Carl Blare

Most people who stay with a website like part15.us are creative people who want to build, invent, discover, improve their surroundings, and bring the general universe into general compliance with the inner on.

A radio station starts from below the ground and builds upward and outward, connecting to the world in terms of inches and feet.

Once the station exists some thought goes into improving it, through programming and technology.

Soon we gather here at the website to share experience and learn what others have accomplished. This desire for advancement through cooperation lead to the organizing of the ALPB (Association of Low Power Broadcasters) which has already matured to the point of looking beyond National part 15 and wondering about international low power.

Those stations who stream on the web have already been speaking to an international audience without every knowing how many countries there are.

At the recent ALPB Meeting we were reminded that all too many locations still suffer from limited bandwidth availability, while those stations fortunate enough to enjoy high speed connections tend to stream at extra high bit rates.

Problem is that many would-be listeners can’t maintain solid connection, which may very well explain why the streaming server at our station shows listeners who connect for 10-seconds and are gone. On the one hand we think maybe they made a hasty judgement against what they heard, but just as likely they heard a choppy audio stream and gave up.

With that in mind, we have today opened a second stream running 16-kilobytes-per-second, 11.025kHz sampling rate, good even for dial-up listeners.

Our regular stream, having been set at a compromise of 24kbps, 22.05kHz, really a little too high for dial-up, but which provides the quality of the best AM radio, have today been upscaled to 48kbps, 44.1kHz, an FM sound.

What station improvements have you made, or, are planning to make?

I found a novel gooseneck lamp at the hardware store that clamps on an edge and contains 24 Light Emitting Diodes in what resembles a stainless steel shower head.

I found a novel gooseneck lamp at the hardware store that clamps on an edge and contains 24 Light Emitting Diodes in what resembles a stainless steel shower head.

It provides very great light, but after a minute or so starts flickering like a fireplace and might cause someone to have an epileptic seizure.

Of course if I return it there could be an exchange or a refund, but I looked inside and got interested in possibly fixing it myself.

There is a wall wart power transformer at the end of the cable, and the power is distributed to the lights via about four tiny surface contact resistors, unless they’re capacitors…. I haven’t yet drawn the circuit, but I thought I spotted some cold solder points and after touching them up expected it to be fixed, but it flickered like a gambling table in Las Vegas.

What should I try?

Many part 15 broadcasters run their radio station audio from a computer. Everything is fine until the computer fails. But the part 15 transmitter will continue working just fine. Radio is a stable technology, the computer is not.

Things become even shakier when streaming on the web. All kinds of failures are possible, and they always seem to happen, sooner or later.

Back when there was a chance that I might provide streaming services for a former client of my audio video business, I was just learning about streaming and the internet, and I soon realized that I could not guarantee a reliable service, that I was at the disposal of unknown break-downs of many kinds, beginning with the inconsistent DSL service I was getting at the time. I was actually relieved when that client decided to part company, leaving me off the hook.

This week is trouble week with our stream and our e-mail. The stream loses touch with Shoutcast every 15-minutes and then reconnects.

The e-mail will not allow sending messages, but does receive them.

But it’s all a hobby pastime, so I am not driven to stay up all night trying to fix something. It may get fixed this week, maybe next week, let’s go to lunch.

Low Power Hour 51 welcomes many celebrity guests talking about how part 15 low power radio has improved their lives, including health and financial benefits.

Low Power Hour 51 welcomes many celebrity guests talking about how part 15 low power radio has improved their lives, including health and financial benefits.

Low Power In the News Report – Carl’s hand shovel found, light bulb heard at 400kHz, Ken Norris Friday Harbor Radio.

A 1-man baseball team announces and listens to his games with part 15.

Part 2 (of 3) Panel On Policies for Advancing Independent Media – Free Press.

Episode 3 The Funny Side of Bonnie and Clyde.

http://www.kdxradio.com/lph.html

There seem to be two realities with regard to shortwave, and they both exist at the same time.

There seem to be two realities with regard to shortwave, and they both exist at the same time.

In reality Number 1 shortwave stations are abandoning their long years of service and shutting down, believing that internet presence is the new medium.

In reality Number 2 the apparent availability and sale of shortwave radios seems to be at an all-time high and growing, a fact that I noticed by recently shopping for a good portable.

With the spectrum analyzer, a device that allows viewing large amounts of radio spectrum on a screen, I have been scanning and observing the shortwave neighborhood from 1800kHz up to 30mHz, and see mostly vacant territory, seen from here in the center of north america, with small clusters of stations around certain frequencies.

Now would be a good time to revise the FCC rules giving part 15 operators a greater place in the renovation of shortwave. All those new radios need stations for their dials.

Let me say up front that this blog is not an editorial position but only a discussion of the very interesting subject of the FCC’s jurisdiction. The subject came to attention by way of a news report this morning on “Between the Lines”, a national journalism program on current issues.

There is a move to prompt the FCC to issue a notice of proposed rule making in the interest of placing a cap on the amount charged by phone companies for service within penal institutions which presently are very expensive for inmates and their families. But here’s the part that stands out: because the FCC is a Federal agency, they only have jurisdiction over phone calling that crosses state lines and cannot impose rules on phone calls within states.

Hearing that brought to mind the defense being used in Austin, Texas, by unlicensed 90.1, which covers half the city, in their on-going court case claiming the FCC has no jurisdiction over their transmitter because the signal does not cross state lines.

That made me remember the largely redacted guide book obtained by kc8gpd under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Whatever was redacted is something we are not being allowed to know, and perhaps that includes the truth that the FCC has no jurisdiction over radio signals contained within a single state.

For broadcasting I can appreciate why the subject of jurisdiction would be carefully concealed, because there would be an outbreak of unlicensed signals popping on the air in every state, and each state would need to have a “State Communications Commission” with whole sets of rules in order to preserve order.

But for a few part 15ers “in the know”, it might be some comfort to know that hair-splitting rules may not apply to coverage within the state.