[Kzyxtalk] Toying with the ether. An equipment check.

[nsi at mcn.org]

Love you pieces of memoir, Marco. Whoever is in charge of programming
these days right now needs to put this voice on KZYX.  Or are you so
terrified of talent. --beth bosk

On Wed, 17 Aug 2016 05:56:41 -0700, Marco McClean <memo at mcn.org> wrote:
> KNYO is set up in such a way that I can just check the schedule so I 
> don't screw anyone else up, and get on the air and play with the 
> transmitter and test things in the middle of the night, and I did that a

> little earlier tonight (3 to 3:30am).
> 
> This sort of thing always reminds me of the middle 1980s when I was 
> building transmitters in the kitchen, in Caspar. I'd turn on a 
> transmitter that was a pile of parts a few hours before and put a stack 
> of records on the changer and wander up the street in the fog with a 
> pocket radio to see how far it went. We were close to the sea cliffs, 
> across the cow field. Salt spray in the air. When the air was right the 
> power wires would arc over the insulators to the wood of the telephone 
> poles and gently snap and flash. Caspar is the only place I ever noticed

> that happening... Wait, no, that’s not right; I remember seeing that in 
> San Francisco this last winter. Ward and Amy took us to a Thai 
> restaurant, and it was raining like crazy off and on, and wires were 
> arcing on several poles in the quiet between downpours.
> 
> In the middle-late 1980s I was teaching at the Whale School in Albion, 
> among other things, doing radio drama over the phone from the Whale 
> School live on KKUP in Cupertino, making little Tesla coils with the 
> kids. I remember how magical it felt when Juanita and I would sit on the

> floor in the kitchen in our first place together, with the lamp off, 
> playing with long streams of sparks from one of these homemade toys and,

> when our eyes had adjusted, admiring the little clouds of blue corona 
> discharge around the corners of the woodstove and on everything else 
> metal nearby. I still associate that calm, numinous, comforting 
> /scientific/ feeling with the smell of ozone. And it's still a kind of 
> magical experience turning something on that you’ve made with your 
> hands, even though it's just familiar computers and the web anymore (on 
> this end, anyway). And I got email from people who were listening, so,
> good.
> 
> Here's the recording of the short impromptu set of test music, ready to 
> download. There's a little triumphant-sounding swearing in it; I'm just 
> saying, in case that bugs you.
> 
> http://tinyurl.com/KNYO-aircheck-2016-08-17
> 
> (If your email program doesn't show that as a clickable link, you can 
> copy and paste it into your browser.)
> 
> 
> --
> Marco McClean
> memo at mcn.org
> http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com
> 
> 
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