Rediscovering my GE Superadio III and my Sony XDR-S10HDiP; and a few loggings -- and, oh yeah, Easter

A pic of my trusty 1995 GE Superadio III, which I took one night while working out in my workout/storage room in 2015 or 2016. The radio has served me well over the years. I used to take it to work in the 1990's-2000's, and I also DX'ed a lot of stations with it at home. 

After a year or two's respite (just firing it up every month or so to ensure it still works), I decided to DX with it nightly again.... got to.

Lately the weather has been feeling like Spring, even if it doesn't always look like Spring. Spring time isn't always considered a time for MW DXing, at least not like Winter is thought to be. But a lot of times you can get a lot of decent long distance MW reception during the Spring months. 

And this Spring, unlike the last 5-6 of them, actually feels and looks like Spring than the previous three or four Springs did. The trees are actually starting to bud on time -- or mostly on time. Usually, in normal years, the hills look light green by April 5th or 6th. Last year the trees were a full month late. It doesn't appear that it will be that way this year, thankfully.

As I write this, it is very early, Easter morning -- meaning, it is still night out. I'm eating some homemade navy bean / potato / rutabaga / carrot / parsnip / celery / onion soup. When I went out to check on my outdoor cat, Tigger, I noticed it wasn't really cold. Maybe 45F or so. And, more importantly, it's not freezing outside. Awesome. Last year, it probably would have been, or close to it.

So, things are getting better.

As I have done for ages, I generally listen to MW nightly. 

My 1995 GE SRIII, probably tuned to 760 AM, when I was just barely picking up KGB-AM out of San Diego. Some GE Superadio 3's weren't all that terrific, sadly enough. The good years for making them were about 1995 or so, through probably 1997-98. Mine, a 1995 according to the date code in the battery compartment, is one of the good ones. The later ones have a mixed rep, because there were some issues with the potentiometers used in the tuning circuits. Both of my GE SRIII's work fine. They match my GE SRII in performance, at least when it comes to DXing. 

MY GE SUPERADIO III FLIES AGAIN!

Earlier last week I fired up one of my two working GE Superadio III's, the one I got for my mother -- in late 1995 or early 1996 -- for her to use where she worked. When I fired it up, the radio worked fine. 

It was then that remembered my own GE SRIII, which I got a few months earlier, probably some time in late 1995 or during 1996. Both of these SRIII's are good ones. Deciding to fire up my own GE SRIII, I first had to find the thing. I had to hunt around for it. I finally found the GE SRIII on the floor in my den, leaning against a stack of books. 

I dusted it off, and sprayed some DeOxit down the side of the volume control shaft (to keep the control lubed -- it's probably good to do this to a Superadio's volume control once or twice a year, depending on use). Then I switched on the radio. It worked perfectly. I decided to make it my main DX and listening radio for a while. After all, like guitars, radios are meant to be PLAYED. 

If you want your older radio to last longer, switch it on at least once a month or once every other month, and run it though the band. Let it run a while. Most electrolytic capacitors (a part that is common inside every radio) last longer if they see a fresh charge every now and then.

I'll repeat here: Radios were meant to be played.

So, anyway, my trusty, 1995 GE SRIII is -- once again -- sitting in its hallowed place, in my main DX room (which yes, it happens to be my bedroom, as it's the most RFI free room in the house). I've DXed with the Superadio III for about a week now, and it is like listening to an old friend. On my Sony headphones it sounds terrific (and although the SRIII is mono, the headphone jack is stereo compatible -- no adaptor needed!). I've been running the radio on AC, as I need to get enough D cells for it and for my Sangean PR-D4W.

As I DXed over the next few nights with my GE SRIII, comparisons to the PR-D4W were inevitable. The two seem to perform equally, with the PR-D4W's DSP seeming to have another stage of amplification / filtering included in its firmware. Overall, whatever the PR-D4W picks up, the GE SRIII picks up equally, and vice versa.

This is my Sony XDR-S10HDiP boombox a couple days after I got it, during the Summer of 2016. I ran a loop of wire from the two MW terminals on the back of the radio, and heard KBRE 1660, Merced, California -- about 900-1000 miles south of me -- coming in after 4:30 p.m. local time one afternoon. And yes -- the Sony XDR's run the AM band off just a simple loop of wire, and FM will work off of just a 3-4 ft or so hank of stiff wire as well.

Another radio that needed to be played was my HD Sony boombox -- my Sony XDR-S10HDiP. It's a remarkable DXer. When I fired it up, thankfully it worked perfectly. It had only been maybe 3-4 years since the last time I used it. The first night I had it tuned to 1330 CJYM and 1660 KBRE. The second night, I tuned it to 1570 kHz and heard some political and religious talk in English -- KBCV, Hollister, Missouri. It's a rare catch on the channel, which usually has a weak, weak XERF and a stronger KCVR Lodi California, which plays Punjabi and Sikh music at night.

The Sony XDR is a remarkable radio. It's great on both FM and AM. On FM it will work off a length of wire, and on AM/MW it works off of a 3-4 foot loop of wire (that's a little more than a meter, for the rest of the world). I had one reader who said that his XDR would bring in MW even in Europe -- or it at least sounded like he was using it to hear EU MW stations. Another reader in India bought an XDR, used, and was dismayed to find out that the XDR only has 10 kHz steps on MW. He asked if there was any way to switch the XDR to 9 kHz steps. I looked, and could find no way for it to be switched to 9 kHz steps.

One gentleman in southwest Scotland said that he can hear some UK and EU MW on the Sony XDR's 10 kHz channels, because the 9 kHz channels in question are pretty close to the 10 kHz channels on the radio.

He also says the XDR is poor on MW, but he's dead wrong on that one! In the summer of 2016 -- before the conditions went into the toilet during the next year, in late 2017-- I heard KBRE 1660 come in during the afternoon, on my porch, and it was just off the 3-4 foot loop of wire I rigged for it. So a Sony XDR definitely DX's the MW/AM band well.

Here is a link to the guy's article on the XDR series of radios. He apparently got the XDR without the speakers, the more popular one than my XDR S10HDiP.:

SONY XDR F1HD (dxarchive.com)

The fact that the XDR never had a 9 kHz function is pretty sad, because there are quite a few XDR's floating around out there, and they're great on MW. Why Sony didn't implement a 9 kHz function is hard to figure. Who knows -- they could have sold more XDR's that way. I would bet that all it would have taken was a slight reprogramming of the firmware in the chip.

But it is what it is. 

One of the first stations I checked on with my Superatio III was KBRE, 1660. I always check out 1660, and 1660, naturally, is KBRE The Bear, a hard rock station out of Merced, California. There are a few other stations that I tune to, to see if they're coming in over the ionosphere. But the Bear is remarkable, in that they have a better mix of current rock than the local rockers. Plus -- hey, it's coming out of CALIFORNIA.

Here's a link to the Bear's website. I believe that they don't geo-fence. At least, I've heard their stream more than once, and I'm 900 miles north of them. They play a really good mix of modern hard rock, with some metal shows at night on the weekends.

105.7 The Bear – Merced's Rock Station (1057thebear.com)

All this said, I listen to radio nightly, and probably much more to the MW/AM band than the Shortwave bands. On FM I only tune into AAA / Alt station KPNW-FM, a relatively new station out of Seattle that gets low ratings but plays a lot of interesting rock music. A lot of their songs, strangely enough, are in mono.

Another station goes off the air. KKOV 1550, which broadcasted out of Vancouver, WA (the real Vancouver), just north of Portland, OR (the real Portland), had a standards / classic hits format in the early to mid 2010's. Their slogan was "Sunny 1550", the "Sunny" format being a nationwide classic hits one that had a lot of easy oldies and standards. "Sunny 1550" came in well at night at my location. Sometimes at night while fiction writing I would tune in and hear a lot of older stuff I'd long forgotten. One night they played Glen Campbell's By The Time I Get To Phoenix, and I included a mention of the song in a story I was writing at the time.

KKOV dumped their "Sunny 1550" format a couple years before the Pandemic hit, and they went to Viet and brokered Asian programming. The Pandemic economy apparently ended that. They are off the air, possibly permanently, and have been silent for a year or more. 1550 is now KRPI Ferndale WA (Punjabi and Sikh) and San Francisco's KZDG (Punjabi).

My GE SRIII and my much newer Sangean PR-D4W, which matches it in performance, with or without an external loop. The only difference is that the PR-D4W sounds like it has an extra stage of gain and filtering, making the weaker stations just a hair more readable when they're in the mud. I chalk it up to the DSP circuitry in the PR-D4W's main chip. They're still quite close, however, showing that even a 29 year-old, 1995 radio can cut it in 2024.

The GE SRIII, like the other Superadios before it, has 4 IF transformers ('filters') in the signal chain, making it not only fairly selective, but also pleasant to listen to. The PR-D4W's "filtering" is all done via software in the DSP chip. 

A SHORT MEDIUMWAVE DX LISTING

Anyway, prompted by my DXing with my GE SRIII, I thought I'd post a listing here of what I've been hearing here in my small section of the Seattle-Tacoma metro on MW at night, since October or so. I'll try to keep it brief. It will be a sort of rundown of the usual channels I tune to when I scan the MW band, and what I hear on them, vs. what I used to hear on them. There is a difference. :-)

540 kHz: This channel is one I check out frequently. If DX conditions are good, CBK, Watrous, Saskatchewan (a small town in the middle of the province, not far from Manitou Lake) will be in around S3-S4 signals or so. If DX conditions are really good, I'll also hear XESURF, Tijuana, Baja California, too. I've only heard two other stations on this channel historically -- a station out of Redding, California (KVIP, which has religious preaching) just once, and XEWA San Luis Potosi, Mexico -- which I logged just once a long, long time ago (using my boombox and a 3.5 ft spiral loop antenna). Lately CBK has been touch and go. XESURF has appeared maybe half the nights I've tuned the channel.

550 kHz: This channel is almost always KOAC Corvallis, OR and a religious station out of Bellingham, WA (KARI). I like listening to KOAC at night because it's BBC World Service. Corvallis is famous for the Oregon State University (with its Linus Pauling research center) and -- more recently -- porn star Kendra Sutherland, who made a name for herself around 2014 when posing, partially clad, in the OSU library, calling herself the "Library Girl." Understandably, her postings became viral. 

650 kHz: Usually at night it's KSTE Sacramento with talk, often mixed with CISL's sports talk from Vancouver, BC Canada. The last few nights KSTE has come in with stronger signals than usual.

670 kHz: This channel is usually wall-to-wall KBOI Boise, but I like to find the signal's weak spot and try to hear KMZQ Las Vegas, because -- well -- I like hearing Las Vegas. Mostly it's fadey and barely audible, and unreadable, but at least one night in mid-March I heard KMZQ loud and clear. I think it was during some semi-Auroral DX conditions we had then.

690 kHz: 690 is an unusual channel, because you can simultaneously hear Canada and Mexico on it (both 'BC's -- British Columbia and Baja California), and often you're hearing three languages: English, Spanish and French. CBU Vancouver comes in OK at night, although not as well as they did before they cut their power in half about 6 years ago. XEWW Rosarito, Baja California (which, long ago, was the "Mighty 690") is sometimes audible with their Spanish language talk -- other times not so audible. And the French language station is CBKF-1 Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan. CBKF-1 serves the Fransaskois community in SW Saskatchewan. Although most French-speaking Saskatchewanians live in Saskatoon, Regina and Prince Albert, there is a considerable number of French speaking farmers in SW Sask.

My trusty Tecsun PL-398, still working off its second set of batteries in 2 years. Not bad. Although this pic was taken a few months ago, I still use this radio regularly on SW, FM, and MW. I'm still getting used to using a loop with this thing while DXing MW, as you have to tune to the programming, rather than listen for an obvious increase in volume when you peak the external loop. The key seems to be to always switch to 1 kHz bandwidth, peak the loop, and then widen the bandwidth. Switching it to 4 kHz bandwidth actually is very pleasant. Almost Superadio fidelity -- Almost.

760 kHz: This channel is difficult, as there is a local station on 770 (KTTH) that clobbers it from one side, and KXTG Portland (750) also clobbers it from the other side. But if there are decent DX conditions to the south, I can sometimes hear KGB-AM (the former KFMB) out of San Diego, and at least a couple times I heard the station readably over the past couple weeks, which is actually kind of rare. I like hearing KGB-AM because I like hearing San Diego, as I have a few fond memories of the place from the one time I spent some time there. It's a wonderful place, with perfect weather. I always thought it would be a great place to live... I mean, who wouldn't want to live there? I suppose, better put: who can afford to live there? But you could say the same thing about Seattle anymore, I guess....

840 kHz: KMAX, Colfax WA (a talk station in Eastern WA) usually dominates this channel, along with CFCW, Camrose Alberta, which plays country. I usually tune this frequency to see if either KSWB Seaside OR is there (they play classic hits, and I used to hear them nightly in the early 2010's -- I haven't heard a peep from them since probably 2015 or so), or KXNT Las Vegas. Las Vegas seems to come in readably about once or twice a month maybe. KSWB has been completely MIA since around 2014-2015.

870 kHz: In the early to mid 2010's, I used to hear WWL New Orleans peeking through the 880 kHz spillover, and sometimes it was readable behind KFLD 870 Pasco WA's talk. I haven't heard WWL in 8 years or so. This is one reason that when I read online about the new Solar Cycle being awesome, I call bullshit on that. Still, I keep tuning the channel, and I'll listen to see if anything outside of KFLD's weak signal is there. Aside from a variable KFLD, it's crickets, basically. So, where's WWL? It's still on the air. It's a 50KW station with antennas in the water near New Orleans. There is very little on 870 kHz to get in the way of at least hearing it. The answer is obvious: the Solar Cycle isn't living up to the hype.

1010 kHz: CBR Calgary often comes in strong enough to splash on the local station, KNWN (the former KOMO) on 1000. I like CBR's programming. Ironically, even though CBR is 400+ miles away, it's much clearer than CBU Vancouver, which is only 140 air miles away.

1200 kHz: I used to tune this frequency at least once every other night or so, to see if WOAI San Antonio, TX was peeking through, because, well, it's coming out of sunny Texas. Usually this channel is wall-to-wall CJRJ Vancouver's South Asian programming coming in at S3-S4, but sometimes WOAI is readable behind it. But aside from one or two times I heard them a year ago, WOAI has been MIA. And it was MIA for maybe 5 years before the last time I heard it. And that trend has held over the past couple months.

1220 kHz: Sometimes I get a station out of Salem, Oregon here. They used to be KPJC, the "Hebrew Nation" religious station with Hebrew Nation preachers and music. They usually came in pretty weak, but often they were fairly readable. Then they went political talk. But most nights I hear an intermod image from local 1620 KYIZ's R&B programming. A long time ago I heard KHTS Santa Clarita, Calif. (Canyon Country, CA, actually), with pop and AC music, but I haven't heard them since 2015 or maybe 2016. Most times anymore I tune past this channel.

1260 kHz: CFRN Edmonton, which was ESPN and sports, used to be a regular on this channel, always with a really good signal. Then the owners (Bell Media) yanked the plug -- and also pulled the plug on 6-7 other AM stations -- taking them, and CFRN off the air, even though CFRN had decent ratings. The other main station on this channel, KLYC McMinnville Oregon, played Classic Hits and oldies. A month or two ago they switched to Hot AC (Hot adult pop hits), and I think they got a translator. I have logged one NEW station on 1260 over the past month: KMZT, Los Angeles, a classical music station on the AM band! KMZT is owned by a guy who has a fair amount of money, and likes to do his own thing with his radio stations (he also has an FM in the L.A. area). I've heard KMZT mainly in the early mornings, when they boost power. The classical music makes them easy to ID.

1270 kHz: I usually tune here because its a mix of classic hits, Catholic programming, and AC music, depending on which station is coming in. KTFI Twin Falls, Idaho is Catholic, and I've mentioned them before on my blog, in my posting on New Year's. But KAJO Grants Pass, Oregon often comes in during the early morning hours with Classic Hits; KMYI Tulare comes in with AC, and sometimes KXBX Lakeport, Calif. makes its appearance with Classic hits. It's always cool to hear Southern Oregon, and California.

1280 / 1290 kHz: these two channels are usually covered by George Noory's C2C program at night, with KIT Yakima on 1280 and KUMA Pendleton, Oregon dominating on 1290. KGVO Missoula on 1290 often also has C2C. I'll tune in and listen to C2C for a while, and I like hearing Pendleton because when I was a kid we went to Eastern Oregon a lot on our camping vacations.

1330 kHz: Most nights, thankfully, I hear CJYM, Rosetown, Saskatchewan coming in, usually with a considerable amount of fading, but generally with S2-S3 signal levels, and they play a wide variety of Classic Hits -- with a LOT OF Can-Con (Canadian content). So you can hear Honeymoon Suite's tracks that never got played in the US, a lot of Corey Hart, Chilliwack, April Wine, Nick Gilder, Sweeney Todd, etc. There used to be a station out of Portland, KKPZ, which had a praying preacher guy I used to listen to from time to time, but he went off KKPZ and then KKPZ went off the air 2 years ago or so (a victim of the Pandemic), so CJYM has the channel all to themselves, until local (Auburn, WA), alt rock college station KGRG-1 starts fading in during the late mornings.

1460 kHz: ESPN Yakima (KUTI) used to be here perennially. Then last year they yanked it off the air. Now it's a rough mix of ranchero/Exitos from KRRS Santa Rosa and recently KION, Salinas, California has been showing up on this channel with news-talk and Coast To Coast AM overnights. I used to hear KION when I was a kid and just starting to DX the AM band. A couple times on this channel I have heard news-talker KCNR, Shasta Lake, California playing Gordon Deal's early morning news show, and Redding area commercials. Obviously, this channel is a grab bag channel -- you never know what is going to be there. 

1480 kHz: This channel is half KBMS Portland (old school R&B) and KEJB Eureka, California (Oldies). The two stations often trade off dominating the channel, and on weekend nights you can hear all sorts of old school music emanating from these two stations, from the Spinners and the Brothers Johnson (KBMS) to Jan & Dean and Strawberry Alarm Clock (KEJB) -- often at the same time. Take your pick. It's like a radio time machine. I'm fine with that. :-)

1570 kHz: this channel is one of the few 'quiet' channels on the AM band here. Aside from some splash hitting the frequency from each side, it's usually pretty faint, and often just weak static with barely a trace of audio on it. I used to hear XERF, out of Ciudad Acuña (across the Rio Grande from Del Rio, TX) nightly, at S2 signal levels most times, with their sedate announcements and old-school ranchero music. Since 2017 XERF is mostly MIA -- you can just barely pick it out of the static -- IF it's there, that is. KCVR Lodi, California used to be Romantica in the 2010's, but then went South Asian, and their Punjabi pop and movie music is easy to pick out of the airwaves... And KCVR has been audible more than it used to be. Whether this is because of the shitty overall DX conditions keeping XERF from interfering, or something they did at their transmitter, I don't know. On very rare occasions I can hear KBCV, Hollister, Missouri with their preaching and religious talk. Before 2017 I heard KBCV maybe 10-15 times total. Since the Solar Cycle picked up I've only heard them once. But hey, maybe that will change as the cycle progresses.

1600 kHz: Usually KVRI Blaine, WA is here with Punjabi and other South Asian programming, and overnights they play Sikh prayer chants and singing. In the mid to late 2010's I had my radio tuned to them nightly while doing fiction writing. Since the last Solar Cycle downturn, although KVRI are still regulars on 1600, they haven't been coming in as strongly overnights as they used to. In the mid to late 2010's I would sometimes I'd hear them as late as 9 a.m.. Not anymore. Underneath KVRI I sometimes hear KOPB, Eugene Oregon (NPR & Oregon Public Radio), and KOHI St. Helens, Oregon, which is definitely a local-oriented, small town talk and information station. After 5-6 years of not hearing them I've started hearing them again underneath KVRI, on my Superadio III. Other incidental stations are the classic hits / oldies station out of Yuba City, California, KUBA (heard maybe 3-4 times total), and a Spanish language station out of Utah (KTUB, Centerville), and KEPN, Denver which -- last time I heard it -- was ESPN sports.

1630 kHz: Although this channel is generally clobbered by nearby local 1620 KYIZ, I used to hear a station out of Cheyenne, Wyoming -- KRND -- playing ranchero (haven't heard them in years), and on rare occasions XEUT, Tijuana, Mexico would play experimental music (they are a college station). I haven't heard XEUT in ages, either -- not since 2016.

1650 kHz: This usually is KBJD Denver, a religious Spanish language station that often comes in pretty strongly. On very rare occasions, I've heard the Korean language station out of Los Angeles, KFOX. That's rare, though. I used to hear a couple NOAA TIS stations, one of them out of the Central Oregon coast; and there are a few more local TIS's that have shown up now and then also. KCNZ, Cedar Falls, Iowa (a sports station) made an appearance on my Superadio III last night -- that was pretty cool to hear. In 2012 or 2013 I heard KSVE El Paso -- just once (they were ESPN Deportes -- a network that was yanked off the air 5-6 years ago), and once heard a station out of Ft. Smith, Arkansas (KYHN) with Red Eye Radio. That was in 2013. Not a peep out of it since then. The Solar Cycle strikes again!

I've already covered 1660, and 1700 is XEPE Tecate BCN Mexico, at varying levels.

To sum it all up -- basically, the AM band here is nothing like it was in the early 2010's, with all the current DX no-shows, and even regional no-shows (like KSWB 840, KSHO 920, etc.). There were a lot of stations I used to hear more or less nightly that have just seemed to have disappeared -- and yet, they are still apparently on the air. I'm just not hearing them -- regardless of equipment.

This is why I think the Solar Cycle we are in right now is more or less a dud.

And I have been working on an article about that, which I hope to post before Summer.

an Easter Decoration -- sort of

This is Floppy Bunny, a completely unexpected, surprise gift I got in an Easter basket on Easter 2009, from my late, ex-GF Sheryl Phillips. I used Floppy Bunny in a kid's story that I never finished. It was to be a sequel to my kid's Christmas book Woody The Woodchuck Saves Christmas -- a book inspired by these stuffed animals and puppets I had hanging around the house -- which I had thought I would make useful, by turning them into characters in a children's book -- a la A.A. Milne's Winnie The Pooh. 

Well, the Christmas story took long enough to write and illustrate. It was a LOT of work. Fun, but painstaking, especially with the illustrations. And then I got two -- count 'em, two -- sales. 

So the Easter story / sequel, which would have had the bunny in it, never got written. Floppy Bunny was going to be a goofy Easter Bunny who broke the eggs, hid them in strange places, etc. And Woody the Woodchuck was going to set Floppy Bunny right, and save Easter, but Easter is doing fine by itself. I lost the will to write a book like that, illustrate it, and then put it out on Amazon just so it would get zero sales. Sorry Floppy Bunny, your chance at stardom came and went.

Well, right now I need to go for a nighttime bike ride. Got to do something for Easter morning, right? Easter, like most other holidays, is a time when the memories flood back, memories from back when my father and mother were still alive, when the holidays had a little bit of 'zing' to them -- something that simply is hard to feel anymore -- religious holiday or otherwise.

I'm glad I still have my health, food, my cat is OK, and I've got a roof over my head.

Really, there isn't much more to need, right? So far, I have indeed had one pleasant surprise this Easter (a friend contacted me from Austria after a few months not hearing from her), but the rest of it shall remain low kay.

I'll end this with a vid. I mentioned Can-Con music previously. Here are a couple tracks from Honeymoon Suite, a Canadian hard rock band that had one hit here on FM Rock stations in the 1980's, New Girl Now. It was pretty catchy. I always cranked it up on my boombox, before it got stolen.:

Here is a track I heard on CJYM that I'd never heard before. It was another track by Honeymoon Suite, and it's actually very good. It has more of an 80's feel to it, though -- but that stands to reason, being that it was recorded and released in the 1980's. Here it is, everybody: Wave Babies. It made it to #59 on the Canadian charts. Should have gone higher. But in the 80's there was a lot of good music, a lot of competition.:

And with that, I shall close this article. For those who celebrate, I wish a Happy Easter, Glad Påsk, Frohliche Ostern, Xristos Voscress (XPISTOC BOCKPESS), etc.

Peace.

C.C. Easter, 2024.

April 1st, 2024: After actually looking at the date codes in both of my GE Superadio III's, they both were made in 1995, not 1996. I might have bought them in '96, though. 

Date codes for Superadios (and many other GE radios) are in the battery compartment. There will be a small label with the serial number, and another small label that says "Date Code". The second numeral is the last numeral of the year in which the radio was manufactured.

April 23rd, 2024. I edited a couple typos and added a small bit about KMZT, Los Angeles, a new logging I had on 1260 kHz a month or so ago.

KDWN 720, the Station that put Art Bell on the radio map, is shut down for good

The old logo for Las Vegas's KDWN, 720 AM, a 50 Kilowatt station that put night-time talk host Art Bell on the American radio map. KDWN's owners have turned in the license, after pulling the plug on the station. Another one bites the dust.

Yet another AM radio station in the Western US has gone off the air permanently -- i.e., the signal is switched off, the plug is pulled, the land is sold, and FCC license has been turned in. This station is one of the biggest US AM'ers in recent history to be yanked off the air.

KDWN, 720 kHz, owned by US radio corporation Audacy (one of the bigger radio companies in the country), was a 50 Kilowatt radio station in Las Vegas, Nevada -- a growing metropolis in the high desert, a city of more than 2 million people, known for excitement, entertainment, and gambling. It also was one of the fastest growing cities in the US for many years.

KDWN was best known for being the radio station where famous night-time talk host Art Bell (who retired from radio before passing away a few years ago), got his career started. Although Art officially started his night-time talk show on another station, it was his KDWN stint that made him famous, as KDWN could be heard all over the Western US wherever there wasn't another station on 720 -- in other words, all of the West outside of parts of Western Oregon and Washington where other stations' signals clobbered the 720 kHz channel.

Here is a link to an article I wrote about Art Bell and his famous, night-time show, which was extremely popular during the 1990's.:

Interrock Nation: ART BELL -- The Storyteller of the Radio Night-Time

In recent years, with the increasing use of the Internet for entertainment and information among all demos, and the aging out of the prominent demographics that listen to AM radio (GenX and older), Radio has lost listeners, with AM stations taking the bigger economic hit. Some AM'ers still do well in major metros. Others are struggling, propped up by being part of a larger station "cluster". In my city, KIXI 880, which plays standards and light oldies, gets low ratings but is part of a greater cluster that includes several decently and highly rated FM's (pop station KQMV 92.5 being one of them). The other stations keep KIXI on the air, and sometimes a station like KIXI can be included as a demographic-rich 'package' for advertisers.

A radio expert on one of the radio forums I go to (RadioDiscussions) who has owned and operated stations all over the US, informed me that even a low rated station like local, Tacoma station KHHO 850, an affiliate of the Black Information Network (BIN), could help the rest of the cluster in demographic breadth and reach. This concept of "demographic breadth" is a part of the reason that in many cities underperforming stations ratings-wise can still be part of the revenue generation machine for a radio company or 'cluster'. Some stations, like Sports talkers, do not depend on ratings. The advertisers know that such stations -- regardless of their overall listenership -- are the best place to reach sports fans.

The economics of radio obviously is more complex than "Ratings high = You're a millionaire / Ratings low = You're sunk".  As mentioned, Sports talk stations, and Sports Betting stations, are typical of stations that can survive without good ratings. But eventually, your stations need to be pulling their weight somehow, and in KDWN's case, the land where the transmitter was located was worth much, much more than the revenues the station was pulling in.

KDWN's new online logo, mentioning the FM translator, although the FM translator is also apparently going off the air.

So, it's bye, bye KDWN.

Oh -- I almost forgot to mention. KDWN had an FM translator. 

The FM translator station DID NOT SAVE IT.

And, whaddaya know? KDWN had/has a stream!

The stream, obviously, did not save the Over-The-Air radio station.

Here is a link to KDWN's stream, which still is operating, as of time of writing. It includes commercials, including at least 3-4 commercials that are LOCAL to my own listening region (geolocation being used, obviously -- pretty smart move!):

K-DAWN - The Talk of Las Vegas - LISTEN LIVE | Audacy

SO WHAT WAS AUDACY'S TAKE ON ALL THIS?

The "KDWN" stream is part of Audacy's greater streaming platform. I'm not sure how locally oriented the online KDWN is -- so far it appears to be a satellite network affiliate -- but it's all that remains of the station that put Art Bell on the Radio map.

The puzzler to me, in the case of KDWN, is why the owners -- radio company Audacy -- didn't try harder to make a go of it with a 50KW AM signal, and what does it say about their view of OTA Radio as a viable medium? A 50KW signal could blast much of the metro with a Sports Betting format, even better than the one Sports Betting station Las Vegas already has (one Sports talker in Las Vegas, KRLV 920, has some sports-bet talk included with regular sports talk). Sports Betting networks pay bills. They could have dropped the power a bit and still covered the metro OK. KGO's owners (Cumulus) have kept San Francisco's once failing KGO on the air by switching to Sports Betting talk and Sports talk. KDWN could have been diplexed with another AM station Audacy already owns -- KXNT 840, and other formats could have been pursued.

Instead, Audacy -- which just went through bankruptcy, because of debt they allowed to be piled up during one of their shakeups a few years ago -- decided to cut their losses, and pull the plug. They've left the KDWN stream on -- I guess that is something. The bankruptcy may have been an issue, although they have stations that make a lot of money. It's more highly probable that KDWN just would be too expensive to operate for Audacy justify dumping more money into it. The AM audience is dwindling, and AM diplexing (the sharing of two stations using the same towers) is expensive.

A famous photo of Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, which -- along with Reno, maybe 350 miles to the north -- was THE center for legal gambling in the US for decades. The Golden Nugget was famous nationwide -- even if people never went there, they knew what the Golden Nugget Casino was. In the late 1960's the Las Vegas Strip began to take over, as large resort hotel/casinos began to predominate. Now, most of the tourist action and gambling takes place on The Strip.

Photo courtesy the family of Edward N Edstrom

Audacy, like other radio companies before them (IHeart, Radio Disney) are concentrating on their streaming platform. The radio companies see streaming as the future. They might be correct, as younger demographics don't listen to radio, they listen to streaming on their phone. However, the economics of streaming actual radio stations is a lot different from that of an already well-established Spotify, Pandora, or Apple Music. So we won't really see the results of this move of Radio from OTA radio to online streaming for another 15-20 years.

On their KDWN stream, Audacy promote an afternoon talk show, that appears to be Las Vegas only -- Steve Sanchez -- and it's also broadcast on the Audacy streaming platform and app. Does Sanchez get enough clicks or streaming ratings without a 50KW OTA signal to push the visibility of his podcast? It's hard to tell.

But this all begs the question: If one of America's largest radio companies doesn't believe in the potential of a metro-covering, 50KW OTA radio station, what does that say for the health of OTA radio in America?

Online, on social media and radio forums, the reactions to the demise of KDWN are somewhat mixed, with what seem to be the usual opinions one sees when these AM stations go under. The fact is, Over-The-Air broadcasting -- AM or FM -- seems to have a lifetime, and the end of OTA radio is probably another decade-and-a-half away before the AM band is static and hiss, and the FM band is increasingly brokered, ethnic, and religious stations, with maybe some sports betting stations thrown in.

Either way, it's sad to see a once well-known radio station in a US major metro go under. I suppose that those of us in the radio listening and DXing hobby should prepare for more of these plug-pulling instances happening. AM radio is not a cheap medium to operate, and its loyal audiences are aging out of the advertising demographics because of the economics of advertising, demographic research, and what appears to be the ageism prevalent in the advertising industry. At the same time, AM audience shares are indeed dropping. Younger demos do not listen to AM radio.

It's the new reality.

Luckily, when I tune my Realistic DX-375 or Sangean PR-D4W across the AM band it's still full of signals, so all is not lost. Still, it's not a great feeling.

Here are the two Radio publications that posted news articles on KDWN.:

From RadioInk.:

Vegas Station That Started 'Coast To Coast AM' Turns In License - Radio Ink

From Radio Insight.:

Audacy Surrenders KDWN & KXST Licenses After Failing To Restore Operations Before Deadline - RadioInsight

TFFT -- TATTS FOREVER, FOREVER TATTS

There is not much more to talk about. The weather is picking up a bit. My cat Squeakers is doing better. She is eating more. During the cold spell last month she wasn't eating as much. But she's improving. I always have to keep an eye on her, and I always make sure I watch her eat. :-)

I'll end this with a bit of upbeat music from Australia's Rose Tattoo, probably my favorite band to come out of that awesome country. 

The first two vids are off of a Tatts album I played to death, Assault & Battery. It was a soundtrack of my college years. This next track is called Suicide City, and it's said to be about Canberra, the Australian national capital. 

Guns N Roses, who were fans of the Tatts early on, are said to have been influenced by this song when they wrote Paradise City, a song off their first album, Appetite For Destruction.

Suicide City is one of the best tracks on Assault & Battery, with a riff written by Mick Cocks, probably the best rhythm guitarist out of Oz, right next to AC/DC's Malcolm Young.

Oz rockers know.

Here is another track off Assault & Battery -- the title track. The lyrics are like a page out of singer Angry Anderson's life, and maybe turned up a notch. I played this track a lot. The gritty nature of many of the words to Tatts' songs -- combined with a literate, almost Shakespearean twist of poetic imagery included -- I found fascinating. Angry Anderson looks like a biker, but he's actually a well read man.

Now here is a live show from Amsterdam, 1981, during one of the Tatts' first forays into Europe, right after they toured the UK and played a couple songs for the BBC. In this performance you can generally hear Tatts' rhythm guitarist Mick Cocks a bit better than usual. In some live Tatts' shows they buried his guitar too much, but on this one -- and the BBC recordings, which can be found on YT, but the Blogger searcher can't seem to find -- you hear his Super Distortion, souped up Les Paul Black Custom a lot better. 

Here 'tis -- Enjoy. The Tatts at the Paradisio, Amsterdam, April, 1981.

And with that, my friends,

Peace.

C.C. March 22nd, 2024.

LONGWAVE Is Not Dead -- Not Quite Yet

My Tecsun PL-398MP tuned to the Longwave band -- and it actually was bringing in a signal, amazingly enough. Aeronavigational beacon 'MOG' from Montague, in Northern California -- maybe 500-600 miles away to the South from my location near Seattle. I had thought Longwave in this region was completely dead. I guess not?

As I've mentioned here before, I have a Tecsun PL-398MP, an AM/FM/SW/LW mini-boombox radio that works quite well. I wrote an article on it a couple months ago, where I went into the qualities of the radio fairly extensively.

In that article I said the the PL-398 has Longwave (the next band down below the Medium Wave radio band) and, in that article, I describe how to enable the Longwave capability (the default setting is that LW is switched off, for some reason). 

After you enable the Longwave capability, the Longwave band will appear if you hit the 'AM' button twice (or a second time, if you have the radio already switched to the AM/MW band).

If you live in Europe especially, Longwave is pretty cool to have, being that there are a few national broadcasters there who still use Longwave as an additional way for listeners to get their programming, as Longwave can easily cover an entire country from just one station. Norway and Iceland had Longwave stations for their mariners and fishermen for the same reason. I think both of those countries have taken their LW stations off the air, though.

There never have been any Longwave broadcast stations here in the US and Canada, but here, the LW band has been used for decades for Aeronautical (and some Marine) Navigation Beacons. And those Marine and Aeronautical beacons are fast disappearing. Just 8 or 9 years ago I was able to DX a bunch of Longwave beacons on my Realistic DX-398, including a few remaining ones in the Puget Sound region, as well as more distant beacons from as far north as British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands. 

Hearing the Queen Charlotte station was a really cool catch, because the Queen Charlottes (known by the tribes as Haida Gwaai) are a remote archipelago just south of Alaska, and they are about 800 miles (1100 km?) north of me, off the northern British Columbia coast.

Aeronautical beacons are a primitive, but effective navigation aid tool for both mariners and pilots. In the early to mid 20th Century, they were vital, as Longwave is fairly stable via ground wave propagation, and fairly easy to use for navigation. Boats or planes would use a finely tuned Direction Finding Receiver (basically, a Longwave / MW receiver with a large, rotatable, built in loop antenna) to zero in on the direction of the beacon, which would either help them triangulate their position, or help them home in on the beacon to get to the airport or harbor where the beacon would be located.

The distant spires of Seattle with Lake Washington, and the Renton Airport in the foreground. Photo taken by me from Renton Hill, a knoll just east of the city where I live. Renton Airport was first constructed in WW2 for Boeing B-29's -- over 1100 of them were built at the Renton Boeing plant (just off the right edge of the picture). The Airport had a Longwave Aeronautical beacon for years. It used to hit my LW radios at S5 signals with its 'RNT' Morse Code signature. I took this pic years ago with my trusty Canon TX film SLR, maybe in the 1990's. It was the last bunch of pics I took with the camera.

These navigational beacons always identified with simple, two or three letter Morse Code identifiers. My city, Renton, used to have a beacon at the Renton Airport that was called "RNT". They took that one off the air about 10 years ago. Beacons up in Canada survived a lot longer than the ones in the US, because the more remote locations needed redundancy in airport radio-location aids. However, Canada is taking more and more of their LW beacons off the air.

The last time I checked the LW band with either of my radios, about a year or so ago, I got nothing but hiss and static. I also noticed this when I tried the LW band on the PL-398 after getting it in December 2022, and double checked it with my trusty DX-398. It seemed that every LW beacon in the Puget Sound region (there used to be maybe 5-6 of them) was gone, and the British Columbia beacons I used to hear frequently were gone too.

It looked like -- for all intents and purposes -- Longwave in my section of North America was completely dead.

Well, scratch that!

There still are a few beacons out there to hunt down. Maybe what was jinxing my two radios a year ago, and 4-5 months ago, was crappy ionospheric conditions, because just last night I heard two Longwave beacons -- both of them from a few hundred miles away!

HEARING THE B.C. INTERIOR, AND REMOTE NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

I was tuning the MW band on my PL-398, still trying to figure out the most efficient way to use a loop with it. It's an ongoing process -- the PL-398's AGC is tight enough you really have to listen to the programming get louder, because the volume itself doesn't increase when you peak the loop -- reducing the radio's bandwidth to 1 kHz, peaking the loop, and then widening the bandwidth to taste seems to work best. I've also found that the internal loopstick is pretty efficient and directional on its own, so I've been experimenting with that, too.

Anyway, while DX'ing the MW band I noticed the "LW" being included in the Radio's badgeline at the top of the dial. Longwave.... I hadn't tried it in a while. What could it hurt to tune the band again?

I recalled how to switch the radio to Longwave, as I had enabled the band shortly after first getting the radio. As the AM band was already on and playing, I hit the 'AM' button, and voila! I was hearing hiss and static on Longwave. I figured, "What the heck. There's nothing on the band anymore, but why not check anyway?"

Being the intrepid DXer that I am, I actually tuned the LW band from bottom to top. All I had was the internal loopstick in the radio. Most of the band was hiss. There was no AM station intermod -- that was really good. A lot of Longwave radios would have all sorts of local AM station images. Not so with the PL-398.

That's when I heard 'MOG' on 404 kHz (I also heard it on 405 at 2 kHz bandwidth). I was floored. First, I had never heard an 'MOG' beacon before. Secondly, I was actually hearing something on the Longwave band!

Then I heard another beacon on 326 kHz -- 'DC'. I was amazed.

And, even more amazing, the two beacons came in better on my Tecsun PL-398MP than they did on my Radio Shack DX-398. 

Using my phone, I looked up the beacons. I finally found a list -- Mr. William Hepburn's Longwave Beacon List, located at DXInfoCentre.com. The link to this highly useful tool is here.:

LW Radio Beacons (dxinfocentre.com)

MOG, 404 kHz, is in Montague, California. That's about 600 miles South of me (1000 km?). Montague is one of the small cities on the I-5 Corridor that was built as a whistle stop and rail junction between the Southern Pacific Railroad, 'coastal' line and nearby Yreka, the county seat of Siskiyou County where Montague is located. Montague, Yreka, Hornbrook, Dunsmuir, Weed -- all these little cities are in one of the most beautiful areas of California, all of them in Siskiyou County. Montague and Yreka are in a dry, Mediterranean, semi-arid patch of cattle country south of the Siskiyou Mountains and east of the Klamath / Coast range.

Driving through this area on Interstate 5 is a treat -- it's very unpopulated, with lots of gold and green countryside to enjoy. It reminds me of pictures I've seen of the inner, near-Outback of Australia, the regions around Bathurst, Orange, Albury, etc. Not desert, but not exactly rainy or well forested, either. Here in the US we call it 'cattle country', but there is quite a bit of what appears to be irrigation agriculture in the Siskiyou County region around Yreka and Montague, too. 

And Montague has a small airport which serves Yreka as well as other nearby towns in the region.

The MOG beacon is a navigational aid for pilots -- sort of a backup navaid for pilots traversing that fairly hilly and mountainous area. It's a 50 Watt transmitter, so the fact I heard it as clearly as I did was pretty amazing.

Princeton, BC, is a small city located in a dry valley just east of the Cascade Mountain divide. It's a mining town on BC's Highway 3, and apparently they have an airport there, which has the 'DC' Beacon on 326 kHz. The beacon runs at 500 Watts. I suppose the beacon hasn't been yanked yet because in a mountainous area perhaps redundancy in your navigational aids is a good idea.

We went through Princeton, BC when I was a kid. There was another mining town, Hedley, maybe 15-20 miles SE of Princeton, that looked really cool, with this abandoned, dilapidated, massive mining complex (with all sorts of woodframe buildings and mining apparatus) covering the hillside just outside of town. It looked as if it hadn't been operated in 50 years, although that might have just been my first impression. Hedley and Princeton (and neighboring town Keremeos) are in the Similkameen Valley, a fairly arid region with pine trees.

The complex I saw may have been either the Mascot Gold Mine, or its Concentrator. I'm not sure. There is information on the Mascot Mine on its Wiki here.:

 Hedley Mascot Mine - Wikipedia

Either way, it was a surprise to hear ANYTHING on Longwave, much less to learn that the PL-398 does really well on Longwave.

The Tecsun is even better on LW than my fabled DX-398: 'MOG' on my Tecsun PL-398MP came in at S1-S2 signal levels. On my DX-398 -- with the LSB filter maxing the signal -- it was S0.3 or so.

In my PL-398 article I said "Longwave Is Dead". Well, maybe it's too soon to dance on Longwave's grave. There still are some beacons to hear. If you look over Mr. Hepburn's LW NDB listing (linked previously) you'll notice that a lot of the beacons are in the Farn North of Canada -- and many of them are fairly powerful. Other high power NDBs are in Alaska and Greenland. So there still is much to log. I guess it's time for me to build a Longwave Crate Loop antenna. :-)

I noticed that the lower MW band was more active than usual, so obviously, the 300-600 kHz section of radio spectrum was cooperating with my radios that night.

Of course, last night, the 18th, I tuned the LW band and heard nothing. The lower MW band wasn't all that hot, either, so it stands to reason. 

Still, one wonders why the Longwave band over the past year or so still sounds so dead, especially if there are still some stations (in Canada) to hear. Maybe it's the crappy DX conditions we've had during this Solar Cycle that's the problem. For example, the SAK beacon out of Kalispell, Montana, 515 kHz, used to be semi-regular on my Panasonic RF-B45 in 2012-2014, but I haven't heard it since 2015 or so.

It's still apparently on the air, according to Mr. Hepburn's list, which seems to get updated periodically. But SAK has been a total no-show on the radios.

TWO MORE BEACONS, FOR A TOTAL OF FOUR!

Since the night of St. Patrick's, when I heard those two LW beacons, I've since logged two more! On the night of the 19th (early a.m. on the 20th) I tuned the Longwave band on my PL-398, and this time I used the 1 kHz bandwidth only.

That seems to be the best way to tune the LW band with a PL-398 -- other Tecsuns may be similar. Tune the Longwave band frequency by frequency, at the 1 kHz bandwidth setting. If you hear the slight whoosh of the carrier signal, stop, turn the radio to peak the carrier (as I said, the loopstick is very directional on a PL-398!), and listen for the Morse Code identifier.

Be sure to peak the signal by turning the radio. PL-398's loopstick is actually very directional on Longwave, as it is on Mediumwave -- something I didn't really pay attention to previously.

On the night / early a.m. of March 19th/20th (about 3 a.m. local time) I once more heard 'MOG' on 404 kHz out of Montague, 'DC' on 326 kHz out of Princeton, and two new beacons: 'EX' on 374 kHz out of Kelowna, BC, and 'SX' on 368 kHz out of Cranbrook, BC. 

Kelowna is maybe 200-220 miles away as the crow flies, and Cranbrook -- located in the Kootenay region of Eastern British Columbia -- is over 350 miles away, so it's not a bad job for these relatively low powered beacon stations.

So, I suppose I've found a new wrinkle in the radio DX hobby. Seeing if any Longwave is actually out there -- I'm up to 4 stations, and counting!

Either way, I guess the lesson learned here is to not give up. Never give up.

This is my dancing Leprechaun. My former girlfriend, Sheryl Phillips, who is no longer with us (she passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in June, 2021) gave me this decoration for St. Patrick's Day in 2012. I sometimes leave him up on my wall because he's a happy looking guy. If you pull the string that is hanging just beneath his feet, he dances.

IN OTHER LIFE...

With that said, it's been Saint Patrick's Day here, a holiday I used to celebrate, but haven't in a long time. There is no reason to celebrate. My car is back from repair, but I'm still hesitant to use it. I guess the turmoil I went through having it towed 3-4 times, and a repair two and a half months ago that didn't fix the problem, made me very edgy about trusting the car. I'm certain the car is fixed, but every time I get in it, it's like "is it going to conk on me this time, too?"

I'll get there. The phone line / internet line was finally fixed after three tries (he found a dependable twisted pair) -- I suppose once the mechanics / techs get it right, you're set for another few years... That's life.

The weather here has been warming, and invigorating. I actually cracked open the window to my bedroom two nights ago, and I didn't freeze to death. :-) It's 45-55F outside at night now, and it's starting to feel like a normal Spring.

That helps. Hopefully it holds.

I've got a lot of stuff to get done around here this year, and for much of it I really need sunlight.

And with that, my friends, I'll close this article. 

Peace.

C.C. March 17th and 18th, 2024.

March 20th: I added 2 new loggings, and more information on how to use the PL-398 when DXing the Longwave band (tune frequency by frequency on 1 kHz bandwidth). I also added a little bit more info on Siskiyou County, California, as it is indeed a beautiful place.

AI & The Deconstruction of the Art of Photography

A barn on the old Beacon Coal Mine Road, just south of the Allentown neighborhood near Seattle. I took this pic long ago, with a Kodak Duaflex camera that I got for maybe $4 or $5 at a thrift store. Developed the film (110 Pan-X), and I made the print myself. Of course, this was during the film camera era -- obviously long before the 2000' s. The barn in this pic is long gone. The winding, narrow Beacon Coal Mine Road still looks like the gravel road it probably was when it served the (long gone) Beacon Coal Mine in the 1920's. It's been paved since probably the 1930's, though, but it always is a scenic, rustic foray into what the region used to look like before it got over developed.

I have been into the 'art' of photography since my college days, when a buddy of mine, Chris Styron, taught me how to frame a pic, focus the lens, use the F-stop creatively and accurately, use a 120mm telephoto or extender, "push" film, develop and print black and white photos in a darkroom, and the like.

Now, to most modern day folks who take pics with their smartphones, such terms like "F-stop", "120mm telephoto", and "pushing film" probably sound like alien lifeforms, but back in the days of the film-based SLR camera, they were standard operating terms.

Seattle area Rock band Rail (earlier known as Rail & Co.) playing at Highline College when I worked on the newspaper there. I took this with a Canon TX -- their working class model of SLR. It got the job done. The photos of this performance came out well, even without a flash, because Rail were starting to get big at the time, and they had a good lighting system. I "pushed" the film, something that was common among news and black and white photographers at the time.

Rail's lead guitarist, Rick Knotts, who was quite good. Rail started as a covers rock band, and then graduated to their own stuff. Knotts' Flying V was his mainstay guitar for years.

I was also heavily involved in the Highline College student newspaper at the time, and over my time spent working there, I contributed a lot of photos. Even after that, I stuck with photography, although it was placed on the back burner for a long time. My old Canon TX began to act up. Film got more and more expensive. Some film, like Kodak Tri-X and Plus-X (Plus-X was my favorite) were no longer available in stores. Even color slide film began to get rare to find. So I really didn't take many photos for a while.

When I got my first digital snapshot camera in 2004 -- a Sakar camera which was a Christmas gift -- it prompted me to get back into photography.

The Sakar was a 'cheap' digital camera, yes. But you could eke some decent, 640 by 480 pixel resolution (the VGA resolution that was common in the 1990's) shots out of it.

I even took some pics of a rock show on one of those $10 digital snapshot cameras in the mid to late 2000's, the band being the grunge band Sweetwater, who reunited after a several year hiatus. If I can find those pics, I'll post a couple here.

A pic of Rich Credo's Les Paul Gold Top that he played during "Head Down". Credo is (or was) the guitar player for Seattle Grunge band Sweetwater, who had a major label release in 1992 but never hit it as big as the big name Grunge era Seattle bands. They reformed in the early 2000's and a buddy of mine invited me to go see them with him when they played at the Crocodile Cafe in Belltown. Probably 2007 or so?

Adam Czeizsler, the singer for Sweetwater, when they reformed and played at Seattle's Crocodile Cafe in 2007 or maybe 2008? I took both of these pics on a little $10 Sakar digital VGA camera I got at Walmart or Walgreens. The camera was my first digital camera -- run off of one AAA battery, and the camera really was not much larger than that -- maybe two inches by one inch square. Uploading the pics to computer was done via a USB cable. It worked. 

When the mid 2010's hit, and I started this blog, I naturally upgraded. I got my Fuji snapshot camera in 2014 or 2015, and then I got my Nikon L32 when the Fuji froze up on me (the Fuji AX100 since fixed itself -- the microprocessor, which locked up when the battery got low, needed to completely bleed a charge -- I have a blog article on that).

All this said, I am not a terrific photographer, but I have some experience in the art. Many of the pics I have taken over the years, I have posted on this blog. 

This is a pic of some flowers at Highline College, which I took with a $24 Sakar camera, if memory serves. The colors were naturally saturated with some of these cheaper digital snapshot VGA cameras. I remember reading negative comments about Sakar cameras at the time. But if it weren't for the cheaper digital cameras like the Sakar ones, I wouldn't have pics of my cats, weekend vacation trips, and the like. My film camera was no longer working and I couldn't afford a good digital camera like a Fuji or Nikon at the time. So I made do.

However, one thing I have noticed over the past few years is there has been a decline in the quality of photography one sees on the internet. As more and more people use their smart phone cameras, and those cameras alone, you can see the graininess in the photographs. It's like when the digital snapshot camera began to be replaced by the IPhone in 2006 or so, the overall quality of photography dropped.

Now, I have a smartphone -- a TCL / Alcatel. I have used some of the pics here on my blog, as it's easier to just use my phone, instead of drag my Nikon L32 snapshot camera around with me. The photos are OK in quality for blog and some other uses. And they're certainly better than nothing.

But when you zoom in, that's when you see just how grainy cellphone camera pics -- even in 2024 -- really are. The "focus" is not much different from what you'd get with a Kodak Instamatic camera in the 1970's or 80's... It's single focal length, and limited focus. As for "telephoto" function on a smartphone, sometimes it looks good. Other times, it looks like crap, depending on the cellphone used. The autofocus can also play fast and loose with the clarity, depending on lighting. A computer app can only guess so much at the true detail in a 'telephoto' shot.

Randy Hansen playing a small pub on south Central Avenue in Kent, WA, in 2010. This was taken with a larger version of a Sakar camera, one with a different brand name but it came from the same factory. It was a 1 megapixel camera, the quality was not too much different from what you would get from a flip phone camera at that time. 

A pic of the 'famous' Selleck windmill. Selleck is an old lumbering town in the SE corner of King County, an area that still looks like something out of Appalachia. There used to be a bunch of lumbering, coal mining, and railroad towns in the area. By the time I was a kid, they all were ghost towns, really -- Selleck being one of them. I don't know what the windmill operated originally, but by the time I took this pic in 2009 or 2010 or so it was more decorative than anything else. I took this with the Sakar VGA camera I got as a gift on Christmas, 2004.

Digital snapshot camera shots from the 2000s were much better quality. They had larger aperture lenses, and real telephoto capability.

So, with all the tech available today, why are most of the photos similar in quality to a 1970's era Kodak Instamatic? Especially when there is so much computer power available in a smart phone's camera app?

The answer is pretty simple: DIGITAL SNAPSHOT CAMERAS HAVE REAL LENSES -- that's why.

Even with the latest versions of smartphones out there, the quality of the photographs aren't quite up to digital snapshot camera level resolution. This is because there are limitations -- physical, and practical. There is really only so much that a computer app can pull out of a tiny, 1 to 2 mm pinhole lens -- or even 2 or 3 pinhole lenses working together. The physics of lenses demands that you need real glass, and a real aperture, to get really high quality photographs.

Smartphone cameras (and to a certain extent the digital snapshot cameras that preceded them) use computer software to improve, sharpen, autofocus, and maximise whatever image, that makes it through their pinhole lens, casts onto the sensor. However, there's a point beyond which you're asking the software to sharpen, focus, improve imagery that isn't really there, because of the limitations of what basically is little more than a pinhole lens.

It's like the software uses a primitive form of AI to re-imagine what it thinks the camera pinhole lenses are 'seeing'. Most of the time, it works OK for social media posts and the like.

So, for most uses, I guess it's not really that big a deal. Considering the miniscule size of the lenses on smartphone cameras, it's amazing that they actually take decent photos at all. In a sense, it almost borders on the miraculous.

But zoom in? The photos are still fairly grainy.

The pictures work. But do they match the quality of photos from the SLR era (1970's through the 2000's)? Not really.

So, what does this say about the quality -- and resolution -- of photography in general?

Why are we celebrating the return of Kodak Brownie or Kodak Duaflex quality resolution (and believe me, I experimented with using those cameras in college, and sometimes you could get good results)? Is it a step forward, or a step backwards for photography overall?

Boots Jr. balancing on a fence in 2010. I took this with my Sakar VGA camera. If you zoom in, you can see it's a bit grainy. The sensors used in these VGA digital cameras weren't the best in the world, but they still gave you a halfway decent pic. If it weren't for my Sakar camera, I wouldn't have many pics of Boots. I got her in March 2007 and she died a couple hours into my birthday, in October of last year. 16 and a half years old.

Looking at pics like this you can sense the irony -- when you look at the resolution aspect of photography -- for all their expense and technology, modern smartphone pics are still a bit grainy.

THE DEMISE OF THE CAMERA, AS A STANDALONE DEVICE

OK, so I have made it clear that I think that relying solely on the smartphone "camera" -- although quite handy, and perhaps initiating millions of people into the idea of embracing the art of photography -- is a step backwards. It's handy, yes. At a distance, the pics look good. OK. But resolution? It's still grainy. Focus? It's marginal, but workable.

Even as late as the 1990's, you'd see people with cameras. Tourists would have cameras with them -- even during the digital snapshot camera era, which lasted from the early 1990's, to the late 2000's / early 2010's.

Today, seeing ANYONE with an actual camera is as rare as hen's teeth.

And it's doubtful that the smartphone is going to sprout a real camera lens -- by "real", I mean one that at least matches the 4.3 mm, actual polished glass lens that my Nikon L32 uses. Smartphones increasingly rely on multiple tiny lenses, and use app software to make up for what the lens and sensor do not actually see.

I don't think there is any turning back the clock, however. The smartphone -- a device that has replaced -- or will replace -- almost 100 different devices, is here to stay.

And its imprint on the nature of what we call photography is also here to stay. I don't think there is any denying that. 

I get it. I use my TCL phone's camera a lot. It's handy. The quality is marginal, but workable. It gets the job done. No one is going to zoom in on my pics to see if they're in proper focus, or there is any graininess. So, obviously, smartphone "cameras" are the dominant "cameras" being used probably by 99% of photographers today.

That said, a new wrinkle has appeared in the photography field that may completely change photography even further -- almost making the taking of photographs redundant for many, if not most purposes.

Welcome to AI.

THE ENTRANCE OF AI INTO THE PUBLIC'S CONSCIOUSNESS

Now, like many out there, I first learned about AI when various news articles mentioned it in past decades, and I think it was periodically covered on Art Bell's famous overnight radio talk show -- and Coast To Coast AM that succeeded it when Art retired.

I think AI was also mentioned in some Science Fiction novels and movies. "Hal", the famous self-aware computer in the futuristic 1969 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, would be an example. I suppose the robotic characters in the Terminator movie series would be another example -- highly "intelligent", self aware (or programmed to be self-aware) computers, programs, and robotic devices that would be able to learn, "think", and the like.

There was a real intense, futuristic 2001 Stephen Spielberg movie about an AI, robotic boy. The movie came out when AI was more or less a futuristic concept, thought to be impractical at the time the movie came out. Remember, in 2001, the average PC had less computing power than your average second-tier smartphone has today. 

The Spielberg movie was called AI: Artificial Intelligence. The movie was a fairly realistic look at a future where, because of depopulation, robots are used in large numbers. Many of the robots were androids -- realistic looking, robot humans. Couples who couldn't have kids could purchase a AI capable robotic child, who for all intents and purposes was just like a real child. The movie looked into some of the ethics of the use of AI and robots, and also has cloning included in its final scene. 

I first saw this movie in 2008 or 2009 or so, when I found the VHS at a thrift store. At the time, the concept of AI, AI robots, cloning, and the like struck me as all too futuristic to think practical to be used in my lifetime.

Then, in the 2010's there were articles in the newspapers about AI, and how it would replace actual human workers. I remember reading several such articles in the years 2011-2014. Some experts on computer tech and futurism speculated that AI would replace 50% of the labor in the industrialised world by the year 2050. That hasn't happened yet, obviously. But, so far, AI hasn't spread to the labor marketplace as much as it may in the future. As for AI robots -- that still seems decades away, although there appear to be a handful of prototypes.

Of course, over the past 3-4 years AI has become a much bigger deal, and it seems to make the news daily. There are YouTube videos of AI versions of the Beatles, Johnny Cash, and other famous artists singing stuff they would never otherwise sing. There are big tech companies like Microsoft and Google involved in AI. Elon Musk apparently is interested in AI -- its negative aspects, as well as its more positive ones. According to some in the indie publishing field, Amazon apparently has used AI bots in many of its internal operations. There were at least a couple news articles in 2020 about Amazon firing people via AI bot.

As I've mentioned previously on here, I'm an indie author, and the prospect of AI generated stories and books replacing fiction and non-fiction writers' works has been discussed on an author's forum I go to. The consensus is that AI may eventually damage the fiction writing marketplace -- but such damage may be a few years, or a decade or more -- away. There is also the thought that fiction readers may still want to read works written by actual humans -- not dissimilar to the non-GMO and organic food movements -- people often will prefer the 'real' to the computer or tech originated 'unreal'.

Either way, AI is obviously here to stay.

So, what does this all have to do with photography?

A lot, actually.

I'll admit, I hadn't been aware of AI's capabilities in producing photographs until recently. And what I have seen is shocking. There are still some glitches in the AI generated photos here and there, but the results sometimes can be alarmingly genuine looking.

I saw some pics that were unbelievably REAL looking. They are so real that some in the stock photo field (who go to a radio forum I hang out at) say that they are concerned that AI may eliminate the need for stock photographers completely.

WHO NEEDS A CAMERA ANYMORE?

After seeing a few of the AI generated photos involved, I did a little research, and it appears that some of the larger AI photo generation websites and apps gleaned millions, if not billions, of photographs off of the internet, and they use a mixture of those photos to create, or generate, the photos they produce. Although the AI can use the actual images, it's my understanding that AI also can meld the real images into composite, but real looking ones. I.e., AI can take five or six faces, and make a composite, generated face from the five or six real ones it gleaned from the internet.

You own mind does much the same, when you dream. If you've ever dreamed about a person you never met in real life, sometimes your subconscious is drawing characteristics from any of the thousands of real people you've seen in your life, and combining faces, body characteristics, and the like. AI apparently works similarly.

So, in an AI pic, maybe you'll see a young woman holding an apple. The apple's image may have originated off of one website -- an advertisement, perhaps. Or maybe it came from a stock photo. Or maybe the apple image originated from a photo someone took and placed on their social media, or a large internet photo webpage. Maybe the AI used images of two or three similar looking apples, and combined the images. The AI may actually alter the appearance of the apple, before it uses it in the generated photo image. Maybe the instructions told the AI to take a Granny Smith apple and make it look more like a Gravenstein or Red Delicious one.

As for the young woman, her face, her body, could be an amalgamation of three or four real female images from the millions (or billions) that the AI app pulled off the web.

Looking at such a pic, one wonders how close the image of the apple is to the real, original image (or images) that the AI app used to generate the apple in the resulting pic. One wonders how close the face of the young woman is to the face (or faces?) of the real woman that the AI used to generate the image of the woman in the picture. The clothes? Maybe those images came from ads or stock images. Maybe if the AI is "smart" enough, it creates its own, based on the standard template for the words "shirt", "dress", "pants", "shoes" etc. that were programmed into the AI, to depict generic styles of clothing.

Admittedly, I really don't understand how AI actually works. All I know is the little I've read on Stable Diffusion and another AI website, and a few postings elsewhere -- and it's really hard to understand the descriptions of how AI operates. To me, trying to understand how AI generates photos is like trying to understand calculus, or nuclear physics. In other words -- aside from the absolute basics -- to me, understanding how AI works is inscrutable.

But AI images are almost scary in their realism sometimes, and I can see a day where -- if one wants to show friends a pic of you at the beach -- you just tell the AI generator to take your own pic that you uploaded, and tell the AI to place you "on the beach". Any beach. 

In fact, I could conceivably tell an AI generator to place me on Scarborough Beach in Perth, Australia -- a place I've never been -- and if the AI is good, it could make the photo look so real that you would think that I've been there.

Get the idea?

If you have an app or program with that much image generating power, WHO NEEDS A CAMERA?

And that is the problem. If you -- like me -- used to really enjoy taking photos, and taking quality ones, AI may cause the average viewer of your pics wonder which AI generator you used to produce that pic of a cat, or of your vacation at the Ocean.

You may post pics of you on vacation at Cozumel, and people will ask which AI generator you used, because, "wow, that looks pretty real -- looks like you were actually there." Fat chance of you actually going to Cozumel. Let's say you didn't actually go, for whatever reason... The AI can make it look to others as if you actually went there.

Now, most people will still take real pics with the real cameras on their real smartphones and post them on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media just fine.

But when AI becomes truly ubiquitous, all bets are off.

My cat Squeakers, a couple days after I got her in August 2010. The pic was taken on a $24 Sakar camera. You can see the cases for it and another, backup Sakar on the inntable next to the kitty. She always was attentive. Very smart. Still is today, Thank God.

And pro photographers? Will they really have much of a job? Are there many actual pro photographers today? Who hires a photographer for a wedding anymore, when everybody has a smartphone? And with AI, they can make it look like you held your wedding in the Notre Dame cathedral, or some other fantastic setting. High school graduate pics have been another realm for professional photographers that AI is probably going to obliterate. With AI, the grad can be dressed however they want, with as many clothing changes as they desire, and will be depicted in whatever location they want to be "photographed" in.

In other words.... No pro photographer with a large format, digital SLR camera will be necessary.

And I clearly don't see much of a future for digital cameras with real, operating lenses -- the snapshot cameras, the digital SLR's, and the like -- once AI becomes so powerful you can dial up whatever you want on a computer screen. For one thing, cameras aren't cheap. And the rarer they get, the more expensive they'll get. I'm certain that there will probably still be a market for some higher end cameras -- new source materials for AI generated images will still be needed. And those new source materials will be taken with actual cameras.

And there will be always a marketplace for phone camera 'selfies', and the like. But serious photography? It's probably going the way of the Dodo.

We're entering into a world where "photography" is smartphone, pinhole lens cameras and AI, with AI taking more and more of a part in the field.

I'm not saying that's necessarily bad. It is what it is. But -- like many other fields I grew up to love -- rock music, electric guitars, photography, creative writing, MW and SW radio, etc. -- the advances in technology are transforming them slowly into oblivion, or altering them completely into something ultimately different from what those arts and fields were just 30 years ago.

I can see where smartphone manufacturers will include more AI into their photo and camera apps. The AI may improve the results, making the grainy images look more accurate in nature, and improve the focus. I'm certain there is already a certain amount of computing power included in your average IPhone or Android's camera apps that would be considered a form of AI -- but that tendency is only going to increase. As AI is more completely embraced, and it becomes more reasonably priced and compact enough to include in a device like a smartphone, all bets are off.

And that won't eliminate the fact that the use of the AI in a smartphone (or other) camera will only replace the real with something generated. 

There is an old adage, taken from a 20th Century novel: "The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there." (British author L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between, 1953)

One could say the exact same thing about the future.

Here's the Seattle band Rail playing what was their first MTV hit, "Hello". They went on to become a second tier hard-rock and metal band, touring the US and selling some albums, and then faded during the mid to late 1980's. But they are still well known here in the Seattle area as being -- along with Queensryche, Culprit, TKO, and Metal Church -- as some of the first hard hitting rock bands to come out of this region, and to get known nationally, previous to the Grunge era of the 1990s. 

For those few Seattle people who may read this blog, I tried to find "Rockin You, Rockin Us" or "You've Got A Lot To Live", but the results I got using the Blogger YT search came up with numerous, completely unrelated results. :-)

IN OTHER LIFE...

Lately my car has been laid up. It ran great, but would simply stall after a couple miles of driving, and it wouldn't fire back up. It turned out it was several problems with the fuel system -- the gas tank filter was clogged, the gas line -- being a 1989 item -- was leaky, the dual fuel pumps were faulty as well. And, naturally, thanks to the after effects of the pandemic, the repair work was waiting on parts.

So, for the past two months I have learned to live without a car. Which means I have had to learn to shop for food online. Surprise! It actually works. And I also have learned to stretch out my food bill, and I do it by making vegetable stews and soups. Potatoes, carrots, onions, celery, and a can of beans, or some chili boiled together in a saucepan can make a decent meal that lasts 2 or 3 days. Add a dollop from a can of beef stew and it tastes even better.

The weather here is still a bit cold, but we haven't had a deep freeze in a couple weeks... Just one or two nights where it was icy or frosty out. One light dusting of snow (maybe half an inch at most -- it melted the next day), and it got down to 22F one night (-6C). That night apparently set a record low for that day in March.

I'm looking forwards to Spring and Summer, when we can see the Sun again.

In my MW/SW radio hobby, I've still been hearing the same 200-300 stations at night, and DX conditions have been fair to middling. The high SW bands have opened up a bit, but the activity levels aren't as high as they were 11 years ago during the same part of the Solar Cycle.

But, it's better listening than it was 5-6 years ago, when many nights it was total crap conditions on MW and horrible on SW, so I really have no reason to complain. You get the ionospheric conditions you get, after all. It's sort of like the weather. You can't control it. You learn to live with it.

So I do. :-)

SOME GRUNGE, AND SOME HENDRIX, AND...

I shall end this with a vid of the band Sweetwater, which I posted pics up earlier in this article. Here is Head Down, my favorite track by them. It sounded just as good at the Croc when I took the pics I posted.:

Keepin' my head down..... Keepin' my head down... Sweetwater's hit album track from 1993. Except it wasn't a hit on the radio. Should have been, though. They played it at the Croc. This is the official vid, probably from MTV. Remember them? When they played music? That's right, another rock tradition long gone. Anyway, enjoy this bit of Seattle music history. The Stratocaster player performs an awesome solo. 

For those who aren't Jimi Hendrix nuts, Randy Hansen has been doing accurate portrayals of Hendrix's playing and sound for years. He is a Seattle native, and is quite popular in Europe -- more popular there than he is here. Here he is in Austria, playing Who Knows, a bluesy track Hendrix did with the Band Of Gypsys. This song is one of my favorite Hendrix blues riffs, and Randy does a great job of it here in Vienna in 2012.

A pro shot taken in Vienna in 2012 for Randy Hansen's DVD that year. Hansen is more popular in places like Austria and Germany than he is in the US. I've seen him twice, the first time at the Algona Tavern in South King County, the second time in Kent when I took the pic I posted earlier in this blog article. He's well worth checking out. Even does versions of other late 60's hits the way Jimi Hendrix would have performed them. I heard him do a great job of Crosby Stills Nash & Young's "Almost Cut My Hair".

Well, that about sums things up for this time around. I hope you all got something out of the article; it was just something that struck me while I was looking at some AI generated pics that looked so much like the real thing that it made me wonder how it would affect one of my former favorite hobbies.

I don't think AI will affect guitar or radio DXing much... It may replace guitar players with AI players, but there aren't that many guitar players on new recordings anymore, not compared to the 1980's or 1990's, anyway. And radio will fully embrace AI, completely eliminating DJ's and perhaps most announcers -- despite some experts who claim otherwise -- but AI can't affect DXing. 

So at least those two hobbies are safe. :-)

Peace,

C.C., March 7th, 2012 (woops. You can see where my head was at when I finished writing and editing.... back in time I guess.... It's actually 2024!)