How
do I Build a radio station?
It's cold and you're stuck in the car with all of the windows rolled
up, looking at the thousands of Christmas lights blinking. You
have all of this visual stimulation and you kinda hear Christmas music
being played outside but it's all muffled because of everyone is talking
inside the car and the heater is cranked up.
At PlanetChristmas, there is a 24-hour, micro-power, FM radio station
playing all of your favorite Christmas music. All Christmas, All
the Time! Check it out at 98.7 on your FM Stereo radio dial.
Of course you have to remember, it has a range of only a few hundred
feet, but when you're watching the lights, you can listen to the same
music being played outside and on your fancy radio in the car.
The
radio station is really a small transmitter available from
Ramsey
Electronics. I originally built the FM transmitter from one of
their small kits (the FM-10A which cost about $35,) but my biggest
problem was output frequency drift. I'd set the unit to transmit at
98.7 in the morning and depending on the weather, temperature, phase of
the moon or who-knows-what, the transmit frequency would drift to
something like 98.4... the problem is digital radios can only tune to
odd numbered frequencies... so people would end up hearing awful sound.
I
have since purchased
Ramsey
Electronics fancy, pre-built transmitter (the FM-100 which cost
about $350) and couldn't be more pleased with the results. You just
plug it into 110VAC, give it a music source and dial the output
frequency you want, no matter what the weather is outside. It takes
care of all of the other magic and stays locked to the frequency you
select. Highly recommended, but a little pricey if you are on a small
budget.
The
other trick to a reliable, low-power FM station is the antenna. I
originally built a 1/4 wave antenna out of a few Radio Shack parts and
coat hangers, but with the purchase of the real FM transmitter above, I
also purchased the official
Ramsey
Electronics antenna (the TM-100 for $40) and taped it vertically to
a plumbing waste stack in the attic of the house. I leave it there
year-round (since you can't see it) and it electronically matches the
above transmitter perfectly. I use a 50 foot piece of TV coax cable to
connect the antenna to the transmitter.
The music heard is from 5 GBytes of MP3 music... all digitized from
about 60 Christmas CD's I've bought over the years.
OtsJuke is used as
the jukebox with roughly 60 hours of music before it repeats itself.
Otsjuke takes care
of mixing the songs, inserting PlanetChristmas commercials and
processing the audio for maximum punch while broadcasting. Nice
program and highly recommended. During November and December,
PlanetChristmas Radio is also streamed to the internet so you can hear
the same program as being broadcast locally.
Click here
to see what streaming radio sounds like.
Home broadcasting equipment can be found at the following:
Want to record a
PlanetChristmas
Promo?
How
do record a promotion for PlanetChristmas Radio?
PlanetChristmas has a 24 hour micro-radio station. Now is your
chance to record a promo that will be played between songs! Simply
record the script below using your voice on you PC and email it to
PlanetChristmas.
"Merry Christmas
from (your name) in (city, state and/or country).
Ho, Ho, Ho!"
