Thank you for continuing to help detour BLUES grow and become one of the top blues stations on the web! Over the past few months, we have added hundreds of new songs to our playlist. We have also added the show, Juke In The Back, Tuesdays @ 2pm east.

Some of our goals for 2011 include attracting new volunteer daytime hosts, adding even more music to our library, and upgrading our streams to allow people with slower internet connections to listen, and upgrading our streaming software. Are you interested in volunteering to do a live show on detour BLUES? All you need is music, a high speed internet connection, and we provide the rest! E-mail vertical@thedetour.us if interested. Stay tuned….

This restoration is going to cost a little extra this month. If you can spare a few bucks, please consider donating using the convenient links to the left. Even better, become a detour network supporting member by giving a little bit each month! Use one of the links to the left to select your membership level today.

Thanks for helping to keep the blues alive, and we apologize for the downtime!

detour BLUES will continue to broadcast as normal. We will be working on taking over John’s operation over the next month. New music and new shows are also in the works! Stay tuned for more blues as we remember John by continuing the station that he started.

Field Day is an annual amateur radio exercise, widely sponsored by IARU regions and member organizations, encouraging emergency communications preparedness among amateur radio operators. In the United States, it is typically the largest single emergency preparedness exercise in the country, with over 30,000 operators participating each year.

Since the first ARRL Field Day in 1933, radio amateurs throughout North America have practiced the rapid deployment of radio communications equipment in environments ranging from operations under tents in remote areas to operations inside Emergency Operations Centers (EOCs). Operations using emergency and alternative power sources are highly encouraged, since electricity and other public infrastructures are often among the first to fail during a natural disaster or severe weather.

To determine the effectiveness of the exercise and of each participant’s operations, there is an integrated contesting component, and many clubs also engage in concurrent leisure activities (camping out, cookouts, etc.). Operations typically last a continuous twenty-four hours, requiring scheduled relief operators to keep stations on the air. Additional contest points are awarded for experimenting with unusual modes, making contacts via satellite, and involving youth in the activity.

Field Day is held annually the fourth full weekend in June (June 26-27 in 2010). During the month of June, detour BLUES will be including PSAs during broadcasts in an effort to allow our listeners the opportunity to become aware of Amateur Radio and how to become involved!

The Williamsburg Area Amateur Radio Club, of which I am a member, uses an area on the Chicahominy River at the end of Brickyard Road off Old Forge Rd, near Toano, Virginia.   The club will once again venture out the ends of the earth for it’s Field Day exercise. This site is a favorite for the members as it has shelter, power, bathrooms and fewer creepy-crawly things to contend with. Chair-person, Dave W9NNK is the man to contact if you have anything to offer or need any information about this exciting event.

Thanks,

John – KJ4PQH

Broadcasting Studio

We use only one computer (AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core Processor BE-2300 1.90GHz, RAM 5.00, HDD 250GB) for our music, advertising, playback programs, our station’s jingles and signatures, etc. Our computer uses SAM Broadcaster 4.2.2 software produced by the SpacialAudio Solutions, LLC Company. All the sound is in the MP3 format and currently with constant data flow of 64 kbit/s. A decision was made to reduce the bitrate of the station from 128 to 64kbits/s.The reason behind lowering the bitrate is to allow those at work, on cell phones,  and other places where high speed internet is not readily available, the opportunity the listen to detour BLUES.

As far as our supplemental devices are concerned, we use CD players, MD players, cassette players, a record player, and a Roland VSR-880 digital multi-track recorder.

Our web camera lets you see what our hosts are doing in our broadcasting studio. If you wish to see them, click here.

So, the thought has come up here at detour BLUES concerning whether you, our listeners, like the idea of having a live broadcast where you can make requests or dedications and interact with the announcer (I’m talking about the Blues You Can Use show, heard M-F 1-5pm eastern)… or whether you would prefer the station to run automatically… selecting the songs to be played with no input from you. Your thoughts, comments, and suggestions would be deeply appreciated in this matter.