Illinois: It seems that a group of folks headed out after the WRFU barnraising to pay a visit to Springfield, the home of Mbanna Kantako‘s Human Rights Radio. They found Kantako and the station in good spirits, albeit at extremely low power, thanks to a blown amplifier, which is now under repair.
Kantako celebrates his 18th nearly-uninterrupted year on the air in five days – a large portion of which has been archived on tape. Continue reading “Scene Reports: Illinois, Louisiana”
Tag: wrfu
WRFU: We're Really Functional, Usually
When Prometheus comes to town to throw down a barnraising, they’re not so much building a radio station as they are planting seeds for collaborative media production. This is because it’s really impossible to fully build out a radio station in three days, even with 100+ of your closest friends. Which means, after the weekend work-party, you still have a sh*tload of work to do.
The process of initial construction is merely the hefty push that launches the collaboration. WRFU’s transmitter and antenna are fully secure – it’s everything else that’s left to finish.
Hence I am remiss both at posting frequently and documenting the experience. Fortunately, lots of others did that: Continue reading “WRFU: We're Really Functional, Usually”
Radio Algiers Visited By FCC; Send Shouts to WRFU
FCC agents reportedly 
paid a visit (32:39, 15 MB, thanks V-Man and Indynewswire) to Radio Algiers in New Orleans on November 2. The station is off the air indefinitely; plans are to try and utilize the facilities of WTUL to help those desiring to speak truth to power acquire a spot on the local radio dial. Please note the irony: the FCC can make the rounds but FEMA is still missing in action. Hopefully the gear will stay in circulation.
More than 120 folks have signed up to help build our little LPFM station in Urbana this weekend. Registration will be accepted on-site, so it’s not too late to get involved. Even if you can’t make it, you can still participate in our inaugural broadcast. Visit this page and follow the instructions to give WRFU greetings, which we’ll broadcast as part of our inaugural smorgasbord show Sunday evening.
Barnraising in My Backyard
Just in case posts are light for the next month or so, you have been duly warned.
No longer content to engage & enthrall scores of volunteers with a plain old radio barnraising, Prometheus and the UC IMC take the mammoth task of building a radio station over the course of a singe weekend in stride. We’re not stopping at the FM AIRWAVES; we’re setting our sights on freeing the whole SPECTRUM for use by democratic communications as we look to the future of radio! … While some of us construct the studio & raise the antenna to get WRFU on the air, others will set up access points to expand and protect [an] open source community wireless network!
Registration for all of this fun closes on November 6. We can use all the help we can get.
UC-IMC Buys Post Office
~30,000 square feet, including massive open space, suites of offices, and crazy hidden nooks and crannies (where postal inspectors once kept secret watch on the staff).
$218,000 goes a long way in east-central Illinois. The IMC already has about a third of that on hand, and the rest, it is hoped, can be paid by renting out space to other groups and such. The potential for a performance space nearly dwarfs anything else available off-campus. The post office still maintains a station in the building, but as tenants ($1 a year for the next ten): Uncle Sam say hi to your new landlord! Continue reading “UC-IMC Buys Post Office”