Checker Board Lounge

This show was on WBCQ for a while. They played some excellent, gritty blues. I absolutely loved their selections and was saddened when I found out it was not being continued and lived a far too short of a life. At least I got a QSL as a reminder and enjoyed some really good blues. i think there are archives of it on wbcq if I remember right.

Checker

Swedish QSL

This is a QSL I got frrom radio Sweden back in June of 2005. I always like their nautical themed QSLs.

Back in the Saddle

For the first time in a while, I had two full evenings of shortwave. It was almost entire WBCQ but it felt like visiting home. Listened to Bluegrass State of Mind, 867-5309, Allen Weiner Worldwide, Timtron and Marion's Attic. What a collection of good music, humor and generally weird stuff (not to forget the red stuff that Timtron drinks). I got a new shortwave that seams to be working out really good. I will give a review on it later. I am kinda proud of the fact that I have the scanner going on in the background. It has been too long since I have listened to that and storm season is warming up.There are things I need to learn to get more out of that unit.

I had to laugh when I canceled the satellite tv a month ago. The rep asked what were we going to do about tv, I felt like asking him if he knew about over the air tv and that there are other medias other than the one eyed mind sucking monster called tv. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy tv but it is no where near the only show in town. Between the internet, radio, and my mp3 player, plus all the other things both necessary and fun, i don't miss having the tv on most days. I still watch some but it is increasingly little.

Vatican Radio QSL

I thought it was weird how I started getting QSL's from Vatican Radio. I had noticed that some of the Voice of Russia transmissions I was getting were via the Vatican City transmitters so I thought to look up Vatican Radio's schedule to hear them since I was hearing their transmitters. Piece of cake and got this QSL and one other from them. Hopefully in a future post I will put up the other one.

The Shack has gone partially deaf

Carp! One of my shortwave receivers is down. Definitely a bummer and worse than being bogged by other priorities instead of listening in the shack. I will see what I can do to get back up and running.

C. Crane FM Transmitter

I don't know if this really belongs in this blog but it has to do with broadcast so I will throw it in. I got a C. Crane FM transmitter for Christmas. This weekend I got to field test it on a road trip to just south of Chicago, Illinois from just north of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I got some interesting results. First of all, overall, it worked really well. Second, I noticed that when I was going past semi trucks, I would get some interference. My guess is that it was from their satellite radio system but I could very much be wrong. The model I have has full spectrum broadcast sweep so that helped take out the interference. The only big downside was that when we got near enough to Chicago with all their station, it was hard to find a clear channel to listen on. Annoying and as disappointing as that is, it worked for most of the trip flawlessly. Not to disregard the weakness to much but I was not too upset by the way it functions. It is usually in the open areas and not the city centers where I would be using this the most with my mp3 player. In the population centers, I would be wanting to get the local radio more. Not perfect but at least for me, it works with how I want to use it.