Positive Contact

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  • Final Word
• Legal
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• Frequency Calculator

FINAL WORD
Although it seems like there is a lot to deal with in setting up a micropower station, it can be broken down into three areas- studio, transmitter and antenna. It should not be difficult to find someone with studio set-up experience to help with the project. Transmitters, particularly their construction and tuning, should be left to an experienced person. If such a person is not available, there are a number of people who will assemble, test and tune your transmitter for whatever fee they have set. Stick to a commercial, easy to tune antenna such as the Comet if your skills are minimal. These can be purchased pre-tuned for an additional fee from. It is best to put most of the energy into organizing and setting up the station.
Experience has shown that once the technical operation is in place and running, it will require very little in the way of intervention except for routine maintenance (cleaning tape heads, dusting, etc.) and occasional replacement of a tape or CD player.
What requires most attention and “maintenance” is the human element, however. More time will be spent on this than any equipment. As a survival strategy it is best to involve as much of the community as possible in the radio station. The more diverse and greater number of voices, the better. It is much easier for the FCC to shut down a “one-man band” operation than something serving an entire community. Our focus is on empowering communities with their own collective voice, not creating vanity stations. Why imitate commercial radio ?
Before you commit to your first broadcast, it is advisable to have an attorney available who is sympathetic to the cause. Even though they may not be familiar with this aspect of the law, there is a legal web site which offers all of the material used in the Free Radio Berkeley case and other cases. There are enough briefs and other materials available to bring an attorney up to speed. That web address is:
http://www.nlgcdc.org/briefs.html.
The National Lawyers Guild Center for Democratic Communications, www.nlgcdc.org, is doing a lot of the legal work on micropower broadcasting. A central clearing house web site for the micropower movement is www.radio4all.org. Free Radio Berkeley’s website is www.freeradio.org.