Changes afoot!

a·foot

əˈfo͝ot/
adverb & adjective

1. in preparation or progress; happening or beginning to happen.

As an esteemed reader of the Round Up Newsletter, you get the scoop early! Other than the usual revolving door of 95 programmers, and the daily administrative and management task of running KWMR, we have been cooking up some changes in Studio A; the broadcast studio here at KWMR.

In September we were able to procure, at a very competitive price, a new broadcast console. It is a solid, well-made unit, that looks eerily like the one we already have – always a plus when making a technology transition.

“Why do this?” This is a good question. I’m not one to generally stroll around looking for additional projects – I have plenty going on. Our current console came to KWMR used in the 1990s and was manufactured in the 1980s. It has been in use since before 2001, but for practical purposes, we estimate that this board has been programmer-run for approximately 66,430 hours, or 2768 days (and this is a low-ball estimate). Replacement parts are no longer easily available. This is how we do what we do – broadcast to YOU – it needs to be reliable, and to work!

So come the end of this month, KWMR will go to full automation (no live programmers) for three days to install the new broadcast console. This will be happening on Monday – Wednesday, January 29,30 & 31. This is all very exciting for us here at KWMR, and at the same time, a bit daunting. The idea of training all of our programmers on a new system keeps me up at night, but I have faith that we can do this! And taking everything out of the studio and putting it all back…also daunting, thankfully we have a stellar crew!

The new cables are being made, and we have poured over the diagrams to make this transition smooth and successful and to retain our current functionality, and ad a few bells and whistles to bring us into the present. The programmers are pretty pleased about this. I would like to thank the West Marin Fund for funding part of this project with the last round of community grants. Another grant from the County of Marin Emergency Preparedness Fund has also been granted. If you would like to contribute directly to this project, please contact me directly via email. This upgrade will take KWMR well into the future!

Thank you to those of you who requested bumper stickers! We’ll get those out this week. And for those of you who guessed at what Richard Dillman’s license plate means, we got 4 guesses, and one was correct. Congratulations Tom Yarish – we’ll be sending you one of the groovy new stickers!

Answer:
160HA1A–
Bandwidth: 160. Hz
Modulation Type: [A] AM (Amplitude Modulation), double sideband, full carrier
Modulation Nature: [1] Digital, on-off or quantized, no modulation
Information Type: [A] Aural telegraphy, for people (Morse code)
Modulation Type Notes: A1A Signalling by keying the carrier directly, a.k.a. Continuous Wave (CW) or On-Off Keying (OOK), currently used in amateur radio. This is often but not necessarily Morse code.

So there you have it!
Amanda Eichstaedt
Station Manager and Executive Director