Portable Audio Equipment

NPR’s ‘Car Talk’ duo calling it quits (Minneapolis Star Tribune)

The chatty mechanics on NPR’s “Car Talk” are pulling in to the garage.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

How does a radio station job work? And can one run without people? Can the music run by itself?

I am writing a movie about the apocalypse. In it, the characters listen to the radio, and it zooms in, and shows the radio station with everybody dead, but music still running. Is there a way to “shuffle” music, or make it run for about a week or so without humans being around? And can you describe more clearly what the job is and how you would do it.

Do you have Itunes? Put a crapload of music and hit shuffle.

Portable radios With DIGITAL TV Audio Bands Available?

I have a Zenith AM/FM/TV/Weather Radio that I have enjoyed (mostly for its ability to pick up VHF channels 2-13) for years, which I assume will become obsolete (at least the TV band) in February ’09. It’s on its last legs, but I can’t see getting a new one (I AM right in my assumption that the VHF band on it will become non-functional, aren’t I?) Therefore, my question is twofold: 1) will anyone be (able to be) making portable radios with digital TV sound, and if so, 2) are there actually any on the market right now?

>I AM right in my assumption that the VHF band on it will become non-functional, aren’t I?

Yes, unless you happen to live within range of any remaining analog stations (translator, low power, Mexico & Canada).

>2) are there actually any on the market right now?

No.

>will anyone be (able to be) making portable radios with digital TV sound

It’s possible to do this but they would have to add most of the parts that are in a converter box to do it. I doubt if there will be much of a market for them at the price they would have to charge.

By comparison, it costs very little to add analog VHF TV sound to an FM radio because analog TV sound is sent by FM.

Radio communication to other side of world?

Me and my dad decided for a cool summer project we wanted to build a solar powered UAV glider. My biggest challenge is to be able to communicate with it but also it communicate back, I would like it to send video feed from a camera, I want it to fly overseas, I live in MN. How can I communicate with it? I was thinking of using a satellite phone but the minutes are very expensive and the phones are $200 and up, I have a satellite dish I can use as the transmitter/receiver here but what can I use on the aiplane? The plane would go beond the curvature of the earth. My dish is ku band. Should I use a High freq. Radio? They can bounce off the ionosphere and go thousands of miles but I don’t think they could go as far as I’d like

The cheapest thing to use for communication that goes a long distance would be a short wave radio. But to go the distances you would need one of those 100ft towers in your back yard to broadcast from and you would have to find a frequency no one else in the whole world was using, otherwise their frequencies could control your plane too. So with the cost of the tower and a great radio your looking at a small fortune because your actually making a broadcast studio.

I think your satellite phone idea would be the best. You get a specific frequency just for your phone that no on else gets. Also you could put GPS on it because you have to know where your plane is and you have to know where bad weather is and to be able to steer your plane away based on weather reports and all.

You could put a autopilot type steering device on your plane , so that you only have to communicate with it every hour or so just to see where it’s at

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