Mountain Spirit's Blog

By Randall Richards, Mountain Spirit Media

Former University community radio host Jay Barnett and I have been putting our heads together for the past year on how to create a local radio station where we could re-broadcast interviews and internet content onto the FM band here in Wanaka, New Zealand. In effect, our goal has been, to do an end-run around the mainstream media’s iron grip on free speech, and their constant barrage of “The Single Source of Truth” narrative.

Enter Reality Check Radio, a recent initiative by Voices for Freedom. “RCR” has a great line-up of experienced, seasoned professional media anchors and interviewers as well as young gun content providers on the front lines of New Zealand’s information war.  Of course, hearing great interviews with guests from all over the world, informed and intelligent interviewees is great for the converted, but how do we get the messages out beyond the echo chamber?

Citizen Low Power FM (LPFM) Radio is just that. It’s one very effective way to reach that 35% of fence-sitters, who once hear the truth will recognize it when they hear it, and be drawn to hear more. They can smell it.
How does it work? It’s easy, legal, inexpensive and easy to set up.
There a few ground rules though:
– Choose from within a range of FM frequency bands allocated for local community radio on either the bottom or top end of the FM band.
– Don’t use a frequency that’s already being used. Refer to the online resource that shows what local community operators are already broadcasting in your area, and avoid using that frequency, Simply choose another one that is free within the allowed spectrum.
– Have an announcement hourly that states the operator’s name and contact info (in this case of re-broadcasting a streamed interview from Reality Check Radio or the like, that’s taken care of as it’s usually embedded in the interview somewhere.
– Use a wattage on your transmitter that’s no more than 1 to 1.5 watts in power.
That’s about it.
But how does this work?

The theme of this article is  “See one, do one”. The purpose is to give you enough information to purchase the needed gear and easily set up your own low power FM station in your house or even outside on a hill top. The linear range of these units are “line of sight” averaging between 5-10km depending your location and that of the antenna. Since the range isn’t huge, it’s important to find the highest ground or in our case, we may put one our moored boat with a battery pack. Currently the community station we’ve just fired up is in someone’s home, but we’re working on improving the antenna set-up for better coverage. By setting it up on the roof with a coaxial extension cord we should see better results. But the important thing is we’re live!

We’ve chosen 107 on the FM dial, which was not taken by the other operators in Wanaka. We plan on making up small stickers and putting them up lawfully around town to get the word out. The thing with these micro-stations is, since the range isn’t huge we’re looking to install multiple micro-stations strategically located in the community, throughout the Upper Clutha Valley. That way, we’ll cover more ground. The only consideration is when doing multiple stations, and if the signals overlap at all, they can interfere with each other, even cancelling themselves out in the fringe areas of their broadcasting limits. The simple solution is to us a slightly different frequency, say 107.2 FM so the two don’t interfere, and include that in any promo materials, such as stickers, with a subtext of the substation. If the two transmitters are far enough away from each other, no problem, use the same frequency (in our case, 107FM). This way, you can leap-frog the region for better coverage, alternating, in our case, between 107FM, and 107.2FM. It’s a mycelium network of truth.

So what’s needed? Below are some links to the basics including a review of what to buy and what to avoid in FM transmitters. We’ll be most likely installing one in our house, (once I check with the rest of the family, of course) with a roof-top antenna of some sort. Because of our location, we’ll have great reach of the Hawea Valley, but won’t interfere with the main town’s transmitter so we’ll stick with 107fm here at Mountain Spirit

Ok, here’s the fine print from the NZ Government’s Radio Spectrum Management page on low power FM broadcasting which confirms what Jay has shared about the parameters one needs to follow. The Radio Heritage Foundation’s page on Low Power FM stations, (LPFM) was a list of who’s on what frequency in your town. The LPFM Society of NZ seems like a great site for resources and to help further the cause of community broadcasting and transmitting.

Lastly here are some links provided by Jay on where and what to purchase in order to get your own community station going, so you can re-broadcast Realty Check Radio, your own content, or that which you pick off the internet.

Acknowledgements:

Thanks also to Gerry Pyves for his leadership as local Wanaka VFF Coordinator over the past difficult year and a half, through mandates and lockdowns, and his good natured approach and enthusiasm for LPFM. He recently passed the torch of VFF leadership in Wanaka on to a wonderful new coordinator.
For more info on the author head over to www.mtnspirit.nz/msm