The Trials and Tribulations of Running A Radio Station: Part1

As part of Alrewas Radio, we experience the highs and lows of any community project, and while the satisfaction and accomplishment of what you end up with at the end is something that cannot be compared to with anything else, there are 2 main issues that you always find within these things.

The first is time. The point with community run voluntary projects is that people do them over and above what they would be doing on a day to day basis. This means that these projects are never anybody's first priority. Whilst it is great to get people involved, this does cause a lot of issues with actually getting stuff done. I mean I have been off school and doing basically nothing else with my life and I still haven't managed to get everything done that I wanted to!

This leads to another problem. When people don't have time to do stuff, they often don't have time to be in constant email contact either. This proves difficult when trying to get stuff done. You try and contact a person but they are busy doing other things, so you can't do that thing and everything ends up working it's way further and further down the job list.

Don't get me wrong though. I absolutely love getting involved with things. I like being busy, and I like helping people, I like making a difference. It is that which gives us the drive and determination to achieve something, whether it be a little radio on a boat or wether it be a massive jam packed arts fetsival across an entire 9 days, it is all worth it and good fun in the end. To see a whole community pull together to actually make a wonderful event is something which is so amazing to see, and is what I would say is the best in human nature.

Thanks for reading,

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Radio Fever

The first thing anybody will know about me, is that I am a massive nerd. No matter how much I try and disguise this by wearing my sunglasses on my head and buying clothes that are vaguely in fashion, I have to confess, I am the a massive geek. This I think is really quantified and solidified when it comes to technology. Not only do I have to be able to talk fluently about anything and everything to do with technology, that has involved hours and days of me sat, reading through the entire wikipedia website to learn about how a computer works and what all the funny little cables do, I also get far to excited about it when it comes to new gadgets. The perfect example of this is when we run Alrewas Radio. I spend hours and hours of my life just looking through websites at all the different kit, miss, mixers, software and broadcasting hosting packages to find out about them all and what all the features of the are and do.

There is something about the radio kit which fills and little hole in my heart with liquid honey and boyish excitement. This is very hard for me to portray to the regular listener, because it is so weird, but there we are. This is something which I am very proud of, mainly because I get really excited about it, and the circle repeats…

Anyway, I really want to tell you about what I have found out, in the name of Alrewas Radio. I have been speaking to a few people about upgrading the microphones that we use here at Radio Towers, as we currently only have 1. We would quite like 2, however that would require us to have the inputs via a mixer board, so we could use more than one microphone. Keep up with the thought processes… If we are expanding our inputs to 2, it seems sensible to try and get as many inputs as possible so that we can have plenty of inputs from guitars and other live musician type things, because we would love to get some awesome live music here on the Radio.

So I have been looking at a Behringer XENYX 1204 USB Mixer, which has all the FX sliders and controllers, along with 12 inputs, 4 of which are for microphones and then the other 8 are for things like guitars. The thought process behind this £160 bit of kit is that it will really allow us to be able to expand the Radio, maybe be able to mic up a whole band to play some awesome music live and local. This is something which excites me.

The next port of call after this is decided then is the microphones. Now originally I was thinking about a £120 condenser microphone, which is at an intermediate level, not the most basic by any stretch of the imagination. This was a thought that went along the lines of price is quality, however after talking to people about this, they have all advised me that unless we are in a completely soundproof professional studio, which would be lovely but is a million miles away yet, the difference between a £60 and a £100 condenser mic is pretty much non-existent. The very fact that it is a condenser microphone, means that the frequencies are much flatter and therefore beautifully realistic and crystal clear, which is what we want for radio. So that decided, we have our shopping list…

Apart from one more thing… We are professionals here at Alrewas Radio and we have to look the part as well as sound the part, and that requires some lovely microphone stands, which clip to our desk, and act like a boom scissor arm, which will stretch in front of our face and away from very smoothly, with the proper elastic suspension microphone mounts which allow us to not pick up any vibrations from putting your tea down on the table mid-link.

So our wish list has really shaped up, and I can't wait to be able to buy at least some of this kit! I told you I get excited about nerdy gadgets, well even writing this I am typing slower than I can think the post because I am that excited! Anyway I am off now to try nd find a rich person to buy us some stuff…

Thanks for reading, 

Follow me on twitter: @peachy146

Follow Alrewas Radio on twitter: @AlrewasRadio

#AlrewasRadio