KCHUNG

I discovered KCHUNG radio in of (all places), the Los Angeles Review of Books newsletter. They plugged an art showing of Keith Rocka Knittel. Apparently he holds an MFA from CalArts, and also hosts the Everything Must Go! radio show on KCHUNG. The radio station broadcasts on 1630 AM in Los Angeles. More here.

Their Part 15 status limits them to 15 watts on the AM band. This lets them squeeze into a limited but valuable slice of the Los Angeles radio band. They are on the same frequency as KLSD-AM in San Diego, and only 10khz away from KWRM-AM in Corona. But these stations are 120 and 50 miles away respectively. So in the daytime I'd except no trouble. KLSD powers down to 1000 watts at night, but KWRM only powers down to 2,500 watts so I'd expect a bit of interference there. KTDD-AM in San Bernardino is about 60 miles out and powers down to 600 watts at night and is 10 khz away so they too should be no issue either.

KCHUNG Radio was started by Mountain School of Arts student Solomon Bothwell in March of 2011. Their primary point of  presence beyond the radio band is their website which was created by Harsh Patel, and Luke Fishbeck. It's sole studio sits above a Pho 87, a restaurant In Chinatown. Though in 2013 it did broadcast for three-months as part of a "residency" at the Hammer Museum . A KCET-TV  Channel 28 interview he was described as follows:

"...Solomon Bothwell is here. He is tall, slight, and deceptively confident. He started KChung and the rest came into place, five nights a week, with 25 distinct shows of scheduled air-time, between the hours of 7 p.m. and midnight."

They further described the KCHUNG staff as "Los Angeles' bohemians." Just a reminder, bohemians aren't lepers. They are people who have informal and unconventional social habits, especially artists and writers. During that interview The Faraday Trippers were performing live. Their themin-based shoegaze experiment certainly fits that bill. The staff has expanded to some 100 DJs and a long waiting list. More here, here and here.

KBUX, The Underground

 Your non-traditional broadcasters have it hard. Stations like KBUX "the underground" seem to have disappeared. Their former domain, www.underground.fm now redirects to ohio.fm, which webcasts on Tunein.com.  The new domain was registered in 2008 and oddly Ohio.fm was registered in 2006 so the transition overlaps by some two years. A cryptic note has them off air in October of 2006.

"...we may be down, but we’re far from out. Several days ago, our Ohio Union studio suffered a fatal blow after a major water drain leak forced us to suspend regular programming. Rather than rushing to restore the waterlogged studio, we’re now entirely focused on our mid-November move to The Drake Performance and Event Center, located on the west side of campus along the Olentangy River. In the meantime, our sports department will continue to broadcast live games, including Saturday's match-up between the Buckeyes and the Indiana Hoosiers. Tune in, tell your friends, and... GO BUCKS!"

A note from GM Adam Carrington in January of 2007 announces their return to webcasting. But by April of that year he announces another interruption "Effective immediately, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are suspending our music programming. We expect to resume regular programming sometime during the month of April." There have been no updates since then so I presume all non-webcast functions ceased prior to Fall 2007. So let's rewind to the story of the 1998 bestiality flyer. It was a turning point to say the least. More here.

"Student radio station KBUX is coming under fire for flyers, including one that features the photo of USG Assembly member David Overeem alongside the statement, "College Republicans and Bestiality." The flyer featuring Overeem [sic] ‹an advertisement for the news and debate show "Ignoreland" hosted by DJ Nathan Crabbe..."

It is the sort of event from which many stations cannot recover. Without a university to float a station many will not survive on transient student support alone. While KBUX was not a FCC licensed facility, printed obscenity can still violate Miller v California. But that didn't happen. Without the FCC as an enforcement body, and with the station operating at some 265 milliwatts, the event went unanswered at least for KBUX. Mr. Crabbe may have had his own consequences.

KBUX was in operation from about October of 1995 to as late as 2002.Different accounts describe it as low power, or just a carrier current station. In truth it was both. the station broadcast on a cable TV channel (not carrier current) and operated a part-15 transmitter on 91.1 FM. A 1997 article in Cringe covered the technology in some loose detail:

"...At the time they used a low wattage transmitter and worked out a deal with UNITS (OSU's cable service provider to the dorms) to broadcast their signal over cable television. A blank black channel greeted the listener as high quality audio ran over their cable connection instead. In order to be heard by the rest of campus they needed a transmitter."

KBUX began streaming in 1998, and were still streaming in 2001 according to an article in Forbes grousing about the foibles of webcasting. They were also on a more-or-less up to date 2002 promo list  from my personal archives. They used the KBUX calls from 1994 to 1999, and operated as The Underground from then until 2008 presumably. Living in the shadow of NPR behemoth WOSU, it didn't have much of a chance. Though The Underground did briefly have the 12:00 AM. to 2:00 AM slot on WOSU around 2000. It wasn't a formal share-time agreement as The underground lacked a license. After losing out on the LPFM license window in 2001 the Underground seemed to lose steam.

But the rest of the story (to quote Paul Harvey) starts long before1995. There are multiple accounts that credit it's existence as KBUX to a student organization named ActiveRadio. A history page from their old website has them active as early as 1992. But even that had it's precedents. KBUX was not the first student run station on campus. In June of 1971 WOSR signed on, with Mason Serle as PD. The mailing address was from a residence hall known as Drackett tower. It may have been the studio address as well. The station played top 40 in those early years, but segued to rock by the early 1980s. From 1983 to 1991 electronic musician Mark Gunderson (of The Evolution Control Committee) was involved as an OSU student. By his accounting WOSR  folded in 1992. I quote him at length below:

"The most frustrating part was always the uncertainty as to just how many people were making the effort -- and it was an effort -- to listen to the station at all. The station broadcast on a difficult-to-receive frequency in the dorms and then over cable radio, which was an rare optional attachment cable TV subscribers could rent to tune into things in stereo. This meant that a listener had to make a fairly determined effort to hear the station at all....This dwindling listener ship dovetailed into a dwindling staff, and combined with the usual shortages of money and resources (which were magnified intensely when WOSR lost most of its funding one year) the station spiraled to its eventual death. I was actually surprised that the station held on as long as it did... I remember each new quarter being surprised that meetings were going on as usual, in spite of fewer staff, virtually no money, and disintegrating equipment."

But even that may not have been the beginning. The station experimented with wireless as early as 1910. W.L. Upson, an assistant professor  in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Roy A. Brown built an 8XL station that year. When WOSU signed on as WEAO in 1922, they didn't change calls to WOSU until 1932 and did have actual students at the station in those early years. More here. The stories about pirate operations like WMRH and WOIO are a but more apocryphal, but probably true.

Ohio State University has had one of the largest student bodies for decades. As of this year they are the third largest, just behind Arizona State and U of central Florida. Source [here.]  Yet they have no student radio station. As Gunderson once said "In the years that followed I would see how just about every college I found had a fairly thriving student-run radio station to go with it. When I told the people who I met that The Ohio State University didn't have a similar station, they were always beside themselves with disbelief... To this day I'm still asked why Columbus has no station. I hope the day comes when I'll never be asked again."

Silent Disco is Radio

Silent disco was something I never expected. I never expected to see a club-floor quiet except for the shuffling of feet, and the couples chit-chatting in corners. It looks like performance art by very imaginative mimes. Sometimes they sing along or clap, but if you don't have a radio and headphones you cant follow the program. In reality everyone in the room is dancing to the same beat, but it's broadcast over a micro-powered transmitter operating under Part 15 (in theory). This was brought to you by the power of radio. Here's a random one from Youtube.

This wasn't exactly what the FCC had in mind when they drafted the Part 15 language, but it covers it quite nicely. The part 15 regulations permit broadcasts originating from unlicensed transmitters to an effective service range of approximately 200 feet. That's from the FCC's own webpage. It does not cite HAAT, wattage, or ER. Without a doubt there are extremes they'd find objectionable but the guideline stands as the sole legal goal post on that page. More Here.

If you actually read the whole part 15 rules.. it's more detailed but really still boils down the the 200 feet. More here. If you want to get picky that works out to 250 uV/meter a measured at 3 meters (~ 10 feet) and a radius of 200 feet. This is actually somewhat difficult outdoors, but not indoors. Indoors we have walls. It over simplifies the situation to say so, but.. walls are lossy. So as a result, the radio/club DJ is relatively well contained to the room they're performing in.

LowFER, MedFER, HiFER, BeFERs

Every time I read a new book on radio, any arena of radio past present or future I encounter new jargon. This set of terms I found in reference to the body of regulations known as Part 15. One important section under Title 47 of the Code of Federal Regulations. These rules cover anything that emits RF deliberately or inadvertently in these regulated bands. So while these rules apply to certain broadcasters the apply equally to your laptop and cordless telephone.

LowFERs are Low-Frequency Experimental Radio and they are the strictly experimental communications in the low frequency band. Many of these broadcasters are hams, but no license is required to operate here under 1 watt of power. LowFERs experiment with longwave signals below 500kHz. The part 15 rules limit the total length of their transmission lines antenna and ground lead to 15 meters. The have a club of course http://www.lwca.org/

MedFERs are Medium-Frequency Experimental Radio (as you might have guessed) and operate between 510 and 1710 kHz. This is called the mediumwave band. Broadcasts can only operate at a power of up to 0.1 watts. There is good list of these broadcasters here.

HiFERs operate in an even higher frequency band. It's 14kHz-wide band and centered at 13.56MHz. But here power is restricted to a very weak 4.8 milliwatts.

Also related are BeFERs and 49ers. BeFERs are licensed in canada to a narrow band between the Low and Medium wave bands at about 6,700 kHz. 49ers operate at about 4,900 MHz a designation legal in both Canada and the U.S.
Popular operations in these ranges are more code, some digital broadcasts and beacons. Some even send out their own QSL cards. As low as the limits are on power, some operators have managed to send a signal over 1000 miles. Any type of modulation is permitted within the band. The most important rule is that A Part 15 operator must not cause interference to any licensed service. But in turn, they must tolerate any interference from other licensed services. If that wasn't clear enough, the man made interference is endemic to these bands. We call it QRM. There are some clips of beacons in the noise here.

Could you be illegally using a device that does not comply with part 15? Yes you could. You may never be caught, but it's not entirely uncommon. If you remember last year it came out that almost all XM and Sirius FM translators (the thingee that makes it come out your car radio) operated illegally above their allowable power. The idea that other devices have the same problem is credible.