We Did It Before! And We'll Do It Again! The N2FNH Magnetic Tape Library! (anencoreperformance)

For this week's (anencorepoerformance) of the Random Access Thought for the week ending November 22nd, the subject is: The N2FNH Magnetic Tape Library. Along with piles of WAV and MP3 encrusted memory sticks and stacks of Red Book compact disc audio storage devices, there is an older analog magnetic tape library here which houses everything from elements of sound design which I developed at various radio stations in years gone by to a fairly extensive beautiful music library on 10 and a half inch reels and dollar store cassettes.

But for the purposes of This Week in Amateur Radio, I culled (an archaic verbal equivalent to "downloading") material relating a little closer to the hobby. Our host this week is Cigman Krasnov who puffs his way through five stellar audio clips: three are off the air recordings from amateur radio repeaters along with an audio snapshot of my Number One and Only Son Zachary when he was but two years of age.

The last clip is the kind of thing I used to do when there was absolutely nothing else to do with my discretionary time. Sliced, diced and patched together in 1980, it took about two hours hunched over an Ampex 440 full track tape machine with a editing block and some splicing tape. The same exercise can be accomplished in what, maybe five minutes on a digital editor.

As a sidebar, I have two analog tape machines here, a ReVOX A77 for playback of all these moldy oldies plus a ReVOX B77 slow speed machine for air checking WBCQ and CoastToCoast AM. I have Howard Stern's terrestrial radio sign-off show along with one of Phil Hendrie's retirement shows.

For the (anencoreperformance) Random Access thought, the Ancient Amateur Archives plus all the latest happening amateur radio news and views, be sure to download (the new verbal equivalent for "to cull") This Week in Amateur Radio and This Week in Amateur Radio International before you do anything else. Mach Schnell. Or! Even better connect to: http://www.twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts Look for file number RAT080624_MAG1_BCQ.cab or RAT080624_MAG1_HAM.cab, right click and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the select RAF audio WAV file inside!