Auds'n'Ends: 7/8/14

Auds'n'Ends: 7/8/14

I guess it's no surprise that being interested in radio and radio propagation, I would also be fascinated with website propagation. Marketing people would just call this demographics, but I how many marketers have an interest in shortwave.

I understand why people from North America or western Europe stumble across my site; the majority of pirates and pirate radio DXers are located in these regions. But sometimes I'll notice a flair up of activity some week from a particular country and I wonder what's going on. One week, I might get a huge surge of activity from Poland and I'm wondering if someone is really reading pages? Or are they skimming through pages, saying "No, that's not it, no, not here, either." Or maybe it's just spammers, looking for pirate e-mail addresses where they can send ads for "Genu!ne R01ex Repr0duction$," "generic Cialis," or "discount Photoshop downloads."

With that in mind, I welcome the large numbers of people from Turkey, China, and Russia, who have been checking the site over the past week. I hope that you have an interest in radio or grow to have an appreciation of the subject.

* For those who are interested in my talk on pirate radio at the Hope X conference, I have word that it will be on Friday, July 18 at 1 pm in the Frank Olsen room on the 18th floor of the Hotel Pennsylvania.

* I have no idea how to present at a conference. In the past, I've tried just winging it, but I've found that this technique leads to very uncomfortable moments that I spend years trying to forget. So, this year, I've been writing everything down. Once I get everything written that I feel is necessary, I'll try a dry run, talking & running audio clips. From, there, I'll try trimming it down to the required length. That said, last night I lost the first two pages that I'd written. After 90 minutes of looking and wondering how I could've lost them, I tracked them down and breathed a sigh of relief. We'll see if I can manage to finish the presentation and manage to not lose it on my way to NYC.

The top's been finished, but I still have a long way to go

* I've done a little more work on the Philco 87 receiver that I've been slowly, slowly restoring. I've been sanding it on my porch. This week, I've been working on its legs and I tested lacquer toner on one. Not perfect, but I think it looks decent. I'm hoping to have more updates later in the week, but if you're checking, the thread is here.

* The OTR unid on 6770 kHz seems to go off the air about once every week or two. It seems to be off the air again as I type this. I notice that since the last time that it went off the air, it seems to have a weaker signal and also weaker audio. Yesterday & the day before, there seemed to be times when there was no audio, just a dead carrier. I'm hoping that it will be back soon and with a good signal again.

* I'm a bit frustrated with my Goldentone radio project. Hmm...not sure where the link for it is. Eventually, I'll get back to it in one way or another

* Undercover Radio was featured in a general pirate radio article in Radio World on July 3, as noted by Al Fansome on HFU. The focus in on Dr. Benway's t-shirt sale and the donation he's making to the Wounded Warriors project. Good stuff all around.

* A guy is suing ESPN for $10 million for showing him on TV while he was sleeping at a Yankees-Red Sox game. Seems to me that the fear of lawsuits is one thing that has made U.S. broadcasting really boring. In an era when it seems that everyone is offended by something, it takes a special type of bland programming to not offend anyone. I'm neither a judge nor do I have any experience in law studies, but I would assume that a lawsuit would be considered to have more merit if the names of the defendants were spelled correctly. (It's "Kruk," not "Kruck")

* I haven't heard Horizon FM from the Canary Islands recently, so I'm not sure if it's still active on shortwave, but the broadcasts are still listed on their website. Hope it will return again soon!

* I want to do more than just type Auds'n'Ends today, so I'll close for now. It's time for a radio-related song for this edition. We've been getting a lot of hits on the site from around the world (as mentioned earlier), so I'll pick a favorite of North American pirates over about the past decade: Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo.