friday March 25, 2022 11:16 AM CDT -- Music for Radio Production -- Brooce
is a regular visitor here on The Blog and suggested old-time-radio-type
organ music to dramatize the dramatic scripts we've being toying around
with, and while I know we have such music cuts in our vinyl and CD
library, it would be also possible to locate something suitable at the
Internet Archive. This kind of music is called
Friday March 25, 2022 9:03 AM CDT -- Breaking Up On the Air -- I'm
not talking about sound distortion which is sometimes called 'break up'
nor am I thinking of breaking up with a girl friend. We're talking
about having an uncontrollable laughing fit on live microphone, and
there are two types: self-induced breakup or breaking up in reaction to
someone's prank. A third type might include keeping it together against
a strong urge to lose it. Legendary news man Lowell Thomas completely
lost his composure on the CBS Network when he heard himself say... "And
President Eisenhower arrived in Hershey, Pennsylvania, visiting the
people who make Hershey Chocolate bars, with and without nuts." Lowell
tried to read on but began to crumble and ended up laughing
uncontrollably with the background filled with laughter from the
control room. The crackup was captured on Blooper Records and can be
found on the internet. Then there was the time Bob and Ray, the well
remembered radio cartoonists, staged a scene in the large plate glass
window separating a newsroom where a network newscast was being
delivered. Out of sight, Ray removed his shirts and lay topless
belly-down atop a table, Bob got underneath the table and pushed
it past the window with Ray appearing to swim by until out of sight on
the other side. The newscaster was completely unable to recover during
the remainder of the news.
Friday March 25, 2022 8:01 AM CDT -- Little Girl Voices and the Scourge of Vocal Fry -- Every
Sunday evening between 9 PM and Midnight (Central Time) the only
worthwhile program from local radio is heard. 'Sterling On Sunday' is
the work of Walter M. Sterling from the Westwood One Network heard on
many 50 kiloWatt stations across the nation with creative input from
some of the top talent in broadcasting, all friends of Walter. But at
midnight, locally, if I'm not fast acting, a hometown girl does a show
with a voice right out of grade school. We take into account that she
is well informed and obviously well educated and is able to talk for
several hours without making a grammatic error but the voice tonality;
it's register, is little girlish. Then there's the rest of the week
when the only two commercial talk stations and NPR bring an endless
succession of girly voices made worse by the large number of them with
voice fry, that grinding scratchy way of talking that possibly is meant
to mimic male resonance but hopelessly so. In years past professional
management was stickly about chosing radio presenters based on voice
quality, but the old standards are lost and I'm certain that thinning
of present day audiences is a direct result of not wanting to be talked
to by what sound like children.
Friday March 25, 2022 7:52 AM CDT -- RT Not Entirely Silent -- RT
America shut down one month ago, but recently on one of our programs
someone said rt.com was a working website, so we checked it out and
found that YES, the same old website is there including links to the
final episodes of the programs produced from Washington DC, but more
important STILL BRINGING DAILY RT NEWSCASTS IN ENGLISH from Moscow!
Friday March 25, 2022 6:10 AM CDT -- Unheard News -- Did we know that the United States is waging war in Yemen? This week's edition of Talk World Radio with David Swanson is titled
Last weeks 'Talk World' visits with Lee Camp, journalist & comedian, about the closure of RT America.
Thursday March 24, 2022 8:21 PM CDT -- Needless Laws -- Mark for the defense:
All cars have daytime lights so the lights are
always on with the wipers. No need to have a special law for
that. As for grass growing through cracks in the sidewalk, the city
owns the sidewalks so they worry about that not you. How should you
be responsible for maintaining city sidewalks?
- Mark
I
seriously think the city governments of some of the heightier haughtier
municipalities are run by gentrified blue-bloods who inherited family
money from the landfill trash business. As for the car, I
never drive at night so lights are only needed during poor daytime conditions. And on the
sidewalk issue, yes! We agree completely! The city put that sidewalk
there. They probably seed the cracks to set citizens up to pay fines. The issue should be settled at the Supreme Court!
Thursday March 24, 2022 4:37 PM CDT -- Plans In the Works -- With
the reignited threat of world nuclear war our correspondent Broooce
recalls the "Last Minute Radio Theatre" episode produced as part of
'The Low Power Hour' and titled "The Big One". We'll have to rummage in
the archive to find and link that great radio moment.
All in all
there were only four "Last Minute Radio Theatres" ever produced, but
today I happened to concieve of a new script we might do, and if I
don't write it down I'll forget. Maybe a title idea will come along
after we write.
ANNOUNCER: This is Morgan Ford,
Presenting... The Last Minute Radio Theatre, written by Percy Downer
and produced by his wife C. Randy Limphand. As our story opens an
ordinary man starts his car and heads onto the highway toward an
appointment at a recording studio. He makes a cellphone call.
ACTOR: "Hello,
Studio? Ya, I'm coming in to record that radio spot we talked about and
I need to text you the main subject line... are you ready to copy?...
o.k., here goes."
NARRATOR: The man taps his finger on his phone's keyboard as he verbalizes each tap:
Thursday March 24, 2022 1:09 PM CDT -- Ugly Inheritance -- The
blotchy race history of the U.S. is everyone's inheritance now, even
though none of us were there at the time. The quest for cheap help in
our time has been spread equally among job seekers regardless of race
and based more on class... what scholastic levels and titles have been
achieved and having the right connections. But backward Joe Biden is
unwittingly biased in choosing a supreme court judge because of being a
black woman. It's not only racist it's also sexist. Biden's nominee,
Ms. Ketanji Brown Jackson, is well qualified for the high bench but not
based on her being a black female, yet that's the specific
qualification applied to her selection, making this a precedent which
will be difficult to ease out of in future appointments to top
positions. The only way out of the race dilemma is to stop measuring it; stop counting it; stop mentioning it.
Thursday March 24, 2022 12:35 NOON CDT -- New Laws -- As
low power broadcasters we're always hopeful that the gov will take a
moment to be generous and give a few more milliWatts but we
haven't been granted any beneficial new laws in many decades. However
our many overlords continuously draft new laws that button us down more
and more until it feels like freedom means being locked out if not
locked in, except that Covid restrictions did have us locked in for a
two-year stint. I per chance came upon two more new laws recently
activated close to home... if your car's windshield-wipers are on your
headlights must also be on. That's a good law and should have been in
effect during the whole history of driving, but at least it's here now
and I can hardly wait to drive in the rain. But the other new law gives
me concern. It is now against the law for grass to grow in the cracks
in the sidewalk. This is the law that could bring us down as we
consider the sidewalk to be public space that rudely crosses an
easement of our own property having no better use than assisting the
importation of dog urine. It's no different than being made responsible
for potholes further out in the rude streets that bring loud
motorcycles and endless delivery trucks to impose upon the day, or
being held accountable for falling objects from airplanes or
helicopters so noisily polluting our sky space. The crack
inspector will be summoning me to municipal court where I'll chose
civil death rather than consent to obedient crack maintenance. It's
going to get ugly and I'll be targeted all the more when I start
threatening to report their Putinesque burocracy on my streaming radio
station. Women. You can't live with them and you can't live without
them.
Thursday March 24, 2022 10:25 AM CDT --
Congress is the Negative of Progress -said hesitatingly by Carl Blare with uncertainty and misgivings
Thursday March 24, 2022 10:01 AM CDT -- About Radios That Tune the Past But Mostly OPUS -- There's someone booming on the door. Hey, it's Boomer!
There was a Twilight Zone episode with that theme, a grandpa has a
big radio from the early days, and the radio is so out of touch
that kids ask him what it is, and he has to tell them, "It's a
radio, boy" Somehow the radio picks up the past, and we see images
of him with his young wife, and he might be reliving those moments
in reality. I think that no one else can believe the radio is
acting like a time machine and his family thinks he's cracking
up.
I'm also a fan of Opus audio format as well. I encode long form
shows to it for quick access playback before the more formal and
tagged versions are out. I also use Opus a lot, several times a
week at least, to send audio bits to others, like recordings from
the radio, airchecks, or as draft recordings for review in a
recording project.
It's great because you can just send the raw link that opens up in
their browser with a player right there. Mp3 will do that also, but
I use Opus at 32 kb/s for speedy upload, download and no delay in
playback. All of my associates can play it and the quality is good
for that use. I've done some streaming in 128k, and tried 32k for a
'phone stream' for a while. So far I haven't had a project where
I'd use Opus as a playback format in my station's automation or
archival audio yet.
I also stay with the "libopus 1.2.1-dirty" version of the opus
writing library. I'd been using it or an earlier version, upgraded
and thought the files didn't sound as good, they had the upper
frequency 'watery cassette' sound at my 32k bit rate. Looking at
Opus documentation, it turns out they'd tweaked the new Opus
encoder, removing a low pass filter, because people preferred more
highs, at the expense of a more watery sound. I don't know if
they've worked on that issue since.
Quote:
"Bandwidth Decisions
Deciding what bandwidth to use depending on the bitrate has always
been tricky since it eventually becomes a matter of personal
preference. The original tuning was mostly based on my personal
preference, plus a "safety margin" erring on the side of lower
coding noise and narrower bandwidth. It appears that most people do
not share my preferences and tend to prefer wider bandwidths, even
if it means more coding noise. "
That's what it is, coding noise. Well I don't prefer the noise,
where others have told me they didn't hear it. After noticing the
change, I made test encodings with multiple versions of Opusenc and
found Opus 1.21 to be the newest with low coding noise at 32 k. I
guess you could get lower coding noise by adjusting the lowpass
filters on newer versions at the command line. The version of the
encoder you want to use is placed in OpusDropMP's folder and named
opusenc.exe.
On higher bitrates filtering and all really doesn't matter.
Ocenaudio, a wave recorder and editor can open and save Opus files,
as well as lots of other file types.
I've used this a little, but don't know how to set Opus encoding
parameters yet. I see this as a good editor for building shows.
I might have written too much about Opus, but I feel audio
professionals such as yourself and Partisan Radio might be
interested. Sorry I didn't include any diagrams.
My mother used to like Bloom County newspaper comics and Bill The
Cat, I guess she liked disheveled alley cats. She was forever a fan
of pet cats.
- Boomer
Thursday March 24, 2022 9:54 AM CDT -- Expression By Any Memes Necessary --
Thursday March 24, 2022 6:56 AM CDT -- Another Morning -- We're
finally adjusting to the lost hours since daylight time disrupted our
sleep and we actually signed on KDX at the proper time of 6 AM Central
this morning. Of course my special contract allows showing up for
work whenever I get around to it, which helps with time lag recovery.
This morning we are presenting a Celebration of the 100th Anniversary
of station WSB, 750 kHz 50 kW in Atlanta, on 'This Week in Radio Tech',
to be followed by Episode 11 of 'Radio Daze' with guest Paula Tuggey a
record industry rep talking about her days driving from station to
station introducing new record releases. Of course we have
back-to-back newscasts keeping current on Putin's ruthless invasion of
Ukraine and damage being done not only to Ukrainians but also to the
Russian populace who are hastening to leave the country in protest
against the unpopular war. Merely calling it a 'war' or 'invasion' is
being discouraged by threat of a 25-year prison term. I've already said
the banned words enough times to warrant several life sentences in a
Russian gulag. And while we're calling attention elsewhere in the Blog
to novel English word definitions, while we speak sentence by sentence
we talk of prison sentences which, when excessive, might be called
'run-on' sentences.
Wednesday March 23, 2022 4:34 PM CDT -- Less English or English Lesson --
If you lesson the amount of English there is less of it.
Wednesday March 23, 2022 10:48 AM CDT -- The Authoritative OPUS Description -- In
general terms the word 'opus' derives from Latin and refers to works of
art and their rankings, very commonly in music where, for example, the
chronologically numbered 127th Beethoven composition is his 'Opus 127'.
As a joke you could blame it as the unknown substance making your pages wet and sticky: "I got opus all over my script".
Thirdly,
Artisan Radio has been employing the OPUS Codec to great satisfaction
in the encoding and streaming of digital audio files.
Wednesday March 23, 2022 9:16 AM CDT -- A Whole New Radio Dimension -- There
have been radio dramas featuring radio as a leading character within
the plot. For example we recall a mystery story about an old fashioned
radio that tuned into the past when great network programs were an
ordinary part of everyday life. And another show titled 'A Shortwave
Goodbye' in which a cruel wife met revenge after destroying her
husband's beloved radio. But there has never been a drama about part 15
hobby radio, UNTIL NOW! Well, I'm just the script writer with no plans
to produce what I am about to present, but you could produce it and
I'll sue you for copyright enfringement to help defray the rising cost
of gasoline. So let's go. Here it is. Carl Blare's "The Obscene Radio
Beacon".
It was a cool and rainy spring day and perfect for a
favorite indoor activity -- listening to the radio. It had been a long
time since last switching to the longwave band so I flipped the switch
and started tuning from 100 kiloHertz up toward 500 kiloHertz, knowing
that I'd find mostly buzz and at best a beeping tone from some HAM
operator's low power beacon. When I got up to 150 kiloHertz I was
surprised to come across what sure sounded like a very solid carrier
which naturally captured my curiosity, so I remained tuned and listened
to it purr with surprising quieting that cut right through the
surrounding hash. Then things got really amazing when it sounded like
someone had turned on a microphone over which voices could be heard
perhaps a few rooms away from where the mic was actually located... a
woman's voice said "You're breakfast's getting cold!" and an adult male
voice said "If he doesn't come to breakfast let him go hungry and
teach him a lesson." At that point a very immature sounding boy's voice
spoke straight into the microphone and said "fuck"
quickly switching the carrier off leaving me with the usual buzzing.
But I wasn't ready to leave the experience behind. The signal had been
so strong I speculated that it could be coming from quite near by,
although I also knew that longwave signals were known for traveling
great distances so for that matter it may have been coming from another
town somewhere. Then it was back! The carrier! The microphone popped
on. The kid voice spoke again: "shit." Switched off. All
during this situation my unconscious mind had been working and suddenly
I had the realization that I knew the voices I'd heard! I looked out my
window and could see a long wire stretching out of an upstairs window
next door and strung at a downward angle to a clothes pole about
50-feet back of the house. Losing no time I called the local
authorities and reported that a probable pirate broadcaster was
broadcasting obscenities from the house next door and in less than ten
minutes a SWAT team started firing into their house and I never heard
that signal again.
Listen next time when Carl
Blare's Radio Tales Adventure brings you "He Spied for the FCC"
the possibly true story of a guy who joined a hobby radio group to
gather evidence against the other members.
Wednesday March 23, 2022 6:35 AM CDT -- Service Provider AT&T to Cut Services --
Tuesday March 22, 2022 6:04 PM CDT -- What About Josh Hawley? --
Josh is another word for Joke
Tuesday March 22, 2022 3:25 PM CDT -- How and When --
When does a loop antenna become a coil and how does a coil become a helical antenna?
Tuesday March 22, 2022 12:27 NOON CDT -- New Next Door Neighbors Coming -- KDX
operates a studio-to-transmitter-link at 2.477 GHz, just at the upper
edge of the Wi-Fi band which ends at 2.483 GHz. Immediately above that
is the 2.5 GHz band, about to be auctioned by the FCC for wireless use.
Tuesday March 22, 2022 6:10 AM CDT -- From Bloom County to OPUS -- The Artisan Radio Blog on March 21, in an entry titled 'Bloom County', wrote:
I've been playing around with the Opus audio
codec. I have an application that
requires me to squeeze as many audio files I can into a limited amount of space,
while still sounding decent. 64kbps MP3 mono sounds OK, not quite as good
as FM radio. I tried AAC, and the files are a bit smaller for the same
audio quality. Then I remembered Carl Blare over at the
Blare Blog talking about Opus.
The great thing about Opus is that
it sounds great (and I do mean great) in 64kbps STEREO. 32kbps mono is
about the same as 64kpbs MP3. And the files are much smaller in VBR mode,
which is the default.
I've experimented with 32kpbs OPUS
at 22050 sampling rates for OTR (mostly voice), and it sounds as good as 64kpbs
or 128kpbs sampling at 44100. Quite an accomplishment.
Unfortunately Opus, which replaces
OGG, is not supported in Zara or Edcast. BUTT supports it and Icecast, so
I suppose if I standardize on Opus (I'm leaning that way), I'll have to use it.
There's an Opus plugin for Winamp, and the older version of Zara, 1.4.4,
supports Winamp plugins, so perhaps that might be a way to go. Otherwise,
I might have to look at Radio DJ, another freeware radio automation tool.
Indeed
KDX is streaming in the OPUS audio format so I'll enjoy talking about
it to build on what Artisan has said. To paint a portrait of exactly
how we're employing OPUS I'll describe our entire chain of softwares
from playlist (Zara) to server (Icecast):
____Branch 1 --> B.U.T.T. Stream Encoder --> Icecast Stream Server
____Branch 2 --> VLC Audio Player --> Realtek Audio 2 Hardware Output --> AM FM Transmitter Chain
To
begin at the beginning, most of our radio programs arrive as MP3 files
with bit rates across the board, some mono some stereo with a range of
sample rates. In most cases these are simply added to the Zara Playlist
and are all able to play normally without further handling, except
Glenn Hauser's 'World of Radio' which arrives at the low sample rate of
16 kHz, which upsets the Virtual Audio Cable if played raw, so every
week I upconvert the sample rate of Glenn's show to 44.1 kHz using
Audacity the Audio Recording/Editing software, saving in the OGG
format, also recognized by Zara. Audacity does not support OPUS,
although maybe there's a plugin available, we don't know. Also to
mention, the reason we select 44.1 kHz as a sample rate is because
StereoTool sets itself to 44.1, although StereoTool could be lowered to
32 kHz or upped to 48 kHz, but we made our choice. As a matter of fact
when the audio reaches the BUTT Encoder, which generates an OPUS audio
stream, it automatically upconverts to 48 kHz sample rate no matter
what is otherwise chosen beforehand. I think OGG does the same thing
within the BUTT universe. Now that we've waded far out in the digital
muck, a main point I want to get to...
According
to Johny Cole of RagFM, a Zara authority that has often helped
KDX, the Zara audio engine is the Windows Media Player, even though
this connection is entirely inobvious. Somehow Zara is able to play OGG
files even though the Windows Media Player, when looked at separately,
does not list OGG as a supported format. But Windows Media Player lists
AAC among its supported formats, although Zara does not recognize AAC
files.
The sun is coming up and Carl Blare is hungry. Let's head to the Upper Management Lounge and see what we've got.
Monday March 21, 2022 4:30 PM CDT -- About Lisa Loeb --
Regarding our recent blog about 'Just Criticism' Mark inquires:
Who is Lisa Loeb and why is her
glasses a topic on a hobby radio forum?
Guess they have run out of topics to talk about also and this is
what it has come to.
Agree about the wrongness in thinking the killing of adults being
less important than killing children. It's the same logic that some
use to downplay the seriousness of covid by saying that it only
kills or seriously affects "old" people as they are not
important.
I wish there was a reply section to blogs!
Maybe you should start a forum for general discussion of all
topics.
-Mark
Hello
Mark! I'll respond in the order of your comments: First, I admit I also
had never heard of Lisa Loeb so I Wikipediad her and she is somebody we
should all discover:
I
also wanted to find the comments at the Hobby Site so you could see
what was said about Ms. Loeb, but could not locate the post. It may
still be tucked somewhere in the forums over there, you could go
hunting.
Even though The Blare Blog is not a forum it is
possible to submit comments just like you and several others do by
contacting me by e-mail. I think that makes a sort of forum.
Starting
a full forum would take a dedicated full-time manager, in my opinion,
and I'm already spread thin with everything I do. We almost had a good
one when RFBurns started to build a forum after M-rammer Bob and Neil
Neck-Kneeler kicked him out of part15org, but along came Townsquare
Media making RFB the chief engineer for all the company's Wyoming
stations.
Monday March 21, 2022 10:18 AM CDT --
There is something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability. -Elbert Hubbard, writer, publisher, artist, philosopher
tvtech SmartBrief
Monday March 21, 2022 7:24 AM CDT -- Teen Age Militarists -- Come
on grow up all you teen-brained militarists who decry the slaughter of
children during warfare while allowing that the murder of adults is
open season. Here's a news flash - killing of all persons is an
atrocity. Real life is not a video game.
Monday March 21, 2022 6:59 AM CDT -- Just Criticism Made Cautiously -- Something the Artisan Radio Blog posted on March 12 regarding sexism on a Part 15 Forum... - Today Hobbybroadcaster continues the tradition by a discussion
of Lisa Loeb's appearance, specifically her glasses. You really can tell
that that Forum is populated by male curmudgeons. - I
would say this about the self-described 'Engineer Extraordinaire' who
hosted that incel-style thread... his eyeglasses make him look like
Mister Magoo.
Sunday March 20, 2022 6:36 PM CDT -- Slight Spoil -- I wasn't
going to do this but I have to tell someone and I think my computer
understands me. In the movie AI Rising, after a long stretch in outer-space,
the male astronaut tries to show his female robot who's in charge, and
she cooly reminds him that the corporation owns her copyright. How much
more human can you get? And feminine on top of it!
Sunday March 20, 2022 5:37 PM CDT -- Artificial Intelligence Has Us in Mind -- The after hours movie on Friday was AI Rising
watched on tubi.tv. The tale was deftly and intelligently laid out and
brought me into a deeper understanding of what we as humans may face as
it comes to dealing with artificial forms of intelligence, particularly
when it takes on human characteristics. It is very good of me not to
bring any spoilers so that your movie experience will be fresh.
Furthermore, the music soundtrack was excellent and throughout the film
I thought it was composed by Philip Glass, but when I looked through
the some 50 film scores by Glass, AI Rising is not among them. So I
went searching to learn that Nemanja Mosurovic wrote the score.
Sunday March 20, 2022 8:46 AM CDT -- Blog Going February Stereo -- Boomer signs on with this:
You mentioned the blog going stereo, that will get me to write, I
love stereo anything!
The only thing I will add is a note that the page title for this
month still says February 2022, so I get two 'February' pages in
the address bar when I intend to go to your blog.
There is too much to write beyond this point. - Boomer
Right!
As it happens, you wrote at the exact moment I started setting up the
first stereophonic blogcast, so you're here to help kick it. And, the
tab in the upper left is now corrected to the present month. I agree
that there's too much to write.
LEFT CHANNEL This Channel is being fed from The Blare Blog Email Box
Moderator Mark writes (Dated March 18): Hi I answered on part 15 .org
forum....well gave my opinion at least. Don't know how good I
explained it.
Look at it this way. Old tube radios had a loop antenna taped to
the back cover. They were about 4-6 inches in diameter and about 20
to 25 windings, around there if I remember right. The one end
connected to the tuning cap and the other to chassis ground. If I
disconnected the loop and just used a single length of wire, to get
the same reception performance the wire, even just half wave length
of any frequency would have to stretch across the street or down
the block!
So to get resonance on any frequency in the AM band the single
length of wire would have to be WAY longer than the unraveled
length of the loop antenna.
- Mark
So, the next day (Mar. 19) I wrote'm back:
- Hello Mark:
- This seems like an interesting thing to talk and think about. - I
really appreciate your viewpoint!
- Amateur websites talk about using loops for transmission. - Part 15
has never done anything with loops and - maybe there's a hidden
secret waiting to be discovered.
- I am just uneducated enough to sniff around for new ways to do
things.
- Carl
Then, that same day, Mark returned with some pictorals:
Yeah I have always thought that
I could use the Grundig tuneable loop that is a receiving antenna
as a transmitting antenna.
If the transmitter doesn't have the ATU with loading coil on board
the it is the tuned coil with the capacitor peaking and you could
go into the wired input and use that in reverse. The loop would now
radiate the transmitter's output.
The Grundig loop could also be used for the loading coil for the 3
meter antenna.
Here's a picture of the loop and another picture of a loop in
use....
RIGHT CHANNEL This Channel is being fed from the Part15org Forum
Mark Mar. 18 -
From Carl’s blog on this topic he was
really asking, as it was misunderstood, and he cleared it up as to what
the real question is. Carl asked “I was looking for a comparison
between the lengths of wire to reach resonance. For example, if the
long-wire approach was 100′ long, then how long would the wire for the
loop version be? I still have no idea.”
The answer, or more
importantly my opinion, A loop or coil depends on the number of windings
and the diameter of the loop to get resonance at a given frequency in
the MW band. If you look at the loop antennas used in tube radios made
in the 20s 30s 40s 50s the diameter was about 4 to 6 inches usually oval
shaped and about as I remember maybe 20 to 25 windings of wire which if
unstretched would be no where near the length a single length of wire
would have to be to have resonance at a frequency in the MW band. Going
by the wave length. I am looking now at my Grundig tunable AM loop
antenna and the diameter is 9″ and the number of turns of wire is 28
turns. If I unstretched the wire it would be nowhere near the length of
wire needed for resonance which would be over half a km at 530klz and at
1700klz would be 176 meters. The length of wire I’d have is 56 ft if I
unravelled the wire from my tunable loop which is 17 meters roughly. But maybe Rich can weigh in on this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ Rich Mar 18 - RE: But maybe Rich can weigh in on this.
As usual in
engineering matters, accurate answers to apparently simple questions can
require a deep understanding of the Physics involved.
Correctly understanding these topics requires the careful study of appropriate antenna engineering textbooks, such as ANTENNAS For All Applications 3rd Edition (McGraw-Hill), by John D. Kraus.
One
point that will emerge from doing so: there is much more involved in
the performance of a multi-turn loop antenna used on a given
frequency/band than the number of loops it contains.
OK, now I'm back in Mono and notice at least one
significant difference between what Mark told the Blog Left Channel
compared to what he said on the Forum... Here on the Blog he said that
a loop was connected at one end to a receiver's tuning capacitor and at
its other end to chassis ground. This important bit of information was
not included on the Right Channel at the Part15org Forum but that was
probably an unintentional oversight. Perhaps more important is that his
straight wire antenna, which we suppose was attached at one end to a
receiver's tuning cap, is left open ended (unconnected) at the far end.
That single difference probably differentiates straight wire from
looped wire very significantly, more than likely affecting the length
difference. We're still not zeroing in on a straight forward answer to
my initial question, which I say again is probably not well asked. So,
let's look at Rich's further approach to bringing it home. Ya. Well, it
seems that Mr. RF Man Rich, whose actual real-world initials are "RF",
is pointing toward the whole entire universe of all antenna theory,
science, knowledge and practice by way of an inclusive and
comprehemsive book on all aspects of antennaship, whereas it was my
hope to remain modular and focus on the simplest way of describing one
thing without stacking the deck with complications and long lists of
specifics near and far. It strikes me that Rich is an exhibition of
what he knows, which amounts to everything, at the same time calling
notice to how little we know. But, we already know we don't know
otherwise we wouldn't bother to ask. Anyway, there are plenty of
informative YouTube videos about loop antennas and we'll be over there
watching them if anybody comes looking for us.
Sunday March 20, 2022 8:42 AM CDT -- The Vernal Equinox is Here --
Saturday March 19, 2022 1:30 PM CDT -- Why Did Saturday Become
Classical Music Day On KDX? --
We
would love to schedule some classical music during the week but
weekdays happen to be prime time for the major news programs that are
important to knowing what is happening in the world. Even with the dire
circumstances of nuclear and climate brinkage it seems that the
journalists insist on taking the weekend to vegetate, leaving open time
for getting around to a few concerts. As I write, the fourth of five
Chamber Music Northwest programs is airing from Portland, Oregon, to be
followed by SymphonyCast and a performance of the sad and masterful
Elgar Cello Concerto played by the German Symphony Orchestra and
cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason, then the concluding concert
from Deutsche Welle Concert Festival's series and the full
length
Resurrection Symphony of Gustav Mahler. It all makes
five-and-a-half-hours of the finest music.
Saturday March 19, 2022 12:03 NOON CDT -- The Blog Goes Stereo --
On
the Blog's Left Channel will be our kdxradio.com Email Box where Moderator
Mark has submitted more thoughts about my big Antenna Question along
with some graphic images, while on the Blog's Right Channel the same
thoughts will be expressed at The part 15 forum along with more
input
from RF Rich, my new nickname for the Man of RF permanently parked at
the part15org website. Getting all of the moving parts posted and
organized is something I will do this weekend if Vladimir doesn't set
off his nukes.
Saturday March 19, 2022 11:50 AM CDT --
I
don't believe in anything you have to believe in.
- Fawn Liebowitz in the film 'Animal House'
Friday March 18, 2022 11:27 AM CDT -- Gurl, You're a Karen --
Friday March 18, 2022 10:31 AM CDT -- That Antenna Question I Asked --
Back
on March 9th in a post labeled "A Good Question" I posted a 'Question
About Antennas'. Our colleague and associate Moderator Mark at
Part15org presented my question to his readers:
-| From Carl Blare’s blog I
thought may get some discussion here….
-| Is there a
relationship between a wire cut to wavelength
-| and a length of wire wound on a loop antenna to reach
resonance?
-| I think yes as the end result is
common to both methods.
-| Any other ideas?
After a week's time Mark and Rich are
the two respondants who've posed their answers..
Mark's
answer is technically correct in that 'the end result is common to both
methods', given that the end result is that both types would
be
resonant antennas, but a weakness in my question is brought to light. I
was looking for a comparison between the lengths
of wire to reach resonance. For example, if the long-wire approach was
100' long, then how long would the wire for the loop version be? I
still have no idea. The second answer submitted by Rich:
There
is a relationship as far as the reactive terms of their feedpoint
terminal impedance both approaching “resonance” (jX = 0) at some given
lengths of straight or coiled transmit antenna conductors, on a given
frequency.
However
the most important facts in the performance of a transmit antenna
depend on its radiation resistance compared to its system losses, which
is based on its dimensions, construction, installation, and its
“aperture” exposed to free space.
As an
example, a legal, 3-m-tall, Part 15 AM vertical monopole can be
resonated at ~1600 kHz, but its radiation EFFICIENCY can be less than
1%.
If a
vertical monopole having a physical height of 1/4-wavelength was used
in that same situation, its naturally resonant (jX =0) length would
have a radiation resistance of ~37 Ω, and its radiation efficiency can
be 90% or better.
It
seems to me that Rich transposed my question into something other than
I asked but otherwise his description applies to certain other antenna
applications and is quite possibly true.
The question remains open.
Wednesday March 16, 2022 12:59 NOON CDT
-- Upgrade to Windows 10 --
Wednesday March 16, 2022 9:56 AM CDT -- The Art of Inflection --
With
all attention on Ukraine capital city Kiev, we notice multiple
pronunciations of that city's name by world broadcasters. For me
personally the first introduction to the name came decades ago as part
of classical music norms, which held that 'The Great Gate of Kiev', a
movement in Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, was said "kee'-yev"
or "kee-yev'", with stronger emphasis on either the first or second
syllable and the "y" part said like the word "yes". Today, by contrast,
many presenters give it one syllable "keev", but we also hear "kee-ev"
without the "y" sound in the "yev" part and with fairly even emphasis
across the whole word. It would be our considered opinion that any of
these pronunciations will stand. However, we would advise
that one
stay with whatever form is picked so listeners don't wonder
if different places are being talked about.
Wednesday March 16, 2022 6:57 AM CDT -- 20 Ukrainian
Broadcasts/Podcasts --
This
website only gives two out of the twenty Ukrainian programs, boxed in
by a subscription pitch; we are at work looking for a better place to
access this information.
Tuesday March 15, 2022 4:34 PM CDT -- MAJOR BREAKING NEWS: MAKING TIME
PERMANENT --
Monday March 14, 2022 3:49 PM CDT -- Place of License --
Radio
stations licensed by the FCC serve a 'city of license' yet are
usually not licensed to the city, although some cities are licensees of
radio stations. The 'city of license' is not necessarilly the location
of a radio station nor its business office but tends to describe a
location within a station's primary signal coverage area. Small radio
stations operating under Part 15 authorization are not required to
identify themselves nor state a location of operation, but are allowed
to use any identification they desire so long as it is not confused
with a licensed station. A gray area argued by some, claims that
FCC-like call signs starting with 'K' or 'W' can falsely appear to be
actual assigned call letters, but more liberal minded operators
maintain that if no extant station has those same letters they are as
free for use as any other name.
Monday March 14, 2022 11:53 AM CDT -- Shortwave Again --
Russia's
systematic blocking of incoming communications is resulting in the
resurrection of shortwave as a tool for reaching the population.
Sunday March 13, 2022 12:17 NOON CDT -- PootinFix --
Rid
your gut brain axis of pie faced obstructions with PootinFix.
Sunday March 13, 2022 8:59 AM CDT -- Plain Truth --
Right wing sentiment is on the rise,
even here in Canada, and it's associated with ignorance of pretty much
everything.
- Artisan Radio Blog
Sunday March 13, 2022 8:54 AM CDT -- An Hour Out of Step --
While
you slept, the clocks were set forward by one hour, the annual
detachment from Standard Time to the very non-standard time nominally
called 'Daylight'. In real fact there is no more or less daylight, the
resetting of clocks does nothing more than throwing human circadian
rythym into disruption.
Saturday March 12, 2022 1:54 PM CST -- Advice from the Blog --
What
should one do about one's detractors?
Stay
out of the line of fire
and wait for nature to come for them.
When they vanish into obscurity
they'll get the forgetability they've earned.
Friday March 11, 2022 9:25 AM CST -- Reflections On Human Sound --
Before
dawn the air was quiet at our position in the center of North America
while we viewed war scenes in Ukraine delivered by DW the German public
broadcast service. Ukrainian air is loud with rockets and gunfire
brought by Vladimir Putin's brutal attack sending millions of people
out of their homes toward the Polish border to seek refuge. We are
reminded of recent caravans of South Americans arriving at our border
where they were caged and their children taken away by former U.S.
President Trump's wicked racist policy made all the worse by the swell
of support for such hatred by Americans of the extreme right. Quiet
morning air for humans is set to expire.
Friday March 11, 2022 9:11 AM CST -- Jesse Ventura - CENSORED --
Friday March 11, 2022 8:45 AM CST -- Back to Brooce --
Following the 'Brooce Radio Activity Report' on March 3, we
communicated to Brooce with this question:
-
Is it possible to send computer audio, perhaps from a playlist like
Zara, to the Wi-Fi radio?
- If so, you could use the Wi-Fi system as
an STL to an AM and/or FM transmitter.
- I am very curious about that.
- Carl
- Everything is never figured out.
- Only something ever is.
Returning the exchange, Brooce wrote: Hi Uncle Carl!
I
don't know the answer to your question.
The
WIFI radio has a VERY specific menu driven
operating system that is specifically tailored for communication
with it's aggregator, which streams in through the modem.
WIFI takes care of this particular "connection."
I'll
have to try to wrap my brain around your
question (which might not be saying very much.)
(HAHAHAHAHAHAHA cough cough) It IS a very interesting
question, though!
Very
Best Wishes - Brooooce
Wednesday March 9, 2022 6:38 CST -- A Good Question --
In
radio interviews when an expert guest says, "That's a good question",
it means he probably isn't sure of the answer. Here then is my good
question of the day... Is there a relationship between a wire cut to
wavelength and the length of wire wound on a loop antenna to reach
resonance?
Wednesday March 9, 2022 10:52 AM CST -- Host Your Own Radio Show --
Wednesday March 9, 2022 10:15 AM CST -- Part 15 Stations and the World
Panel --
A
device from Angry Audio could serve to alleviate poorly understood
mixing and matching of wiring and connection standards,
if stations manage to realize what it is.
Thursday March 3, 2022 5:29 PM CST -- New Orleans Jazz Festival Returns
--
After
two years of COVID restrictions, the New Orleans Jazz Festival returns
with a national hookup of radio stations for two weeks of live
performance by jazz orchestras. All two weeks of the Festival will be
carried by KDX Worldround Radio starting at the end of April.
Wednesday March 2, 2022 --
PRIORITY ONE !!! --
Ukraine is on the Brink of a
Nuclear Catastrophe – Linda Pentz Gunter and Dr. Ira Helfand
By Maria
QUOTE: “We are in an unprecedented
situation. For the first time a war is being fought in a region where
there are operating nuclear reactors. This presents an extreme risk to
human life unlike anything we have seen in previous wars.” That’s a
statement from Beyond Nuclear, of Feb. 25, 2022.
For a relatively small country the nuclear statistics are impressive:
Ukraine operates 15 reactors, ranking 7th in the world in 2020. The
single largest nuclear power plant in Europe is in Ukraine. Ukraine’s
power sector is the twelfth-largest in the world in terms of installed
capacity. 54 gigawatts are providing over 50% of Ukraine’s
electricity.
Linda Pentz Gunter presents a list of 6 catastrophes that can befall a
nuclear power [ . . . ]
Wednesday March 2, 2022 3:13 PM CST -- Brooce Radio Activity Report --
This just in:
Uncle Carl: I will get
back to the recent vintage
multiband portable radio acquisitionssoon.
Here
is something else.
My
Part 15 transmitting set-up still
operates.
But
it is different than it was many years
ago.
Many
years ago it sounded like a real broadcast
station. It had a crude automation system, and there were TOH
(Top Of The Hour IDs) PSAs, and somewhat of a structured broadcast
schedule.
Today
I still experiment with Part 15 AM and FM
transmitters, but they exist now as a source of programming for
vintage radios.
A
lot of the time, my WIFI radio feeds the Part 15
transmitters. (More about that in a minute.)
Sometimes
the program source is a tablet or my cellphone. There are
many times when my Part 15 AM and FM transmitters are
OFF. A lot of the time I am experimenting with radios and
want the airwaves completely clear here.
The
WIFI radio is sort of a default item though, in
that, if I want to transmit to my radio collection, it is very easy
to use as a source. Attached is a picture of the WIFI radio,
which ALSO serves as an alarm clock in my bedroom. The WIFI
radio has presets for 5 different radio station sources. (It
also receives the FM BCB, which is a great plus.)
So
attached is a picture of the WIFI radio.
After this I will talk about the rest of the broadcast
system.
More
on the way!
Very
Best Wishes. -Brooooce
Special
Message to Brooce about this picture. The dealer sent you an
out-of-focus radio and you should return it with a demand to be sent a
properly focussed radio.
Wednesday March 2, 2022 3:06 PM CST -- Radio Audience Attentiveness to
Commercials --
This study is very interesting if you think so. I do.
Wednesday March 2, 2022 7:13 AM CST -- Hearing
Ourselves --
As
with all radio stations the KDX operator needs to monitor the signal
being sent by the station and this means having a reliable radio
receiver tuned in and reproduced over loudspeaker. For this purpose KDX
several years ago chose a Rolls HR78X Tuner which is 8" from
side-to-side, a handsome form factor. By way of the memory buttons we
are able to check any of our AM and FM frequencies. But the FM section
of our tuner was faulty from day 1. A sticker on the box indicates
"Return Received", thus inadvertently notifying us that someone
previously returned this unit and it was resold to us without being
repaired. The unit is supplied with a common dipole antenna and
matching balun (300/75-Ohms), but rather than contributing to reception
this antenna merely moved multi-pathing from one part of the room to
another. On some days the reception was adequate, but more often there
was loud annoying interference. That's why today, finally, we launched
a microscopic analysis of the tuner and its accessory parts, including
the balun. Soon enough we observed a hair-thin wire that had broken
away from one of the screw-terminals of the balun's 300-Ohm attaching
point. As of this moment we've restored the quality of reception
expected for professional performance of our radio station.
Wednesday March 2, 2022
5:17 AM CST -- RT is Being Shut Out --
Tuesday March 1, 2022 9:39 AM CST -- KDX Adjusts Wartime Schedule --
Amy
Goodman's Democracy Now will replace the several RT America programs
heard mornings on KDX Worldround Radio. It appears that none of RT
America's programs are available under the circumstances, and it would
be our guess that many of the program hosts who have trusted the
Russian platform will no longer wish to be associated. On her award
winning daily hour Ms. Goodman represents a clear and honest voice for
journalism.
