Radio and WIreless

Fischer Verses Dish TV

2009-02-10T00:58:00.001-08:00

A number of people have asked for contact information. Odd they use Google to find this blog but can't find the info, so:

Fischer Contact Info
Dish TV Contact Info

Pirate Radio - How To Avoid Causing Interference

2009-01-08T19:42:00.001-08:00

During my Jr. High and High School years I ran a number of bootleg radio stations ranging up to as much as 1Kw, but mostly in the 25-100 watt range on the AM broadcast bands.

I had a number of friends who also ran AM and FM pirate radio stations, one ran a pirate SW station.

I just ran across this article, "The Story of Bootleg Radio 1610", and for anyone considering operating a pirate radio station, it's an excellent example of what not to do.

In all of the years I ran a bootleg radio station, I only ran afoul of the FCC once, and that's when my antenna broke and resonated in the 80 meter ham band and caused interference.

Prior to that occurrence I had run a pirate radio station in a major metropolitan area for more than half a decade. And I'm not talking occasional operation, I'm talking daily multi-hour operation, during the summer months 24 hour operation, with an average power level of around 100 watts.

The lesson here is simple, while any operation without a license that exceeds part 15 is illegal; the laws were written with a purpose of preventing interference and when you cause interference you're much more likely to invoke enforcement than if you avoid causing any interference. Even if you are operating completely legally within the constraints of part 15, you still may not cause interference to licensed operations.

Avoiding causing interference is a function of being knowledgeable and exercising careful engineering to create a clean signal that does not interfere with any legitimate licensed service. The higher the power level you operate at, the cleaner your signal must be in order to avoid causing interference.

Avoiding interference to licensed service involves first doing a careful survey to find a frequency upon which you will not cause interference to legitimate services. The AM broadcasting band has become so crowded that this is a very difficult if not impossible undertaking in many locations and at night when ionospheric reflection transmits signals over the horizon by reflection off of the ionosphere.

You want to find a frequency that not only is it vacant, but where there are no nearby stations on the adjacent channels that might receive interference from your sidebands or in cases where the receivers selectivity is garbage.

A good example of what not to do was set by a friend of mine who operated a pirate AM station on 1570 Khz AM when a local broadcast station was operating on 1590 Khz. In addition to being close in frequency; there was no limiter employed so that overmodulation would create additional sideband components by clipping the audio waveform. Interference to the commercial broadcast station brought the FCC field engineer to his house.

Most of the precautions you would take to prevent interference also happen to be good for your signals strength and quality. RF power that is outside of the intended frequency spectrum is RF power not going towards your intended transmission.

With AM stations, most of the commercial kits are garbage having either entirely untuned and unmatched outputs that are inefficient and have high harmonic content, or at best very low-Q output circuits that are only broadly tuned and do not provide good harmonic suppression.

I would suggest either building your own gear or using commercial broadcast quality gear. If you build your own, take the time to design your transmitter, matching system, and antenna. Be sure your oscillator is stable and within 20 Hz of the selected frequency. I would really suggest aiming to get it spot on. Most commercial stations will be very close and if you can do likewise you'll avoid generating an audible beat note.

Take care to put together a high quality low distortion audio chain that includes a compressor and limiter or optimize your modulation and avoid any negative modulation peaks of 100% or greater. While theoretically, your audio power has to be half the DC final input power for 100% modulation, in practice I like to have about twice the audio power as DC input power to insure that modulation is highly linear up to 100% and also to allow for unsymmetrical modulation where the positive peaks may be allowed to exceed 100% while limiting the negative peaks to less than 100%.

Design your transmitter to meet all the requirements that a commercial station would have to meet save for the power levels. Pay careful attention to suppressing harmonics and any other out-of-band radiation. Design the output section, antenna, any matching or antenna tuning, to use tuned circuits of as high-Q as possible within the constraints of providing the necessary bandwidth for the desired audio frequency response.

Call around to local AM stations and you'll often find that they have surplus equipment, old compressor / limiters, mixing consoles, cart machines, turn tables, etc, that you can acquire free or very inexpensively if you get to know the engineers.

Once you've designed and built your equipment, take extensive measurements and monitor it closely to be sure that it's operating as expected. Some things I would suggest, first, be absolutely sure you have a decent modulation limiter. Anytime you exceed 100% modulation on the negative portion of the waveform, it is clipped because you can't have less than zero carrier signal; that clipping generates high order harmonics that cause sidebands far outside of your intended channel and will interfere with other stations above or below your operating frequency.

A simple and yet highly effective modulation monitor for AM signals is an oscilloscope setup as a trapezoid modulation monitor. To do this connect a sample of the transmitters RF signal to the normal vertical input, and put an audio signal on the horizontal input.

Here are some example images. Forgive my art work, I know it isn't the best, but hopefully it will serve to demonstrate the concepts.

To the right is an example of a display without modulation. Since there is no audio input you see only the RF carrier signal deflecting the beam vertically.

Only your sidebands actually carry information, the carrier signal serves only as a reference for their decoding. An unmodulated carrier is a complete waste of power.

You should strive to design your program content so that this (dead air) never happens. High average modulation will mask noise where your signal is weak providing a higher perceived signal strength.

To the left is a trapezoid modulation pattern with approximately 50% modulation.

The vertical lines indicate the minimum and maximum transmitter power points of the modulation envelope.

The slanted lines should be straight. Any curvature represents non-linearity in your modulation system and audio distortion results.

Non-linearity reduces audio quality and produces high order harmonics that will cause adjacent channel interference.

To the right is a trapezoid modulation pattern with approximately 100% modulation.

In practice, you'll want to set your limiter so that your negative modulation never quite reaches 100%. The trapezoid never comes to a perfect triangle or goes beyond that point.

No limiter will limit completely precisely owing to variations in the audio waveform so you need to allow a small margin of safety.

Imperfect frequency response, linearity, or phase shift in the transmitters modulation system may cause peaks to overshoot slightly.
To left is an example of approximately 125% modulation.

Notice the line to the left of the trapezoid pattern. This represents the negative portion of the modulation envelope where the carrier has reached zero.

Also notice that at the other side of the trapezoid, the lines are no longer straight but taper off. This represents non-linearity in your transmitters output as it's modulation capabilities are exceeded. This will also result in harmonics and adjacent channel interference but not as bad as going over 100% negative.

Note that if your transmitter is capable of exceeding 100% modulation on positive peaks cleanly then there is no harm in allowing positive modulation to exceed 100% and there is substantial advantage in doing so. Commercial broadcast stations are allowed to go up to 120% modulation on positive peaks.

This is why building your modulator to be capable of more than the theoretically required 50%, personal experience has taught me that it's preferable to have about twice the audio power capability as DC input to the final, not that you will utilize all of this but it will insure your audio section is distortion free throughout the full range of modulation levels you might choose to utilize.

Commercial stations will often use clippers after the limiter followed by a low pass filter to remove any harmonics they generate but this really chews up the audio and makes it sound like crap so I don't recommend it.

If you want to obtain good audio density I would make a number of recommendations, first a small amount of reverb injected into the audio chain, at a level where it is just barely audible, will provide additional density and cover noise.

Follow this with a good triband or multiband compressor. These break the audio into "bands" and compress each individually. This prevents things like a kick-drum or vocal cybalance from modulating the middle frequencies which are most noticable.

If you have the dollars, you can get a device called a peak inverter. Since you can't exceed 100% negative modulation without extreme distortion and interference, but positive modulation can go arbitrarily high within the capabilities of your transmitter, a peak inverter will detect natural asymmetry in the audio waveform and switch the polarity such that the natural asymmetry is such that the peak is always greater in the positive direction. This allows you to modulate in excess of 100% without distorting the waveform of the audio source by taking advantage of any natural asymmetry in the waveform.

Lastly follow up by a fast asymmetrical limiter. I recommend setting the attack speed as fast as it goes, and the release speed as fast as you can get away with without the bass modulating the midrange. If you hear voices take on a chewed sound with bass notes, then the release time is too fast and the gain is following the bass waveform.

Set the limiter to limit the negative peaks a few percentage points shy of 100%, set the positive just shy of what your transmitter is capable of cleanly. If you see any rounding on the upper end of the trapezoid modulation pattern, you're exceeding your transmitters capability. If you design your transmitter with a 2:1 audio to DC input you'll never see this problem.

If you do these things you'll have a loud, but clean, signal with good density that will mask noise to a large degree making the most of your coverage area.

Now assuming your transmitter, antenna tuning, and antenna are all designed well, your oscillator is stable and on frequency, you did a good survey before hand and found a truly unused channel with adjacent channels locally unused, your audio chain is clean, your modulation never exceeds 100% negative and positive doesn't exceed your transmitters capability, you should have a professional sounding signal that won't cause distortion and won't sound amateurish (your program material may still be an issue).

Having done all of this work, I still recommend careful monitoring. You should have a good portable communications receiver capable of covering your operating frequeny and up to 30Mhz or so contiguously. I do not recommend getting the receiver too close to the transmitting antenna or you may fry your receivers front end.

Take your receiver about a block from your transmitting antenna while your transmitter is operating and modulated normally. Tune to the second adjancent channels to your transmitted channel. For example, if you are transmitting at 1000 Khz, then tune to 980 Khz and 1020 Khz and listen for any splatter from your station. If you hear splatter then something in your audio chain or the transmitter itelf is distorting your audio signal.

Then tune to harmonics of your transmitted signal, in the case of a 1Mhz transmission, tune to 2 Mhzs, 3 Mhz, 4 Mhz, etc. If you hear your signal, then your transmission isn't clean and you either need to increase the quality of the tuned circuits in the transmitters output, antenna tuner, or the antenna itself, or possibly install a low pass filter between the transmitter and antenna.

If you've done everything to make sure your signal is clean, possibly even to the point of using a spectrum analyzer, and you still hear harmonics, there may be something non-linear object connected to something that receives your signal, rectifies it, and retransmits it. A good example might be metal gutters with a corroded joint. The gutter might play antenna and the corroded joint may act non-linearly distorting the signal and creating harmonics.

Not doing regular monitoring is the thing that allowed my broken antenna to resonate at 80 meters radiating a third harmonic of our transmitting frequency and drawing the attention of the FCC after six years of uneventful transmitting.

KASB Frequency Change Bad

2009-01-08T11:11:00.001-08:00

I've been a listener of a little station that broadcasts from Green River Community college for years, KGRG. In terms of music, they've been on the bleeding edge giving exposure to independents that you just don't hear anywhere else. They transmit with just 250 watts on 89.9 Mhz so their signal was receivable with a good antenna and receiver up in North Seattle but just marginally.

KASB is a 8-watt station from Bellevue High School that I've yet to hear anything unique or interesting on. KASB was formerly on 89.3 Mhz but was just recently moved to 89.9 Mhz. KASB's 8 watt signal from Bellevue renders KGRG's 250 watt signal from Auburn unlistenable here. At the same time KASB's 8 watt signal which was formerly listenable here when they were on 89.3Mhz, if you had a good receiver, is also no longer listenable.

Now 89.3FM appears to be clear; at least I can't receive anything at all there with a fairly decent receiver. I'm wondering what the hell the FCC was thinking when they allowed this change?

At any rate; if you listened to either of these stations and now find them unlistenable, please call the FCC 1-888-225-5322, e-mail fccinfo@fcc.gov, file a complaint on the FCC website: http://esupport.fcc.gov/complaints.htm or write to:

Federal Communications Commission
201 Varick Street, Suite 1151
New York, NY 10014-4870

Fisher Communications Vs. Dish Network

2008-12-29T01:44:00.000-08:00

I am a subscriber of Dish Network. I've been reasonably happy with them but recently tuned to channel 4 to be met with a message saying that because Fisher Broadcasting and Dish Network were unable to arrive at an agreement regarding retransmission fees, they no longer had the right to carry KOMO's signal.

As a customer of Dish Network I'm upset with them but I'm more upset with KOMO and Fisher broadcasting because I feel their position is unreasonable, unethical, and just plain greedy.

Here is the issue as I see it. Years ago, Sony was sued over their product, the BetaMax VCR, which allowed customers to record television broadcasts. Sony prevailed on the grounds that once something is placed in the public domain, it remains in the public domain and is no longer subject to copyright law. Public broadcasting of a program constituted placing it in the public domain. This became known as the BetaMax decision.

In the years since, there have been some changes to copyright laws that have created some exceptions. That's an understatement really, copyright laws and patent laws have totally run amuck, but I also think there is a moral issue here.

If you go to Fisher's website (if you click on the title I've provided a link), you'll find that they compare various paid channels that Dish Network pays for. This comparison is unfair because these channels have a different revenue model.

Commercial broadcasters sell advertising space in their program content to pay the costs of obtaining and broadcasting their programs. The customer doesn't pay a monetary fee to watch the program, but suffers through the advertisements in exchange for receiving the program free.

Pay television by contrast provides programs without interruption of commercials in exchange for receiving a fee, directly or indirectly, from the viewer to provide the revenue that pays for the production and distribution of the programming.

Fisher is comparing one revenue model, commercial television, with another revenue model, pay television, and I don't feel that it is a fair comparison. Fisher wants to collect revenue from both ends, they want to charge advertisers for airtime and they want to turn around and charge us, the viewers, for the program material in spite of the fact that we're also forced to sit through the commercials for which they've received payment. I don't find this to be a reasonable proposition.

KOMO operates an expensive transmitter broadcasting hundreds of thousands of watts from high gain antennas placed on a huge tower on Queen Anne hill in Seattle in order to reach viewers in much of Western Washington state. They spend the big bucks on the equipment, electricity to run it, personell to maintain it, in order to reach an audience that is valuable to advertisers and by extension to KOMO-TV who the advertrisers pay.

Now when Dish TV retransmits their signal, they increase the size of KOMOs' audience and by extension the value of their airtime to advertisers. They provide this added value to KOMO at no cost to KOMO. If anything KOMO should be paying them! It's like getting a free transmitter power increase or a higher tower. They are reaching more customers with a cleaner signal that more people will be willing to watch, at no cost.

But that isn't enough, in spite of the fact that Fisher is receiving additional value from advertisers as the result of Dish Network carrying their signals, they expect Dish Network to pay them for the priviledge of helping them make more money.

As a customer who could go out and buy a new antenna, I fail to see the logic in Fisher Communications position. Sure they can argue that there is a cost of acquisition of programming (in some cases, much is provided free by the network) and a cost associated with thier operation, but they encounter those costs whether Dish Network retransmits their signal or not. Further, Dish Network also has huge costs of operation which are increased by carrying more signals. By carrying KOMOs' programming, Dish Network increases the advertising revenue potential of KOMO-TV and does not increase their costs.

So I just can't see Fisher Broadcastings' logic at all. I can't understand why they should expect people to pay them for the priviledge of increasing their audience and revenue.

One last point of irritation, both sides make the position that the other sides' position is unreasonable (and on this note I agree with Dish and disagree with Fisher), but neither side is willing to provide specifics. Dish says that Fisher is demanding an 82% increase, Fisher publishes Dish's letter in which this figure is mentioned without disputing it, but neither side is willing to say 82% of what? 82% of a dollar isn't worth a squabble, 82% of ten million dollars is. What are we talking about here? If Fisher feels what they are doing is ethical, and if Dish feels what they are doing is ethical, why are both sides demanding confidentiality?

I Told You The Ionosphere Is Strange

2008-12-17T02:40:00.000-08:00

I've posted here several times stating that radio propagation has changed since the way it was when I was younger. I did not know and do not know fully what is responsible for that change, but clearly there has been change.

Now an article in Science Daily entitled, "Boundary Between Earth's Upper Atmosphere And Space Has Moved To Extraordinarily Low Altitudes, NASA Instruments Document", confirms that the Ionosphere has changed. It is lower than it used to be.

For the record, I believe the title of this article is scientifically horrid; there is no "boundary" between the Earth's upper atmosphere and space. The atmosphere is a gas, and it gets progressively thinner as you move away from the planet. The definition of the boundary is arbitrary, at some "pressure" one can call that the boundary, but at what pressure you decide to do that is arbitrary.

There are many factors affecting the upper atmosphere and how "inflated" it is, but the largest is probably extreme UV from the Sun which is absorbed in the upper atmosphere heating and expanding it. The last solar cycle was the most intense on record, and then ended and a new one really has not started. There is indication that a magnetic reversal has happened, but so far there has only been a sparse very short lived sun spot every now and then, nothing like a normal solar cycle.

There are other factors as well. The Earth's own magnetic field is weakening. How much of this relates to any internal dynamo action and how much relates to changes in the solar flux is hard to say. The interaction between the solar wind and internal sources is extremely complex.

The strength of the Earth's magnetic field determines the latitude that cosmic rays and solar particles enter the atmosphere. When the field is strong, they enter in very concentrated zones near the poles, when the field is weaker these particles can enter farther from the poles. In the last 100 years, the average latitude that these particles enter the atmosphere has shifted towards the equator by about ten degrees.

The long term nature of this shift suggests more of an internal, change in the Earth's dynamo, cause. One effect of this shift is to shift rainfall patterns to some degree because these high energy charged particles create ionized paths that serve as condensation points where raindrops can start to form.

Then there are changes in atmospheric chemistry. We've added additional carbon dioxide, methane, water vapor, halides, and other sulfur.

And then there is the intentional manipulation of the ionosphere with HAARP and similar projects around the globe.

So I'm not going to pretend to understand the relative impact of each factor, but clearly our atmosphere and ionosphere are changing.

Cell Tower Safety

2008-12-08T04:25:00.000-08:00

Since I published the article regarding cellular site safety issues, I've received much e-mail and comments on the subject, most of which is highly paranoid. People here the word radiation and think "nuclear", but not all radiation is bad radiation, sunlight and all radio and television signals are radiation. These are quite distinct from nuclear radiation in that they are non-ionizing.

Radiation that is harmful has to have some physical effect on the body such as ionizing atoms in our body, which makes them reactive, or damaging DNA, or interfering with the ability of ions to transverse ion channels in our cells walls, or by causing thermal or electrical effects that disrupt normal metabolic activity.

At low power levels, cell phone radiation does none of these things, but at higher levels, thermal effects and effects on the electrical activity within the central nervous system can manifest and cause a variety of problems up to cancer and central nervous system problems. These power levels are normally only possible if you are in the same plain as the antenna and within 35 feet, and the effects can be cumulative, the longer the exposure the greater the risk. Cell sites are supposed to be designed and sited to avoid these conditions.

I received e-mail that described a situation which involved a telephone pole mounted cell site with the antenna at the same height as the bedroom window of a nearby house and the distance from the antenna was less than 35 feet from the bedroom.

This is a situation where there is a legitimate concern. The antennas used for cellular sites are highly directional in the vertical plain.

The energy they radiate is focused in a plain at their height. This means you are safe if you are significantly higher or lower than the antenna or more than about 35 feet away.

But if you are at the same high as the antenna and less than 35 feet away, and particularly if you are going to be in that location for long periods of time, as in the case of a bedroom, this is not a safe situation.

In this case I would file a complaint with the FCC and the company involved making it clear that this creates an unsafe condition and asking that they either relocate the cell site or raise the antenna above the height of the bedrooms to resolve the issue.

If you can not stop the installation at the bedroom height that close to your house, then I would look into adding some RF shielding in the walls. You can buy brass or copper screening that would be effective, or copper foil, but these things are expensive.

This is a situation where the home owner really has a legitimate complaint but proving it might be expensive. That is to say, the FCC may not send out a field engineer to take measurements, instead they may require that you hire an engineer to do so. But then if you are forced into this, I would make it clear to the telephone company up front that you intend to do whatever is necessary and take legal action to recover your costs from them in hopes it might persuade them that it would be more cost effective to take action voluntarily. Alternately, they could pay the costs of installing the necessary shielding to assure the safety of the individual(s) sleeping in that bedroom.

Radio Programming Future

2008-08-25T04:56:00.000-07:00

Eventually we will use ultra-wide spread-spectrum orthogonal frequency division multiplexing techniques for all wireless communications because this method utilizes spectrum and energy more efficiently.

We are moving in this direction with the evolving technologies of Internet wireless transmission, cellular networks, and digital radio and television. These will merge into one ultra-broadband wireless digital network.

You'll listen to your favorite radio station, watch your favorite television program, interact on the Internet, talk on the phone, anywhere on the planet. Reliability will improve at lower power levels resulting in reduced levels of electromagnetic pollution and carbon dioxide.

There is a cloud to this silver lining. Greater channel capacity, providing the consumer with more choices results in fewer viewers per channel, lower revenue per channel, and lower quality programming.

The global reach of each channel compensates but you lose local relevance. Perhaps a situation will emerge in which quality draws a large enough audience to sustain itself.

As satellite and cable have made many more television channels available, we haven't seen quality improve. Gone are theme songs. Real actors are replaced by Joe Average seeking glory on reality TV, which also eliminates the need for writers. Create an unreal situation and then let nature take it's course. Writers can find work creating news.

Radio is moving towards greater use of automation, syndication, and lack of professionalism. Dead air, bad queues, and bad taste seem to be the norm. Recent ownership rules that allowing a single entity to own several hundred stations greatly reduces competition, diversity, and local relevance.

Expanded channel capacity is going to worsen these existing trends but will make narrowcasting practical. Finding specialized programming will become easier. Now you can take that radio proctocology coarse you've always wanted.

Advanced civilizations still using radio will have moved to this model because of the efficiencies. SETI is unlikely to be productive looking for narrow band carriers. A carrier is a waste of energy. Allocating tiny bits of spectrum to individual channels is a waste of spectrum. We're not going to find ET on the radio unless we look at a broad bandwidth and spread spectrum encoding characteristics. I wonder if ET has found a way to address the program quality issues.

KNDD Enercom Kaplan

2008-08-21T23:46:00.000-07:00

I've listened to KNDD 107.7 since they went on the air back in 1991. They are not my ideal. If it were up to me, I'd most definitely make changes. In terms of what is available from commercial broadcast stations in the Seattle area, they were the best.

Recently Enercom has replaced Lazlo as program director with Kaplan, an import from New Orleans. Harms is leaving for the UK. Lazlo has returned to Kansas (there's no place like home). Since Harms and Lazlo shared the function of music director, someone else will need to assume that function. Even before the replacement of Lazlo, changes were made that I find objectionable.

One of the things I've always liked about KNDD is that KNDD has involved the audience. It's not a one-way, or at least hasn't been a one-way interaction. While their competitor, Jack FM (KJAQ) played established corporate crap, KNDD played new up and coming artists. The established artists KNDD does play are those that are clearly in it for the art first. When I hear Jack say, "We play what we want to", my response is "And I listen to what I want to". I promptly turn Jack off. I couldn't resist the pun, it's about only thing Jack is useful for.

At KNDD, audience interaction seemed to gradually decline over the years, until Lazlo came to Seattle. At that point it improved substantially. The Summer Beach House was a brilliant move, but they used it much more effectively last year. This year it received minimal promotion and there really didn't seem to be many significant events. The energy that was there last year didn't manifest this year.

This year much of the live local broadcasting has been replaced with automation and syndicated irrelevant garbage. I apologize in advance for those of you who actually like Adam Corolla. I found him funny for the first couple of weeks, and after that grating. His show is irrelevant to the local scene. People in Seattle want to know about what is happening in Seattle not what is happening in Los Angeles.

Impulse radio sucks. Given a chance to vote between three usually marginal songs is just stupid; it's a poor excuse for audience interaction.

The Church of Lazlo show excelled with regard to interactively involving the audience. I did feel that Lazlo was not really deserving of the leading role, I found Slim Fast to be more entertaining. Still, I am sorry to see Lazlo leave, though I can catch him on the web at the Buzz back in Kansas. Their internet feed is excellent. The sound quality is much better than The End's internet feed. That's another thing KNDD needs to fix. In fact their entire website could be vastly improved and used much more effectively.

I'm not thrilled at substitution of music with some stupid talk shows like their love-line at night. It is so incredibly tacky. If it weren't for the last two presidential elections, I could never have brought myself to believe there were people who were that stupid. I don't see the benefit of putting them on the air.

KNDD's intended demographic, which is geared towards young people not old farts like me, is under represented in Arbitron ratings by virtue of the fact that Arbitron relies heavily on telephone surveys which exclude cell phones and younger people tend to use cell phones to the exclusion of wired phones.

In my view KNDD should address that head on. Use their own medium to sell themselves and state that fact publicly. Challenge potential customers to try advertising on KNDD and track sales and compare sales performance with other stations. Offer them a heavily discounted trial package to allow them to make this comparison at low risk.

If KNDD did things right, audience station loyalty would contribute to advertising effectiveness and by extension, sales, but canceling popular shows and then offering no explanation to the audience is not the way to engender audience loyalty. Concentrate sales on local business that are relevant to the demographic and interesting.

I said KNDD was not my ideal, and I want to elaborate a bit on that. I loved the old Mexican border stations, not because I was fond of much of the music they played but the energy level of the stations. It was like life energy flowed out of their antennas. There were many aspects that contributed to that but the formula isn't that difficult.

Hire people that actually enjoy what they're doing. Many of KNDD's staff sound like they hated to drag their asses into work, aren't real thrilled with people, and are only mildly enthusiastic about the music. and it's not what they say it's how they say it. Seattle has a lot of excellent college radio stations, and they produce many good eager people looking for jobs in radio. People that are a lot more enthusiastic, a lot hungrier, and just more fun to listen to than people whining on the air about their lot in life. Hire some of these people.

Involve college radio station talent where they are. They are much more connected to the Seattle music scene than people who are "in the industry". Set up a deal where you have a guest DJ from one of these stations for a portion of the air time at least twice a week. Within the limits permitted by the FCC, encourage them to introduce new music.

Get rid of dead air, absolutely eliminate it. This is a biggie on the Mexican border stations and I think it contributes strongly to keeping the audiences attention. No dead air, not for a millisecond, even during announcements. Use something to fill the space, if not background music, then some reverb, sound effects, etc, something so that silence does not happen. Hire people who can actually hit a queue. If they can't queue out of song that ends hard and into another song that starts hard without dead air or overlap, find someone who can. That used to be considered an essential talent.

Don't use a separate board-op and radio personality; it takes away a portion of control from the DJ making a coherent presentation of the program impossible. If they can't operate the board, get someone who can.

I did a stint as a PD at a small AM station years ago. It was in financial trouble when I came in, but in two months we turned it around from losing money to making money. That was a low power AM, which is much more difficult with a music format than high power FM. They were too far in debt and too far behind so banks foreclosed even though we were able to make payments. It lasted long enough for me to know it's a working formula. Involve the audience to the extreme, keep it exciting, and eliminate dead air. People want to relate to a human element that presents excitement and enthusiasm. It's contagious and people want to be a part of that and they want to introduce their friends to that excitement.

The Beach House was a good move but it is under-utilized. Some larger events coordinated with the city with a tent and bandstand on the beach across the street could draw much larger crowds and be even more effective. Other radio stations have done that in the past.

Talk to some of the common local music venues like the Trolley Tavern, Blue Moon Tavern, Showbox, Crocodile Cafe. Arrange to broadcast live some of the better bands. The venue gets free advertising, the band gets increased exposure, and the listeners get some exciting live music and more opportunities to interact in person, and the station gets some additional exposure.

KNDD rules regarding the music I agree with except for the no-talk over rule. Replace it with a no-dead air, minimal talk-over depending upon the material, but absolutely no talk-over the lyrics ever, with the possible exception of the White Stripes or Beastie Boys, in that case, talk loudly over the entire piece though I'd eliminate the majority of Beastie Boys and White Stripes because all of their songs sound the same with only a few exceptions.

There are songs that have really cool intros that you don't want to obscure; there are others that have eight identical boring bars before they get into interesting. The latter should be talked over, the former not. Dead air needs to eliminated. It only takes about a second for someone to decide to hit the change button but people are reluctant to do so when there is sound. Tom Shane commercials, NO NO NO!

Spell out to advertisers, if they're producing their own commercials, they have to fit the format, no dead air; no droning, (Tom I'm talking about you), no droning, no monotonous please kill me droning. If you really do things right, station loyalty will contribute to advertising effectiveness and by extension sales.

That's my two cents worth regarding KNDD's replacement of Lazlo with Kaplan and recent trends there. I hope things get better but I'd be lying big time if I thought I could say I felt optimistic.

Future of Radio, Television, Telephony, Internet

2008-06-19T21:09:00.001-07:00

In the present day most of our transmissions are discrete units where the signal corresponds directly with an information path. An AM station transmits a program, and FM station transmits a program, a TV station transmits an audio and visual program.

Gradually we are seeing a trend towards the breakdown of this 1:1 relationship in favor of a continuous digital RF media and multiple multiplexed information channels. Cell phone networks, WiFi, and WiMax networks are examples of this.

The availability of spread-spectrum technologies and orthogonal frequency division modulation technologies made it possible for multiple transmitters to share spectral space and to transmit and extract information even when noise actually exceeds signal.

We are seeing AM, FM, and TV stations move to digital transmission and virtually all of the new digital systems use a orthogonal frequency division modulation techniques because of the noise immunity and lack of susceptibility to rapid fading that the technique provides.

We are seeing multiple information channels being multiplexed onto these AM, FM, and TV digital signals just as with cellular and WiMax capability.

As the demand for faster transmission rates and the availability of faster and faster digital signal processors capable of encoding those rates continues, the bandwidth of each transmitted signal widens.

We will see the end of the discrete 1:1 information flow to transmitted signal disappear entirely for terrestrial transmissions. Eventually the special purpose nature of various transmissions will disappear and we'll end up with ultra wide broadband networks with virtually all communications multiplexed onto those networks.

The digital bandwidth available will eventually eliminate the need for nodes to be wired together, they'll start routing information between themselves directly. Smart routing will be developed that will find optimal routes on the fly allowing nodes to be added / dropped at random with no effect on service, automatic hand-off will allow information streams to follow moving targets as with present day cellular.

This sort of infrastructure is inevitable because it will make the most efficient use of bandwidth and power while providing almost infinite functional flexibility.

Devices will be less inclined to have significant data storage, instead, you'll access data over the network from a centralized location. This will greatly increase interoperability between devices as well as facilitate communications between people.

There are going to be challenges, organizational issues, who owns what when any given node will carry anybodies and everybodies traffic of all kinds?

Privacy, any veil of privacy is going to disappear. Privacy itself has already disappeared, the current administration demonstrated that it's OK to completely ignore the constitution when it comes to unreasonable search and seizure and it's implications for domestic spying. Privacy is already gone.

We'll be able to use our electronic gadgets everywhere, that will be another assault on personal privacy because virtually everywhere there will be laptops with built-in cameras, cell-phone with built-in cameras. However, strong end-to-end encryption will become indispensable. It will need to be based upon something other than factoring the product of large primes because quantum computers will render that task trivial, unless advances in number theory does so first.

The media center in your home and car will no longer tune stations that occupy certain frequencies, instead it will tune addresses. Narrowcasting will largely replace broadcasting.

The ubiquitous nature of this new ultra-broadband everything media will not lend itself well to respecting national borders and this is going to change the nature of governments as well as society greatly.

One social aspect I see coming is that the total lack of privacy will lead us to the recognition that nobody is without sin in a social sense at least, and perhaps that will force laws to be brought more inline with our true nature, what we are, as opposed to what we like to pretend we are, and the need to jail 2% of our population will go away, and hopefully a fair amount of the current social hippocracy .

It's going to be an interesting experiment, if we manage to survive the current era so that it can unfold.

Virtenna

2008-06-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

Virtenna (at http://www.virtenna.com/) is kind of a virtual internet tuner. You select a city and then you can select from various radio and television stations in that city to listen to or watch.

It's a neat idea, easy to use, but the downside is that right now it only lists a handful of major cities around the world. If it were made more comprehensive it would be an incredible service.

Radio Heritage Foundation

2008-02-12T05:31:00.000-08:00

I received e-mail from the Radio Heritage Foundation and after taking a look at their website decided it was a resource that was worthy of mention. I've added it to the resources on the right column under Radio History.

This site is rich with material covering history, current events, pirate radio, foreign radio, all with a substantial degree of depth. Many very cool photographs and much in depth information. I'd write more about it but am pressed for time at the moment; however, let me assure you that this site will keep you entertained and informed for many hours.

Rainier Radio

2008-01-25T23:34:00.000-08:00

I received e-mail today from one of my early partners in bootleg and then later legitimate radio informing me of a new website that has been created by the Seattle community colleges that has a lot of interesting radio history for the Pacific Northwest.

There are jingles for various local radio stations including KAYO, KJRB, KJR, many classical radio shows, old mysteries and other radio drama.

Unfortunately, there isn't much in the way of 60's era regular radio shows on stations like KJR and KOL, a lot of radio checks from various DJ's but not full programs.

They've also got a streaming online station you can listen to as well as many photos.

For being new though there is a wealth of material there and hopefully more will come as it evolves. Enjoy!

Cell Phone and Cell Tower Safety

2008-01-22T20:41:00.000-08:00

I continue to receive e-mail from folks who are concerned about cell phone and cell tower safety.

It is my position that cell towers do not represent a safety risk, at least in so much as the RF radiation from them being a health hazard is concerned. I do believe that modern hand held cell phones, which operate with a maximum power of 100mw but typically much less than that, pose a very minimal but non-zero risk, and that the older 3 watt and 5 watt units were a significant health risk.

Regarding risks posed by cell towers, you may wish to read this article entitled, "Health Symptoms Aren't Linked to Cell Tower Emissions, Study Finds..." in Science Daily.

I've added a new section to the sidebar links with related information, and in particular there is a new link to this FCC Website, "Human Exposure To Radio Frequency Fields from Cellular and PCS Transmitters".

It may seem odd that I'd take a position that cell towers are not harmful, whereas cell phones may pose some health risks, but the reason is very simple. RF fields decrease rapidly with increasing distance from the emitter. You hold a cell phone up to the side of your skull where there are only a few millimeters from your cell phone antenna to your brain. But it is unlikely you will get any closer than tens of meters to a cell tower antenna. In short, the exposure you will receive from a cell phone that you use will exceed that from a tower by a factor of thousands.

If you really want to get excited about RF fields, I'd be much more concerned about these things in this order, HAARP (High Active Aurora Research Program), high power RADAR, UHF television stations, VHF television stations, FM stations, AC wiring in your house, CRT televisions and computer monitors, AC above ground transmission lines, ULF submarine communications systems.

What all of these things have in common is that they either operate at power levels that are high enough to have thermal effects on people close to them, or they operate on frequencies that are low enough to cause ion transport issues across cell walls, both of which are known mechanisms that can induce cancer and other health problems. HAARP has the unique distinction of having both of these properties making it a double threat to health.

With respect to cell phones and cell towers, what I would really like to find are recent large scale studies that attempt to analyze statistical correlations between living in proximity to cell towers and health issues, and studies that do the same for cell phone usage. My hunch is that no health issues will be related to cell towers, save maybe for one falling and injuring someone physically, but that there may be some issues with heavy uses of cell phones although I don't expect that to be significant. But I'm really interested in actual numbers rather than conjecture and sensationalistic crapolla.

One issue to be aware of is that when you read of long term studies finding risks, and those are studies that go back ten years or more; you are getting into an era when high powered, as much as five watt, handsets were used that did cause thermal effects, and it is not at all surprising to me that those sets did cause significant health issues.

Stupid Radio Commercials

2007-11-28T20:20:00.000-08:00

Last night I found myself I wish I could secretly break-in to KVI 570 and replace their stupid commercials.

Listening to coast-to-coast and when it ended a commercial...

Men... Are you finding that you are urinating more frequently?

Do you sometimes wake-up at night to urinate?

Now be honest, how's your sex life been lately?

Super-beta prostate contains 10,000 times the active ingredient found in Saw Palmetto... yada yada yada..

Anyway, I'd add a testimonial, I mean what's more effective than a testimonial?

"Hi, My name is Ivan P. Freely. Lately I've been getting up in the middle of the night to urinate and so I decided to try Super-Beta-Prostate.

Boy did it work! The sex that night was fantastic.. And now I sleep like a log, no more getting up at night to urinate.

Unfortunately, that night was the last night I had sex, seems the wife has problems with the no more getting up at night to urinate. She much preferred that I woke up and got up first.

Seems to me like this era is a almost like a century ago with all the snake oil being pedaled.

Radio Propogation

2007-11-21T05:19:00.000-08:00

I continue to receive comments and e-mail to the effect that the propagation changes are cyclic, part of the solar cycle.

Let me make it clear that I have been into radio since my elementary school days, I am 49 years old now. I've owned shortwave and AM receivers across that entire time frame, and AM/SW/TV DXing has been a hobby of mine also across that entire time frame.

Conditions are too noisy for effective DXing below the AM band in this area. There is a lot of power line harmonics creating interference to the long wave band. City Light, the power company here, seems to have a policy of replacing defective insulators only after someone is electrocuted or the pole catches fire. I have phoned in insulators visibly arcing over only to have the calls repeatedly ignored for months on end.

I don't have the equipment for past the UHF television band or I'd be exploring frequencies below and above as well.

I am well aware of the solar cycle. People commonly refer to it as an 11 year cycle because peaks come, on average, every 11 years. It is really a 22-year cycle because the magnetic field reverses every peak and it takes 22 years to return to the same state and magnetic polarity.

The maximum usable frequency, that is the highest frequency which will be returned back to the Earth from the ionosphere generally follows three things; the solar cycle, the MUF is highest during solar peaks, the season, the MUF is generally highest in summer and lowest in winter, and daily, the MUF is generally highest in the daytime, particularly mid-day, and lowest at night.

So during solar minimum, during the winter, late in the night, is the time when the MUF would be the lowest, rarely above 6 Mhz or so under those conditions. I've been listening to a signal on 9484Khz now (9.484 Mhz) that has been coming in strong for quite some time tonight. On other nights I've been able to listen to signals as high as 18 Mhz. Several decades ago this would have been rare for this part of the solar cycle, this time of year, at night. Now it has become common.

When I was young, sporadic E-skip events that would bring the MUF up to television channel 2, 54-60 Mhz, was a relatively rare event except during the very peak of the solar cycle. Now the MUF reaching up to channel 10, 192-198 Mhz, during solar peaks, has become about as common as reaching channel 2-3 was several decades ago. During solar maximums, the MUF going above channels 2-3 has become so regular that it can hardly be described as "sporadic" E-skip anymore. There is nothing sporadic about it.

At the same time the MUF has increased, so has medium wave absorption, and AM stations that used to be easily and reliably receivable no longer are. AM stations in Vancouver BC, only about 100 miles from where I am, used to be easily receivable here, no longer.

Yes, these things do vary with the sunspot cycle, but superimposed on that cycle has been a steady rising of the MUF and AM absorption over the last several decades. The activity of the Sun also has increased, with the last solar peak being the most intense on record, but even during solar minimums, even during times when zero sunspots have been visible, the MUF and AM absorption have both been more than what they were when I was younger.

There are many potential factors; the weakening of the Earth's magnetic field allowing the solar wind to interact with it more may be a factor. Changing atmospheric chemistry and resulting changes in refractive index of the ionosphere under given conditions may be a factor. Changes in the heat distribution in the atmosphere and resulting changes in refractive index might be a factor. Increasing solar activity over the longer term may be a factor. Artificially increased ionization by HAARP and similar activities may be a factor. The introduction of halides into the atmosphere, Bromine added as part of an anti-foaming agent in jet fuel, the solid rocket boosters of the shuttle having a chlorine compound, these may be factors. There are so many potential causes that I don't know if it's even possible to sort them out. There are probably more that I haven't thought of.

Radio Propagation Changes

2007-10-22T03:26:00.001-07:00

Well, the net is an interesting place. I did some digging and found that are in fact hundreds if not thousands of articles dealing with the topic of radio propagation and atmospheric chemistry.

There is interesting chemistry in the middle atmosphere between 15Km and 90Km in altitude, and this overlaps the "D" layer of the ionosphere, extending from approximately 50Km to 90Km, which is responsible for much of the absorption of radio signals below about 10 MHz.

The concentration of water vapor in the middle atmosphere has been increasing over time and thought to be a consequence of global warming.

The concentration of ozone has been decreasing on the whole though the variation caused by changes in solar UV radiation over the 11 year solar cycle are greater than the rate of decline so during the ascending part of the solar cycle the ozone depletion is masked or even partially reversed, and during the descending part, exaggerated.

Above 15Km, the atmosphere gets hotter rather than cooler. This increase in temperature is primarily the result of heating caused by UV radiation being absorbed by ozone. It has been known that the suns UV output varies considerably over the solar cycle, as much as 200% at the shortest UV wavelengths and as much as 30-40% at 250 nm.

Lately, the Suns activity overall has been increasing. We're presently at a solar minimum, but on top of that 11-year cycle there seems to be a longer term increase in UV output. Observations of the UV output of other similar stars shows that this is actually "normal" behavior for a star like our Sun. UV is produced in the upper reaches of the Sun's atmosphere and is therefore more affected by magnetic changes than visible light from the photosphere.

So increase in water vapor which results in increased ionization increases atmospheric absorption up to about 10Mhz. Decreases in ozone allow UV to penetrate further increasing ionization at lower altitudes where the effect mainly is to increase absorption. And increases in the Sun's UV output increases ionization at all levels which increases absorption at lower radio frequencies and reflections at higher frequencies.

While I was able to find information with respect to the role water vapor, ozone, and chlorine play in atmospheric ionization, I was not able to find anything regarding CO2 and methane, also increasing in concentration, so I don't know what roles they may play.

Suffice it to say there is not only one but multiple factors affecting radio propagation. So where will this go in the future? Well at this point we really don't know what will happen with the Suns activity. We can be reasonably certain global warming will increase for some time. Levels of chlorine will likely increase and ozone will likely deplete for some time. So I think it likely that we will see existing trends continue. Lower frequencies will become more useless for long distance communication and the maximum usable frequency will continue to increase on average.

New Look

2007-10-22T00:38:00.000-07:00

Hope you don't mind the new look. I redesigned the game section here and people seemed to like the change so thought I'd do the same for this Radio Blog but I don't know how much cross-over there is between radioheads and gamers. If you find it excessively ugly say so.

Radio - AM Propogation

2007-10-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if I'm noticing over time, a steady decrease in the propagation characteristics of the AM radio band, particularly those frequencies above 1 Mhz, or a steady degradation of the performance of my AM receivers and a lack of quality in newer receivers.

I live in Shoreline, WA, just north of Seattle (about 13 miles north of downtown Seattle). I used to be able to receive CFUN in Vancouver, BC, Canada, about 100 miles to the north, at about S8 on my receivers that had an S-meter and strong enough, save for the occasional night time fade, to be listenable.

For the last few years though, CFUN barely comes in at all, not even S2 on the S-meter anymore and the noise level is too high to tolerate listening, even at times to be intelligible. Even many local stations which used to be solid are now marginal, particularly on the high end of the band.

At the same time AM propagation seems to have suffered, the higher shortwave bands seem to be alive at times of the year and times of the day that they wouldn't have been in the past and sporadic E-skip on the low VHF TV channels has almost become so regular that calling it "sporadic" anymore seems inappropriate. It seems to occur more frequently now during the winter months during a solar minimum than it used to during a solar maximum in the summer. And during the last solar maximum, on one occasion I got skip all the way up to channel 10, and for all I know it may have gone past that but there are local stations on 11, 12, and 13 that would have required a very strong signal to overrun.

I'm wondering if this is the result of changing atmospheric chemistry, or a general increase in RF power levels causing an increase in ionization, or HAARP, or some other factor(s).

Ionosophere

2007-08-02T00:52:00.000-07:00

I've had the hobby of radio MW/SW/FM and television DXing since I was in elementary school. I've received distant stations via a number of propagation modes. I have received distant AM and SW via "skip", which is refraction of a skyward radio wave back towards the Earth by the ionosphere. This is often referred to as a "reflection", but that is technically incorrect. If it were a reflection, a signal straight up would be reflected back, but that is not the case.

The ionosphere is a layer of the Earth's atmosphere, extending from about 50 miles up to several hundred miles, ionized primarily by UV radiation from the Sun, also to some degree by cosmic rays. UV from the Sun is mostly from the chromosphere, an area above the visible photosphere which is occasionally visible as a rosy red glow during a solar eclipse.

The UV flux from this chromosphere varies with the level of solar activity and is generally low during solar minimums and high during solar maximums. The higher the level of UV flux, the greater the degree of ionization in the ionosphere. The stronger the ionization, the greater the refraction at a given radio frequency. This means that as the ionization increases, higher frequencies can be refracted back towards Earth.

Because UV flux is non-existent at night, that source of ionization is absent at night and the ionosphere is weakly ionized. The lower altitude regions tend to go away as the charged ions and electrons recombine into neutral atoms. Only at higher altitudes, where the density is low enough that collisions are less frequent, does significant ionization remain at night. Ionization is also generally lower during solar minimums as well because of lower solar UV flux output.

Image courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA.

What you are seeing here is an image of the Sun that is completely lacking in sunspots. It has been this way since July 24th, 2007. We are presently in a solar minimum. This means that ionization of the ionosphere should be minimal as well, particularly at night.

The higher the radio frequency or the shorter the wavelength, the less the ionosphere will refract the radio wave. Consequently as the radio frequency increases, signals can only be refracted back to Earth if they arrive at the ionosphere with a low angle nearly parallel, a signal entering at a high almost perpendicular angle would not be refracted sufficiently and would pass through the ionosphere or be absorbed by it. At lower frequencies signals can be refracted back at sharper angles.

Above some frequency a signal can not be refracted sufficiently to return to Earth even if it arrives at a very low angle. The highest frequency that can be refracted back during given ionospheric conditions is known as the maximum usable frequency or MUF.

Two days ago, at 11pm, I was still able to receive WWV at 15 Mhz and I listened to Radio Japan at just over 13 Mhz for almost two hours and the signal was strong. I was able to detect some skip at frequencies above 17 Mhz, however, because of computer hash I wasn't able to make out what it was.

This is really abnormal behavior during a solar minimum. During a solar minimum this reception would be more typical of daytime reception. At night it is generally not possible to receive anything distant above about 7-8 Mhz. The MUF is only about 7 or 8 Mhz at night during solar minimums, but two nights ago it was over 17 Mhz for at least a couple of hours.

Sometimes space events called gamma ray bursts can significantly increase ionization of the ionosphere. Gamma ray bursts generally last milliseconds to several minutes. Radio Japan came in strong for several hours and maybe more as I did not continue to listen.

Lightning storms also can dramatically increase ionization at night, however, generally in a limited geographical area, yet, I was receiving WWV on 15 Mhz from Ft. Collins, CO, and Radio Japan, so whatever phenomena resulted in this high level of ionization was geographically more disperse.

Given a Sun which was not active, and the lack of a fit to other known sources of nighttime ionospheric ionization, I am puzzled as to what is responsible for the high degree of ionization.

During the last solar maximum, the MUF reaching above 50 Mhz was almost a daily occurrence for months at a time. That was unusual, but the last solar maximum was also unusual, the most sunspots of any recorded maximum. Chinese and Tibetan monks have been recording sunspots for thousands of years. Western records date back several hundred years. Strong ionospheric activity during the last maximum is not surprising but the level of activity during this minimum is.

I mentioned that television DXing is one of my hobbies. Most frequently, TV DXing is in the low VHF band, channels 2-6, during solar maximums. Occasionally there are what are known as sporadic E-skip events as well. These happen most frequently during summer, during afternoons, but they can happen anytime and I have seen events in the middle of the night, in the winter time.

During this last solar maximum, I received channels via skip all the way up to channel 10, which is at 192-198 Mhz. I only experienced skip at this frequency once, it is extremely unusual, and unfortunately it did not last long enough to get a station ID, so I don't know the distance involved which would have revealed more about the nature of the skip. I received skip on channel 8, 180-186 Mhz on several occasions.

Skip at low frequency channels, channel 2 or 3, at 54-60 Mhz or 60-66 Mhz respectively, was a rare event when I was young, thirty years ago, I might receive skip on these frequencies several times generally during afternoon late summer hours. It seems to have become more and more frequent over the years to the point where now in any two week period I can usually pick up something just listening sporadically.

Ionization seems to have increased gradually over the years on average and I am very interested in knowing the source. I have also noticed that while shortwave and low VHF propagation have improved over the years, absorption in the AM broadcast band (540 - 1700 Khz) as well as the low shortwave frequencies between the high end of the AM band and around 5 Mhz, seems to have increased.

Another area that seems to be related is auroras. I have lived in the Seattle area all of my life, first near Northgate, and then for the last 22 years in Shoreline, approximately 7 miles north of Northgate. When I was a kid, I used to sleep outside on the patio on clear summer days falling asleep under the stars. Never once did I see an auroral display in all of those years. I have now seem them five times and all within the last decade, and this during a time when I spend much less time outside under the sky.

With respect to Auroras, the last heavy duty solar cycle might explain those, but it does not adequately explain the changes to radio propagation even during solar minimums. I am convinced that either something in our Sun is changing significantly, or something in our own atmosphere.

The amount of carbon dioxide and methane in our atmosphere has been increasing as a result of human activities. The distribution of water vapor and ozone in the atmosphere is also affected by human activities. At 350 PPM or .035%, I would not expect carbon dioxide to significantly impact the ionosphere. Carbon dioxide is also heavy so I would expect it to make up an even smaller percentage of the ionosphere.

Then there is HAARP and other similar installations that intentionally heat a portion of the ionosphere, but these are tightly focused beams, so I would not expect widespread geographical changes, however, I have heard that there is now a system in place to destroy inbound warheads electronics by supercharging the ionosphere, so maybe the capabilities are greater than I know. However, this seems to be a gradual effect and HAARP at higher power is a relatively recent phenomena.

I wonder if all the space missions don't contribute somehow, the rocket exhaust, the re-entering of space debris, do they significantly alter the ionosphere on a large scale?

Then there is the general increased use of higher frequencies, more power in the microwave band. Could these be affecting overall ionization levels?

How about 50 and 60Hz radiation from long distance AC power transmission lines? We know these have some effect on the ionosphere and magnetosphere because whistlers often start at these frequencies (though they are most often triggered by lightning events).

And I know this may seem really far fetched, but could Gaia play a role? The reason that I asked this is that I've listened to a phenomena where a large audio frequency antenna is used to pick up signals from the Earth's magnetosphere. Here listen to this. Tell me that doesn't sound alive and organic to you.

Please, tell me if you've observed any related phenomena and what you think might be the cause.

KNDD 107.7 The End People

2007-07-28T20:44:00.000-07:00

I went down to the KNDD Beach House to see Silversun Pickups, however, only Brian Aubert showed up there. However, he did perform Well Thought Out Twinkle and Lazy Eyes solo on acoustic guitar which I video-recorded. The performance was excellent. Brian Aubert was on during DJ No-Name's show.

DJ No Name seems to prefer a low profile. He's seemed soft-spoken and takes things at a comfortable pace but also seems to prefer to hide most of his face with that baseball cap. He interacts well with guests on the air and seems to have a good, albeit at times dark, sense of humor.

DJ No Name

I hung around afterwards to meet the Church of Lazlo personalities, Lazlo, Afentra, Slim Fast, and Candice Derriere. Afentra wasn't there so I did not get to meet her. Lazlo strikes me as not unprofessional, but laid back. Like he's been doing radio so long he just has it totally handled and that well may be the case given his history. He came in just before his show started and then just kind of grabs a microphone and starts talking.

Lazlo

Slim Fast comes in a bit early and talks to people and gets things setup the way he wants before the show. He comes across as spontaneous on the air but he really seems to plan ahead and just makes it sound that way.

Slim Fast

Candice Derriere, their resident Drag Queen adds an element of high strangeness. Definitely the most visually interesting member of the church. Candice Derriere performs locally with a group called The Nutcrackers.

Candice Derriere

Click on any image to see a larger version. To see more photos of those that were present take a look at the KNDD page on my photo gallery. Unfortunately, there are no photographs of Afentra here because she was not present while I was there.

This group I think makes a great team. Lazlo seems to need to have a rapport with a present body. Slim Fast is a not uninteresting person. The two of them have a good rapport. Still, just the two of them might seem kind of mundane, nah, not really. Afentra adds a female perspective. Throw in Candice Derriere and you've got enough strange factor for all of them. It's a weird show but I think it works.

I will end this by saying if you have an interest in radio or just an interest in music, either way, a trip down to the KNDD Beach House on Alki is worth while. All of the KNDD staff I've met have been extremely personable people. They seem to have struck an ideal balance between professionalism and having fun.

The one thing I wish the folks at KNDD would do, is fix the audio on their website. The sound quality of their audio on the web sounds muddy and swishy. A nice streaming Ogg Vorbis feed would fix that.

Art Bell Gone - Alternate Venue?

2007-07-26T04:17:00.000-07:00

Experimental data that merely confirms theories are less than exciting. Completely random pseudoscience that has not even a shred of evidence is also useless. What is interesting is that which is right on the fringe. Data from well thought out and executed experiments that contradicts conventional scientific theories is where real advances in science come from.

The Art Bell show allowed everything from credentialed scientists to certifiable loonies on the air. By providing a relatively unfiltered medium, from time to time we did get to see truly interesting cutting edge stuff.

There are flaws not only with the execution of the scientific method but even with the method itself. Science wants phenomena to be reproducible on demand. Natural phenomena don't always lend themselves to this. Pretty much anything that doesn't is dismissed as pseudoscience.

Phenomena such as ball lightning, extraterrestrial visitations, psychic phenomena, all of these things are just dismissed out of hand by mainstream science. And that leaves many phenomena unexplained.

Art Bell provided a venue where these phenomena could be explored, I don't see anyone standing inline to take his place. The other hosts do not have enough of a grip on known science to try to extend that into the presently unknown.

KNND 107.7 The End Alki Beach House

2007-07-17T03:00:00.000-07:00

KNND 107.7 The End is broadcasting from an Alki Beach house through September 22, 2007. It's got a big deck where you can hang out and watch the show get done live as well as enjoy free drinks. They're also giving away free CD's and promotional material.

They don't have an enclosed studio at the beach house, just an open broadcast table. They use an ISDN line to get the program material from this remote studio to their main studio and actually broadcast the music portion of the program from the main studio doing only the announcing from this studio.

They are giving away free CD's and other promotional materials. The CD shown above, End Sessions Volume 4, is one worth having. These are recordings they've made in their own studios and the engineering is nothing short of excellent. Kick drums sound like kick drums not the mushed wumps, the cymbals sound like cymbals, the guitar is crystal clear with all the overtones present, in short music sounds like music. There are few recordings I can't find fault with but these are really good. If you can't make it down to the Beach house to pick up a copy, you can buy it online.

I want to stress that I have absolutely no affiliation with The End 107.7 or their parent company. I simply happen to like the station, most of the music they play, and have a past that involves the radio industry, engineering, and also doing sound reinforcement. I love good music, I know what it sounds like live, and when someone actually does a decent job of recording good music I want people to know it.

They have a version of Jet's "Are Ya Gonna Be My Girl" with an acoustic lead. It actually works rather well, and the overall recording is excellent. The performance is also very energized but then that's Jet.

Tegan and Sara do an exceptional performance of Walking With A Ghost, again the recording is excellent. I wish the record companies would take a hint and start kicking out recordings like these.

They are located right next to slices pizza, about a block south from the Pepperdock.

Kraig Kitchen Resigns

2007-07-11T23:27:00.000-07:00

Kraig Kitchin has announced his resignation as president of Premier Radio Networks. Kraig Kitchen was co-founder of Premier Radio and many of you have heard Art Bell talk about how much he helped Art through difficult times. This announcement was apparently made the same day Art Bell announced his retirement.

Art Bell's program became more slanted towards the right, misquotes of Iran's president were highly inflammatory and seemed geared towards trying to provoke a war. I wrote to him about this, about the quotes out of context, and how taken out of context they meant exactly the opposite of what they meant in context. To this I received no reply.

This article on Unknown Country, gives some insight with respect to the corporate culture at Clear Channel. It might give further insight as to the reason for Art Bell's resignation. It is clear that the company line stating that Art Bell resigned because he wanted to spend more time with family is just so much bovine excrement.

Kraig Kitchin has stated that his future projects will be much more tightly focused. I can't help but wonder if some future collaboration between Art Bell and Kraig Kitchin might be in the works? Perhaps one not so burdened with heavy handed control by Clear Channel? We can only speculate and hope.

Art Bell

2007-07-09T00:34:00.000-07:00

Someone left a comment that said,

" Want even more supposition re Art Bell's most recent retirement? Check out: http://hamfanz.blogspot.com/"

I'm not going to endorse the content at that link, or the links that you may follow from there because I have no way of knowing what is true. I will say that the history given in that link differs significantly from what is given in, "The Art of Talk", Art Bell's autobiography.

Art Bell Retired Again

2007-07-08T00:12:00.000-07:00

Art Bell retires from Coast-to-Coast AM again saying he wants to be able to spend more time with his new wife and daughter. Well, I guess doing a 4 hour show two days out of the week would take a lot of time away from family. I can't help but wonder if it has anything to do with the merger between Clear Channel and Mergerco.

I hope you will forgive my cynicism but I can't help but feel there are issues, other than those stated publicly, involved in both this retirement and previous retirements. That said I'd like to state a few of my beliefs and suspicions. These are nothing more than my beliefs and opinions. I'll make that clear from the onset in hopes it will dissuade Art Bell and Clear Channel from suing me.

First, a lot of people were critical of Art Bell remarrying only three months and a few days after Ramona's death. They have suggested that Art was "vulnerable", or that Airyn is a "mail order bride". I have even read one blog in which the poster suggested that he "disposed of Ramona and bought a new wife".

Art Bell lives in Pahrump, Nevada. Prostitution is legal in Nevada counties with low populations and I believe that includes Nye county. Art Bell has large amounts of money. If all he wanted was a hot Asian girl to bang he wouldn't have much difficulty obtaining same without the commitment that goes with marriage or the publicity.

Although it might seem disrespectful to many that he remarried so soon, it is a statistical fact that when men in a good marriage lose their spouse to death, they remarry substantially sooner on average than men who were in bad marriages.

Having listened to Art Bell over the years, having read his autobiography, and having seen many photos of him with Ramona, I do believe his love for her was very real and that their marriage was very good.

If he were going to mail order a bride, the Philippines wouldn't be the best option because divorce isn't even a legal option there. I don't know what the effect of a legal annulment in the United States would be in light of the fact that the marriage took place in the Philippines. Suffice it to say that he could have gone with some lower risk options.

He generally speaks glowingly of various network officers but I wonder if things are as rosy there as the picture he paints. If you look at the rest of Clear Channels hosts, Art Bell seems very out of place.

Prior to the Clear Channel takeover, Art Bell didn't use call screeners and did generally have interesting guests. Now calls are screened and the guests all seem to be selling something, usually pushing a new book. The commercial load seems up considerably. These don't impress me as things that Art Bell would not accept without some resistance but perhaps I am wrong.

During the last retirement, which was somewhat lengthy, one of the substitute hosts that got a long run was Mike Siegel, who I personally couldn't stand for a variety of reasons. Those of you who had heard Mike Siegel on KVI would know that prior to taking the position on Coast-to-Coast AM, he was a right wing political talk show host.

Ian Punnett, who will replace Art Bell on the weekends, seems to be largely apolitical, reasonably knowledgeable, and reasonably capable of handling callers in a civil and non-abrasive manner. However, for reasons I can't nail down, he never has impressed me as being as interesting as Art Bell.

Many years ago I heard rumors that Art Bell was connected with the DIA. Whether there was any truth to these rumors or not, I don't know. I have for many years had the sense that someone else was calling the shots.

I have found his position on various wars disturbing, justification for our continued presence in Iraq, or the continual push for war with Iran. To be specific about what I mean about Iran, he keeps pushing the line that the president of Iran wanted to "wipe Israel off the map", but neglected to mention that that quote was actually part of a speech in which he is quoting Khomeini and setting himself apart from Khomeini's policies, which means, taken in context he is saying exactly the opposite of what is being implied by the out of context quotes.

I have written to him on this topic and neither received any reply nor have I heard any on-air correction or attempt to place the quote in the proper context.

I find his penchant for revenge troubling. It's hard for me to believe that after all of the years of marriage to Ramona and his long time friendship with Evelyn Paglini, he would not understand karma and the connectedness of all things and why revenge is not such a good thing for the person seeking it.

Art Bell received some items that were allegedly recovered from the Roswell UFO crash. I am of the belief that the crash really occurred and that these parts wouldn't have been allowed to remain in civilian possession if they were genuine, and because of certain characteristics of the parts, I do believe they were genuine. All of this leads me to believe that Art Bell probably has some military intelligence ties.

So now that he's off the air again, I wonder what is up? What's getting ready to go down? The world has been strange lately.

There are some of my random thoughts. I don't know if I am pleased or disappointed that he retired again, but I am not surprised.