Saturday it appears the last few bugs were worked out in the audio. Ron Cohn packed up his broadcast unit and stopped by with the news that next year he'll bring a new transmitter which will accept our audio line out from the tower. No more background chatter. It's going to be much easier with better sound quality. The biggest problems were my fault. Before leaving for SLC, took the netbook to Best Buy and loaded the pre-paid broadband and the computer acted up. Went over to the Geek Squad who kept it for an hour and gave it back "working." My plane was not going to wait, so I headed to the airport without playing with it. On the salt, several people helped overcome some of the spyware and glitches. Like I said, I've been hammering Macs so long, it takes awhile to remember how to thrash a Windows computer into shape. Took off one morning into Wendover to check the pawn shops for another unit. The pawn broker at one place had hunched shoulders. I asked if it was his ass since everything else was so high in the store. Pilot truck stop had a netbook in the electronics case, but priced double what I could have done if I kept driving to SLC.
It appears to me that we've got a handle on how to do this right, next time. And what equipment to have on hand in case something goes gunny sack. When the broadcast booth is finished for the day, we should be able to stay on with CB channels for awhile, or run them early in the morning before the FM goes live. This was an experiment. Like racing, there is always next year!
