Don't touch that dial!

[Wild Root]

:rage: That's what I though! I wish it was different my friend. My Grandfather started a small radio station in Southern Utah in 1937 with a friend. They built their own transmitter and started to broadcast! The station is still around in southern Utah even today! I'm not sure on the call letters but from what I was told it's still there.

Back in radios golden day, it was easier to start a station. The air was still free! It's sad that if there was any one today who wanted to start a station of their own like my Grandfather did back then it couldn't happen!

Every thing was new back then and laws and rules weren't placed upon air or radio waves till later.

I don't consider the great Jazz or swing from the 20's to the 40's to be old folk’s music. I place it right next to Classical in my book. There are plenty of young people who play and listen to Classical. You made a very good point and it's about time some one did. Just because it was recorded in the 20th Century don't mean it can't be called classic. To us Americans it is our form of Classical music. All the greats of the Classical movement lived in Europe.
Jazz and swing is America’s true original musical art form. I remember just about 11 years ago that KPCC in Pasadena played 6 hours of music from the 20's to the 50's every day Monday through Friday and it was grand! I used to sit at the radio and record every thing onto a tape. They called that program Classic American Music and they told the listeners why.

Well, as long as there are people like us that love real good music, it will never die. It stands a chance to make a come back and soon.

Keep it up my friend! Keep the music alive!

Root.

 

[wackyvorlon]

Back in radios golden day, it was easier to start a station. The air was still free! It's sad that if there was any one today who wanted to start a station of their own like my Grandfather did back then it couldn't happen!

Root.

It's harder to start a station in the US than in canada. In Canada, it's possible to start up a small station of 20 watts, with the license costing less then $10k. In the US, there is no such provision for low-power stations. There is a 1kW minimum, and the license itself averages $500k. That's not counting the cost of hiring an engineer and doing a frequency survey, which you still need.

 

[Wild Root]

Boy, Canada! There was a station that I heard up there in Saskatoon SK that played good music from the 40's and played radio shows from 9 to 10. That was a fun station. Canada is full of great little stations because of that reason you mentioned. Also there are alot of older people that I have met when I lived up there. For some reason, Canada is more old fashioned in many ways. More so in smaller towns. I love the north and the people I met wile I lived up there for a few years.

Root.

 

[gandydancer]

As far as I know it is still legal to set up a station of less that 0.100 watts in the US without any license at all. There use to be quite a few outlaw stations around in the 5-100 watt range. Many of them in vans so they could move about and have less chance of being knocked off by the FCC. How ever most of the outlaw stations had a decidedly anti-establishment flavor to them. If you were just playing nice music, and not stomping upon a local stations music you probably could get away with it for a long time and not have to worry much about anything more than a cease and desist order. Or you could put up a webstation.

OTOH you could buy up CKLW in Windsor, Ont. or one of the Mexican clear channel AM stations and punch out 100,000+ watts around the world. You do have a spare 100 million in change laying around, don't you?

 

[Chad Sanborn]

Thanks Dismuke for sharing the link to your station. I tuned in and was treated to "Eugen Wolff Mit Seinem Orchester - So Tanz Masn In Polen [2:29] - Swinging Ballroom Berlin".
Followed by "Ben Selvin - 'Tain't No Sin [3:11] - The Columbia House Bands Volume 2"

Great music.

Chad

 

[Slate Shannon]

I know this is reviving an old thread, but I couldn't resist. Those old radio programs are great. I enjoy them almost as much as the old movies, and have several different ones on cassette tapes - suspense, comedies, drama, etc. My favorite ones, by far, are The Shadow episodes and I have them with different actors doing the voice.

I also have this neat set of cassettes that I bought many years ago, called America Before TV. It's the complete broadcast day for WJSV in Washington, D.C., from sign on to sign off, on September 21, 1939. It starts at 7:30 A.M. with Arthur Godfrey's show, and has music, soap operas, news, game shows, comedies, commercials, an address to Congress by President Roosevelt, part of a baseball game between the Cleveland Indians and the Washington Senators, and the last program of the evening is the Bob Chester Orchestra program, which starts at 12:30 A.M. Most of the news bulletins concern the early days of the war in Europe. There is a morning game show, where the winner gets $1. And an evening game show, where the winner gets $25. A pretty interesting glimpse into that era.

 

[Wild Root]

This would make a good wallpaper to have wile listening to internet radio.

The colored black dial to my 1936 Grunow All Wave!

WR.

 

[scotrace]

Except for the reflection of your big ballcappy noggin in the glass.

 

[Wild Root]

Not wearing a ball cap sir, it's a vintage 8 piece.

Yeah, show me a way to take a close up with out getting a reflection and I'll be happy to do it

WR.

 

[The Wolf]

Slate mentions a good radio cassette tape set

An interesting part of the full day of radio programming from 1939 is a show that talks about George Washington Carver and has an interview with him!
The last tape also has some early Louis Prima.
I have bought quite a few radio shows in my time and now everything is going CD. My cassettes are next to my VHS which are next to my LPs and 78s.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[Absinthe_1900]

Yeah, that's nice but.... I don't know anything about building a transmitter. Tips on where to buy one?

Root.

I have a single tube transmitter which I bought already built from my local Antique radio shop. (I believe mine is a variation of the Lil'-7)

Some are kits, some are prebuilt Try these links:

http://antiqueradio.org/transmitter.htm

http://www.oldtimeradioprograms.com/transmitters/am3000.html

http://www.vectronics.com/products.php?prodid=VEC-1290K

http://www.hobbytron.com/R-AM-1.html

http://www.ontheair3.com/

 

[Cousin Hepcat]

Tips on broadcasters

Yeah, that's nice but.... I don't know anything about building a transmitter. Tips on where to buy one?

Root.

Got a house-wide AM broadcast station running off a kit broadcasting 24-hour MP3 CD's with the collection of 78s and reissues digitized so far(complete with the occasional live half-hour Benny Goodman 30's broadcast with those longwinded "Camel Cigarettes will give you the lift you need!" commercials!

I tried several kits before getting one that worked.

My 2 cents:

DONT GET the $30-50 deals! They just didn't do the trick at all at least not for me. tried two . They "Ramsey" brand ones at stores like hobbytron. They drift too much. Gotta chase them around on the radio dial. No deal; the whole reason I for one got this was I move all around the house room to room sometimes, and want some kind of music distribution system (so won't need a CD player in evey room); AM seemed like a logical choice.

I got the $100-$150- or so (I forget) microprocessor-regulated am transmitter from "sstran": GREAT! Downside: They won't assemble it for you! Its got a Ton of parts to assemble tiny soldering connections including IC socket pins. My advice, get one of these kits (BE SURE ITS THE VERSION where the one really microscopic IC is pre-soldered for you!), & get a trusted person who workes on your old radios to assemble it if you dont want to mess with it.

http://sstran.com/

But its Great. So much better all around than the cheaper's: range, stability, tone quality & no audio distortion at all, and it even has built-in "acoustic compression" like the real radio stations that you can infinitely control with a knob. Even has 2 inputs which it can mix, if you want to do a "live DJ" hour program for folks within 1/4-mile range. Also the manual has a web address for instructions on how to build an outdoor coil-loaded aerial antenna for further range, if you live in a town where others would enjoy your stuff and where there's an unused gap somewhere on the AM dial.

You just gotta watch out for Wireless Routers in your neighborhood. They can be a real nusance for weaker AM radio signals like from a home broadcaster, but you can work around them by moving radios to different locations in your home. There are websites with "mods" that allow you to surpass the FCC-allowed power rating for unregistered broadcasters, but who needs black helicopters...

but then again, if the FCC doesn't care if routers trample AM radio signals, and if the routers are designed so that if part of the band is overpowered by AM radio then that band is ignored by the routers, then who cares if you bump it up a little, you're just trying to get the signal to cover your Own House!

THE BATTLE IS ON! We're not lettin' go of AM without a fight! :rage: