Friday, May 17, 2013

17 May 2013 When in doubt, twirl




Cassi Creek:  When lost, listen to the music play.  If twirling coincides with the music, so much the better! 
          The development of satellite radio services has brought into being, something light-years from the radio programming available in my youth.   I grew up in the Midwest, that vast region between the mountains to the east and those to the west that was populated by 50 – 5000 watt sundowner AM stations.  That’s right, AM stations that signed off at local sundown. 
          The hours between dusk and dawn were the hours when we learned to try tuning in the 50,000-watt major urban market stations that were below the radio horizon, but sometimes could be caught on what was called “the skip,” the reflected signal bent back to earth by the Ionosphere.  That signal, often static laden and inconstant, did not cover the entire middle states.  That left large areas of the nation with no nighttime commercial radio to listen to.  And in concert, that left immense highway miles through nowhere between here and there where whining static and distant thunderstorms filled the AM dial. 
          The expansion of FM outward helped.  FM, however, is line of sight and has nearly the same gaps in coverage as those ancient AM stations. 
          Stay tuned for the miraculous * track

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