New AM & FM Stations Sign On

The AM carries weather updates 24/7 on 1610AM, while the FM on 104.7 carries Christmas Music and Old Time Radio until the 26th of December. The part 15 stations serve a small neighborhood that has limited radio service.

6 year old Brian, at the controls of his new radio station

Rebuilding Transmitters & Antennas

We spent the weekend rebuilding a transmitter and cable assemblies. With the wind blowing endlessly around here; antennas and cables take a real beating. The areas around the fittings, receive the greatest abuse; so fittings were replaced first.

Murphy's law was definitely in effect this weekend: For the maintenance project; it was necessary to switch to our auxiliary transmitter and antenna. What should have been a quick switchover; took well over two hours. You name, and it failed! cables assemblies, SWR meter, antenna; you would never know we just tested it the week before.

Two weeks ago our original main transmitter failed after four and half years of service. Nothing major; just the RF final transistor opening up! It was at that time our auxiliary transmitter was placed into service; so we know it was working before a spare transmitter was assigned to main service; and the auxiliary transmitter was returned to standby service.

Another change was made: Since 90 percent of the programming is News-Talk; it was decided to drop the stereo signal. The advantage to dropping the stereo signal is improved coverage and less noise.

Radio Brandy staff

Summer May Be Canceled In High Desert

It's June here in the High Desert, while normal temps should be in the high 90's during the day; the temps have been in the 60's with strong winds blowing nearly everyday since the first of June. Even our Arizona location has been below average, with temps in the mid 90's. Normal for this time of the year is 118 plus.


So much for global warming!


Staff
Radio Brandy

Radio Brandy Adds New Elements

Radio Brandy will be adding new elements to its website and other sites it host. The new elements will include instructional videos; designed to help with the construction and operation of part 15 AM radio stations. The videos will be located on a new page, to be added soon.


Staff
Radio Brandy

Vista Arrives At Radio Campus

Windows Vista Business is now on the Radio Campus; nobody can accuse us of jumping into things on a whim. Radio Brandy's homepage for the first time was created with Vista, using Site Spinner 2.7f. Up to this point, our website has been created with an old 350mhz running Windows 98SE; everything we use to create the site was on the old computer. From images, to paint programs and other editing tool were on it. The one advantage to the old computer; is that we knew our site was available to anyone with an older computer, and it still loaded pretty fast even with a slow computer.

One loophole we have found with Vista Business is you can't RIP CD's, even if it's your own work. Others have reported the problem; but nobody at Microsoft can explain why. We will work around that problem by upgrading an older Compaq Pasario 6000 running XP, but only has 128mb on board.


Staff
Radio Brandy

Radio Brandy Summer Fun

Radio Brandy, students plan on relaxing poolside and enjoy their summer at the Radio campus. The heat is on here in the desert, with temps hitting triple digits most days.

Thanks to technology, talent can do a show from poolside; without a glitch. A cellphone or even better a netbook like the ones Acer sells do a fine job away from the studio.


Staff
Radio Brandy Campus

Strong Winds Blows Radio Campus

Strong winds gusting to 60MPH, continue to blow for the second week at our California campus. Strong winds are no friend of our antenna systems; including our satellite dishes. The winds also continue to topple trees, and send trash cans flying across our land.


Blown Over Staff & Pets

Radio Info Banning And Censorship

Radio Info: the popular radio board; has been taken over by clueless, money hungry, opportunist, taken advantage of a young mans timeless and tragic death. The dream, has turned into an operation run by iron fisted control freaks, intolerant of frank open discussion of broadcasting; the politics of broadcasting are strictly off limits. It takes very little to get banned from Radio Info; getting censored takes even less. Simply taken issue with a cities politics and the way it is governed, can get a post censored. Simply identifying the political leanings of a politician, can get a poster banned without warning or justification.
Most posters, who have been banned from Radio Info, have migrated over to Radio-Talk; an alternative board started by those fed up with Radio Info's way of doing business. Radio Brandy students will no longer take part in discussions on Radio Info, because of the on going abuse of their members.Radio Brandy now post on Radio-Talk exclusively.

Students of Radio Brandy

Radio Brandy Goes Mini

Radio Brandy is now using mini barns, for its new studios, housing and offices. The min barn's are about 560sqft each and come in several configurations as shown here:

Mini Kitchen for housing dorm

Mini Kitchen/Bathroom for office

Studio is located in a mini barn

Check out more of this studio located in a mini barn here

New Antennas

Radio Brandy's California campus, is the sight for testing new antennas for broadcasting. This time we decided to use a TV rabbit ear antenna, as a broadcast antenna for broadcasting on FM. We were very surprised by the results: One mile of rock solid coverage; with the antenna less than 12 feet off the ground.
More on this antenna is on Outlaw Radio website; just click on the rabbit antenna on the bottom of the page.



Radio Brandy Crew

Two New Country Stations Headed To AM Dial

Two new country stations are headed to the top of the AM dial, one station will feature classic country, and the other will feature independent unsigned country artist of all styles. Indie Country will take to the airwaves in the middle part of February, with several new unsigned artist already to go. The Classic Country station will sign on in April, and will have a few live DJ's.

Radio Brandy staff

Gas Headed Back Up!

Today gas jumped up .15cents a gallon in three hours to $2.15 a gallon. This weeks excuse has to do with Flying J filing for bankruptcy and shutting down a refinery in Bakersfield. It is noteworthy when the refinery was open, it did not help bring down gas prices in the High Desert area.

Staff
Radio Brandy

New EDM transmitter

EDM is due to release an upgraded LCD transmitter, the new transmitter will have a higher output power of 250 milliwatts. The transmitter is intended for countries where high powers are permitted, and more than just a new transistor. The new version has a new PCB and upgraded power supply. More details to come soon, including a review on the Radio Brandy web pages.
EDM Design

Three Flats, Make That Four.

New Years day started rather deflated for us, as the two rear tires on the Radio Brandy van at our California campus were found slashed as well as the spare. We are sure a story we were covering regarding discrimination when it comes to code and law enforcement in northern Los Angeles county had nothing to do with the tire damage. Unless you entertain the fact that outside of those who work in law enforcement for the county, only a very few knew of our location, and the last time we did a sensitive story regarding the county, we had glue placed in our locks, and a staffer assaulted, during the assault the staffer was told if the story continues there would be more trouble. You would think this was Texas, but no it's Los Angeles county where a certain religious group receives favorable treatment when it comes to enforcement of the law. The discrimination is rather blatant, case in point: In Los Angeles county, it is illegal to have a trailer on your property that is rented out to others, unless you belong to a certain religious group, the law is strictly enforced. If you are doing 10-30 mph over the speed limit and belong to the religious group, you will not be pulled over by the deputy who also belongs to the same religious group. On the other hand, 5 MPH will get anyone else pulled over and ticketed.
After the three tires were replaced, not ten minutes later, we had a forth flat tire. It turns out the tire was also slashed; just not deep enough for it to leak immediately. Well the new students got an early education on the downside of covering sensitive news stories, but were not deterred from covering the story; it just made them more determined to get the story out.

The real downside is that the four new tires were not in the budget by any stretch, and will leave the campus with some serious financial problems to start off the new year. Other cost have gone up substantially too, including taxes on the land, propane is still very high here; coming in at over $3.80 a gallon. Water has just tripled at the California campus too, so we are really going to have to tighten our belt.


Staff
Radio Brandy
California Campus