rock95seven

As you may already know the history of my radio station from it’s humble beginnings as 97.7 the axe. rock 95.7 and rock 105.3 in London,Ky and eventually our new location at 102.7 Busy FM in Busy Kentucky. 

 

Busy Ky is located 5 miles north of Hazard Ky and is located inside a portion of the Daniel Boone National Forest park system though right were i live isn’t necessarily part of the park it is however the middle of the Appalachian mountains so it is breathtakingly beautiful here.

 

And yes plenty of wildlife and coal mining here. But there is more importanly a lot of rich culture as well, not rich as in rockafeller rich but more of a history sense of the word.
The television show The Dukes of Hazzard was based off of the city of Hazard,Ky but was filmed in Georgia and the name changed to Hazzard rather than Hazard.
That was due to some disagreement between the producers and the city.

 

At any rate i really like it here. 
Now as far as the radio dial goes, am and fm are well…dead..sort of.
There are only a tiny handful of stations here on both am and fm with one of those fm stations being a 100 KW blow’ torch of nonesense. A personal favorite of mine is WMMT 88.7 FM with many translators or relays nestled in valleys that would other wise have no local station to listen to because of the adverse terrain. They have a variety format with country, gospel, folk, bluegrass and my favorite Classic Rock. So they get a gold star in my book.

 

As for AM radio, distant signals are awesome here at night so dx’ing on AM is a must and very enjoyable. 

 

Busy FM is for the time being operating on a dipole antenna 8 feet off the ground with very poor coverage, well my road has great coverage but then there are mountains on each side and only  6 houses on this road. Most of my fm signal is going out to the bears, squirrels rocks,trees and hillbillies lol 

So my plan is to go AM and install either carrier current or a procaster ground mounted with radials. FM just won’t make any difference here even if i pushed the limits slightly past part 15. 

 

Right now Busy FM is running on from an HP Desktop computer running zararadio and the built in processor connected into a Ramsey FM 25B and a simple wire dipole antenna.

Here is a video of the station in action playing the LPH #80.

I will try to keep everyone in the loop here as time permits, currently we are having trouble with the phone company who is offering no immediate solution to our DSL problems so i am lucky i am able to post this here let alone upload a video to youtube. 

Enjoy

http://youtu.be/ol2bu_DoIoI

Barry at Busy FM
Busy Ky USA

Commission Adopts NPRM to Revitalize AM Broadcast Radio Service

Link to FCC website

A holler for those not in the know, is a valley in the country usually surrounded by hills or even mountains. And is what most people in the south call a valley. With that being said, i have moved to a holler. I am surrounded by hills here. The road to my house is for the most part a one lane road. Some cars can pass each other without too much trouble and if you know the person drinks coffee perhaps close enough to pass them a coffee or a high five. 

Some places you just pull off to the shoulder and let them pass, if there is a shoulder lol. 
I drive a Jeep with 4 Wheel Drive so most of the time it is no trouble for me.

Any way i have been testing the new frequency on 102.7 Mhz in both stereo and mono. 
The dipole is 15 feet off of the ground but the signal follows the road in both directions before it is absorbed by rocks and trees on either side of the road. 

I already had a suspicion that FM would not work here, the signal is confined to the 5 houses on my road and possibly more on top of a couple ridges. 

So since FM is already limited to 250 -300 feet and i don’t want to press my luck by raising my antenna up on a tower or hehe the top of a ridge then would AM really make any difference in the valley er i mean holler?

Would i really benefit from buying a professional grade  transmitter like the procaster or the Talking House and External ATU? I finally have a place to bury ground radials which is something i couldnt do at the mobile home park. Would the rock and trees around me just suck up or reflect the AM signal?

I want to thank Bob of MRAM 1500 Am for providing the download of ZaraRadio v 1.4.4 on his stations website. 

We have finally moved into a house further south into a small town called Busy,Ky just outside of Hazard,Ky. As soon as we were nearly settled into our new place i started on rebuilding my part 15 fm and am station. But one important component was missing, Zararadio. 

Prior to making the move south, i had re installed Windows 7 on the station computer but failed to save a copy of Zararadio software. So today i thought about going to the official website and downloading the latest version but remembered i really didn’t like that version very well.

As i was on my netbook (not the station computer) i noticed the  bookmark for MRAM 1500 website. A-HA! I know Bob offered both versions of the software and i immediately downloaded it to a zip drive. So i want to Thank You Bob of MRAM 1500 AM for offering the download.

You saved the day without even knowing it. 
By the way, there is only a small handful of stations in the part of Ky so there are ton of empty channels to choose from. I chose 102.7 fm since there are vacant channels on both sides of my chosen frequecny. Next project is to get a usable signal on AM since FM in this valley is going to be difficult. 

Busy-102.7 FM
Busy, Ky

Here is a good idea of what goes into building a large AM Antenna and grounding system.
This article was posted in the I Take Pictures of Transmitter Sites group on Facebook and I immediatley thought it would be worth sharing with you all here.
Enjoy.

http://www.amgroundsystems.com/krld.htm

Sometimes we make predictions during converstation to look smart, or perhaps just to best the other guy out of our own stubborn pride. Some predictions are just sloppy guess-timations or said Tongue In Cheek.  That is human nature. 

But what about those preminissions that we hold on to because we are sure that one day the cosmos will smile down on us and friends will say “Hey Bud, you were right!”

One day, well 2 years ago to be exact i made a prediction that some countries would slowly phase out radio services that are not mainstream and/or are no longer cost effective to operate such as Shortwave, Longwave and dare i say Mediumwave.

I said that those stations would be shut down (decommissioned) due to budgets cuts and the ever so attractive DAB services that so many AM and LW stations have already succombed to.  My opinion about my own prediction was actually negative. 
It was one of those things said that we regret saying because the impact from saying such things was a bit hard to chew but never the less it was already said.

I had read scattered news blurbs about Canadian and European stations making the switch to FM from AM, LW and Shortwave but now after reading the following article it seems to confirm my assumptions that these once majestic services are quickly dieing in favor of cheaper broadcast services such as DAB.

http://radiomagonline.com/digital_radio/german_public_broadcasters_plan_lw_and_mw_shutdowns_0708/

 

While DAB has a much better sound and much less interference than the American counterpart IBLEC (IBOC) the power level is much smaller thus the audience will be directly inside of that stations conturs. Sure the power needed to operate a digital radio service is much much smaller than that of a 100 KW AM the audience must be within 20 miles or so of that digital signal. What about those living out in the middle of nowhere that relied on those services to bring them the latest news and great hits?

I can hear it now, “Mum, i’ll be taking the motorcar into the village to listen to a bit of radio” I just don’t see how that will be helpful to those on the outskirts of town, i suspect they will throw their radio into a closet or build their own station wether it is legal or not. 

Many shortwave stations are leaving the airwaves, WHRI – World Harvest Radio, RCI – Radio Canada International  just to name a couple. 

The next generation won’t even know what it was. Well come to think of it , neither does this generation for that matter. Long standing legacy stations are going dark as the cost of operating these iconic flamethrowers is just not profitable anymore.

Let’s just hope something good will come out of the unused spectrum in the future.