Goodbye NPR

I've commented on NPR before and now they've stepped over the line with the firing of Juan Williams who simply expressed his feelings in a discussion on Muslims. America does not need NPR any longer and it certainly should not be funded with tax dollars. It has gone too far to the left, it has become a George Soros machine and a Barack Obama puppet. I've said it before...there's absolutely nothing public about "public radio", they do little or nothing for their local communities. Good riddance. By the way...Muslims on airplanes scare me, too! Why wouldn't they after 9/11?? If Norwegians had blown up the World Trade Center they'd scare me too, but they didn't...radical Muslims did.

The Shack???

Not only has NPR decided to shed their affiliation with Radio...now Radio Shack wants to be known as "The Shack". Give me a frickin' break. I don't even know what to say about this one. I sell on ebay as "radioguy12"....I'm thinking about changing my name to "guy12".

Good Riddance to NPR

NPR has decided to separate itself from the rest of the radio world. The powers- that-be have asked the staff to refrain from saying "National Public Radio"...and just go by NPR! They've never been much of an asset to radio anyway. They claim to be "local" but I've never heard a lost dog or funeral notice on an NPR station.

Since they aren't a radio operation anymore, I assume the government can quit giving them funding?

NPR is ashamed to be part of radio....we should all be ashamed of NPR.

I'm Back!

Sorry for the lack of posts recently, I'll try to make this a more regular thing! Perhaps you caught my letter to the editor in the recent issue of Radio World where I thanked Bernie Wise of Energy Onix for continuing his battle against HD Radio and Ibiquity. If I can find it in my computer I'll post it on my blog in the near future.
All is well in radioland with the exception of our central air conditioner here at Q-92 radio...it quit working last Friday (which was the start of the hottest weekend of the year!). If it ain't one thing...it's another! Please keep checking back with the Small Market Radio Pro...thanks for reading my ramblings.

Snowshoes!

I'll have to admit that I'd rather do repair work at my transmitter site on a sunny day in July...but when you live in Minnesota things don't always work out that way. The transmitter power was dropping, I knew there was no way I was going to nurse that final tube along for the entire winter...it had to be changed. Furthermore, a tuning problem which couldn't be corrected by remote control was resulting in some undesireable spurious radiation. The transmitter and tower sit in a flat farm field which is completely exposed to those strong northwest Minnesota winds.

It was January and we had recently had a couple of snowstorms, each resulting in another half foot of snow along with those strong winds. The drifts at the transmitter site were huge and there was no way one could walk across the field between the road the transmitter without sinking into crotch-deep snow which makes walking difficult. My partner, the outdoorsman, suggested we use some snowshoes which he happened to have in his possession. I had never tried 'em before but last winter I tried walking there without them and I thought I was going to perish about half way across the field. We put them on and away we went...it's actually fun when you get the hang of it...and some great exercise.

Upon arriving at the transmitter there was some shoveling to be done..not only outside the building but also inside the building where a small drift had formed in the interior northwest corner...fortunately away from anything electronic. Minnesota snow seems to sneak into buildings no matter how hard you try to seal up the structure!

The snow was removed, the tube was changed, a couple of blocking capacitors were replaced to be on the safe side, the transmitter was re-tuned and all was well with the world again. We put the snowshoes back on and went home...you might know my partner took a little video of my first snowshoe experience!

Incidentally, I had the good sense to leave a complete set of tools at the transmitter building at all times which turned out to be a great idea. Lugging a toolbox over deep snow is not much fun either...with or without snowshoes.

An excellent alternative form of transporation would be a snowmobile but we didn't happen to have one available. Maybe it would be a good investment.