Watching a tower drop from a different perspective:
Looks like a World Tower Utility 80.
Category: General
Brother, could you help a pirate out?
It is not news that the FCC has its hands full with the FM pirates in the NYC area, particularly Brooklyn. On any given night, as many as thirty unlicensed signals can be heard, jammed between the commercial and non-commercial broadcasters in the FM band.
I am quite sure that other parts of the country have similar pirate problems. I do not see the FCC getting much more funding for enforcement purposes.
John Anderson asks; perhaps a pragmatic approach?
For most engineers, this will be a non-starter. Engineers (and other technical people) tend to see things in binary; on/off, right/wrong, black/white, legal/illegal, working/broken, etc. It is the nature of logic and dealing everyday operating status’ of technical equipment. A transmitter that is halfway working is broken. There is very little grey area in the interpretation of these things, nor is there very much human element. One cannot reason with a broken piece of equipment; it is to be either repaired or replaced.
Helping a person engaged in what is ostensibly an illegal activity, no matter how pragmatic such help might be, or how just or helpful the illegal activity may be to the community, would not be something that most radio engineers that I know would want to take part in.
Truth be told, some good might come from helping pirate broadcasters clean up their act. Over modulation, spurious emissions, and poor quality transmitters all create bigger problems for everyone else. The moral dilemma is what type of help to offer and can this or any technical advice then be used to make bigger and better pirates.
I don’t know, but it may be time to start thinking about things like this…
Well, crap
Radio Shack (AKA, RadioShack, The Shack, Tandy Corporation, Realistic, Optimus, etc) appears to be filing for Bankruptcy if the Wall Street Journal and Reuters is to be believed. I see the words “private equity firm” in the article, that does not bode well.
Radio Shack of late has become a glorified cell phone store. It used to be one could get some emergency repair parts, an FM antenna, or a CB radio as the need arose. As a young lad, it was fun to poke around and look at the various radio kits and other assorted fun things. My first shortwave radio was a kit from Radio Shack; assembly finished just in time to hear the Vatican Radio’s announcement that Pope Paul IV had died.
What happened to Radio Shack is fairly typical; what was once a niche market for hobbyists and experimenters tried to go mainstream and lost their core customers. There are still plenty of electronics hobbyists out there, look at the Amateur Radio community as an example. Yet, that market was abandoned for the more lucrative general consumer electronics market. Unfortunately, Radio Shack never produced high-quality stuff, so their reputation in the consumer electronics market was not that great. Thus, not being known for anything, they slowly slipped into irrelevance.
Friday Funnies; malaise edition
Remember when there was an actual competition between radio stations for the coveted #1 bragging rights? That was way back in the day when talented air persons were sought and compensated for their performances.
These days, when thinking about certain owners and their money men, a certain Fat Boy Slim album cover comes to mind:
Ahhh, the 90’s, I never thought I’d miss you.