THERE'S A LETTER IN YOUR MAILBOX!!!!!

Here, in no particular order, are a few recent e-mail requests for an Official This Week in Amateur Radio QSL Card. The more traditional pathway of writing a reception report and mailing it to: This Week in Amateur Radio Post Office Box 30, Sand Lake, New York 12153 has given way in recent years to an e-mail request sent to n2fnh@capital.net. So, whether you receive the program over your local VHF or UHF repeater, copy the show over WBCQ or download the latest weekly Internet Podcast, you can get your own TWIAR QSL Card by taking pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. either way works!

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(Editor's Note: With reference to The Random Access Thought: The Story of Reginald)
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Great job be it true or fiction just a great story. Since you are in Buffalo I would have liked to heard a short WKBW clip worked into to show.
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Jerry Fisher
VE4SAT
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Hi, I didn't write for a QSL..But would like one....My comment was about the Security Gard/CB story. I don't know if this was true or fiction but a great piece. If it was in Buffalo I thought you could have worked a WKBW clip into the background... KW is Buffalo..The last time I was there was in 1999. I turned on the radio expecting KB to be rockin away instead a baseball game-times change. I lived in the Springfield,Mass area in the early 60's and remember WKBW and WTRY in their prime as rockers.
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Jerry Fisher
VE4SAT
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Hi, I am sure that a good segment of your audience are Viet Nam Era Vets...Stratovision was used during the early phases of the War. A mention of this would have been great.
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Jerry Fisher
VE4SAT
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Hi Jerry, Thanks for writing! During the course of research on Stratovision, there was no direct reference to Viet Nam era deployment but I have also heard that such techniques have been used by the USA in Afghanistan in recent times. The orginal concept for Stratovision took place in 1940's and 50's as a non-military educational apllication. But perhaps we have some core material for a future Random Access Thought. I've been on hiatus for a few months and plan to start cutting new programs soon, so this may be good follow-up. > Anyway, thanks for writing. I believe you wrote for a QSL Card. I was wondering if you received it. More later!
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Bill/N2FNH
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found your programs on backmasking and oija entertaining (though the latter was creepy). My friend in Pennsylvania recorded the programs and sent them on a CD to me (in Kansas city, mo) and I found them cool. My friend has lots of radio equipment and an huge antenna he strings through a fence, so he can record stuff from WOKIE and WBCQ, which is probably where he got your program from. I don't have much use for a QSL card (except as a coaster), but anything else would be cool. I guess my friend could use such a card, but I'm not sure. Anyways, please make more shows about weird or silly stuff and less rants about radios.
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"Wagner, Christopher"

Boxing! Branding! Bandwidth!

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Amateur Radio In The Print Media! No Matter How Obscure!

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Here's an FYI, an interesting backfield reference to amateur radio, that I came across while perusing The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell, as authored by Luca Turin. This book is first and foremost a volume about chemistry, molecular structure and how we and the other animals can detect them with our schnozzes. Anyway, here's the quote:

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Physics is unusual in that people either do theory or experiment, seldom both. Experimentalists laugh at the armchair generals who send them on fruitless missions or declare impossible something which turns out to be easy. Conversely, theorists frequently deride the glorified radio hams who, when faced with a brilliant idea, have the audacity to ask whether it is worth spending years testing it. Mostly, though, they can't live without each other.

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The Secret of Scent. Harper Perennial copyright 2006 by Luca Turin.
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ISBN: 978-0-06-113384-8 (pbk.)
ISBN-10: 0-06-113384-1 (pbk.)
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I got my copy at the Barnes & Noble (FREE PLUG!) at the Colonie Center in Albany, New York. Easy to find in the science section.
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BLOCKSHOT!

TWO! TWO! TWO AUDIO EXTRAVAGANZOS!

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Before I even begin to blogulate, let me advise that I am savoring (gobbling) the extremely addicting Thin Mint Girl Scout Cookie (I bought five boxes) that some shameless street pusher in my business office...mmmm...mmmhrff...that's good!

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Anyway, make a point to download not one but two This Week in Amateur Radio Internationals this weekend. One for this week ending March the 7th, and one for the week ending on February the 28th. Nestled at the core of each program: a tasty Random Access Thought. Not just any Random Access Thought! But two of my favorite and most heavily post produced efforts! I really should have posted for the 28th sooner because one of my more truly eclectic Random Access Thoughts: "The History of Backward Recorded Sound" was up for an encore performance.

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This unique and certainly quite esoteric offering first took flight in April 2005 as an exclusive production solely for play over the shortwave giant WBCQ. But now that TWIAR Internet podcasts are a weekly must do, this presentation is more universally available.

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Because it was top of mind at the moment, I decided to put focus on the arcane alchemy of reverse recorded sound, first engineered for use in film animation and motion pictures from the 1940s and then continuing the saga (eh...) into the 1960s with the emergence of Musique Concrete and tape music where, thanks to the development of the first commercially available analog audio synthesizers such as the MOOG, notes and noises of all sorts could then summarily sped up, slowed down, played backwards and even sliced and diced to achieve some truly remarkable effects.

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From the tape music, we move into the twilight zone of back masking in music, beginning with the Beatles' audio masterpiece Number 9, where subliminal and maybe not so subliminal messages were parked in reverse gear just so us kids could spot our fingers on the vinyl and force the record backward against the groove and the needle to hear the words of...SATAN???? Then! An easy leap to the equally hellish commentary to be unearthed deep within the folds of reverse speech where the conscious mind says the nice politically correct words in forward time but speaks the not-so-nice, not-so-politically correct realities in time reverse.

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Lots of backward noises, forward sounds, reversed melodies and forward tonalities abound! The RAT as a separate element will soon be available for download at http://www.twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts The WAV file to watch for will be RAT0504O2_BACK_BCQ_R1.CAB. In the associated promo, PROMO_RAT_BACK_BCQ_R1.CAB, a young nine-year old Zachary learns how to say his name backwards into to a microphone and then play the recording backwards so what he said forwards is now heard backwards, which was his name said backwards which now sounds like he said it forwards with a Swedish accent. Savvy?

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This photo taken with my Sony PSP displays a edit screen with two audio clips. Both are the sound of a cast iron bathtub being dropped. Both are ready to be played backwards.
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Whereas "The History of Backward Recorded Sound was a Sonic Extravaganzo in the extreme, "The Story of Reginald" allows my extensive post production technique to stroll down a more dimly lit, more tightly refined and far more subtle three o'clock in the morning avenue in sound.
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But Mister Continelli is at his best as a teller of tales, when he sits back, pipe in hand, with a thin wisp of tobacco fragrance rising above, to tell us True Believers one hell of a really cool bedtime radio story. "The Story of Reginald" is Bill's recollection of working as a security guard at a dog biscuit plant in 1970s Buffalo, New York. The tale intertwines radios, a CB walkie talkie bad guy, radios, social intrigue, radios and radios. Savvy?

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Adding environmental sound to Bill's reminiscences required subtlety. Background ambiances such as Buffalo's city traffic was aged, distant, muted and tinged with brown. Effects for radios were quite authentic though in some cases, were played in reverse to mask content since what might have been heard on track may also have been inconsistent with the story line. "The Story of Reginald" is a must save for your MP3 player personal library.

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You can download this week's This Week in Amateur at http://www.twiar.org/ or even better yet, connect to: http://www.twiar.org/n2fnh/RATParts and look for file number RAT071127_REGI.CAB. Right click on the title and "Save Target As" to your hardddrive. Use your WinZIP or IZArc to extract the select RAF audio WAV file inside!

What's This? My Train of Thought was Derailed!