There is something about this island… one of my friends believes that Roatan has some other-worldly juju … a kind of weird electricity… that causes some people to go ga-ga goo-goo… or open a coffee shop… or start selling real estate.
Or open a radio station. Really it should be pretty simple right?
But it seems that anything that has to do with electricity here on Roatan- toasters, tvs, light bulbs, relationships, small battery powered devices (yes ladies, I’m deliberately avoiding the cheap shot… which of course is a waste of a good cheap shot…) and radio stations are really hard to keep in the “on and up-right” position.
Radio is a simple thing…
1) Take Music
2) Break It into Electrons
3) Send the Electrons up a wire to an ANTENNA
4) Have a monkey lala
5) Blast those little particles into the wind
6) Hope someone hears them
7) Have another monkey lala
8) Hope an advertiser is wise enough to let you help them spread the word about their business.
9) Monkey lalas for everyone…
It’s really difficult here…
First Roatan is a beautiful place thanks to the water around it… (SALT WATER… Ever see what salt does to snails… It does the same thing to electronics.)
Second Roatan is a beautiful place thanks to the jungle (lush canopy plus radio waves is like sticking your head in a giant box packed with absorbent cotton towels…) The radio waves get eaten up a lot by the dense jungle.
Third Roatan is beautiful because of these small rocky mountains (the same deep ravines that make it so cool to fly over zip lines don’t always let radio waves through. Radio waves follow the same path as those ziplines … and they don’t like ravines.)
This also makes it difficult for the internet companies and of course RECO… You put up a wire in one place and the wind blows, rain flows, and tree falls on your wire some other place… and while some of you in relationships hope that if falls on your spouse, we all hope it doesn’t fall on your house…
I know the guys and gals who work at these companies… not just the managers but line level people who get out in the field and solve problems and they take a lot of pride in what they do.
And this isn’t throw a switch kind of stuff. It’s math and electronics and I can tell you after mounting my antenna on a tower… sometimes very dangerous work.
So it’s really easy to complain about what doesn’t work when it’s not working. But I was complaining about ATT and Cox Cable and SDGE in the United States… And they aren’t dealing with “island ju-ju”…
They are easy targets because we become so dependent on them we never notice any problems, even though everyday there are problems that are being solved and resolved and we don’t know about those things because we aren’t affected.
And when we do have a problem… When systems fail and they break down, thanks to island juju or “Ju-Ju the Cabbie from Hell” who runs off the road and into a transformer pole while talking to his girlfriend on one phone and texting tonight’s date on his other phone, we whine like spoiled little bratty children… because we are so accustomed to everything being perfect and we never want to admit that things don’t work like that…
This being said it’s getting better…
Thanks to the men and women of Cable Color and RECO, 101.1fm has been able to solve a lot of little problems and knock on wood, the only time 101.1 will be off the air, is when there is a power outage that affects the transmitter area. And if I could get the Reytel guys to loan me some juice from their gigantic battery back-up on my hill, we’d never go off the air at all…
Unless I accidentally spilled a monkey lala on the transmitter…
Which reminds me.. There is a planned outage and WE WILL BE OFF THE AIR 7a until 12NOON FRIDAY March 13th… (all of West Bay) … West End will be off 1pm until 5pm…
FRIDAY THE 13th… See … there is that ju-ju…
2 thoughts about the post
Beck Reyes
How do I get to your live streaming station. As much as I like love KPRI there’s nothing that I enjoyed most and learned more from then Sets 102.1 it taught me to enjoy great blues, because of their respective choice in great music I have since then Bern a blues fan attend Bluesapalooza & Doheny Blues Fest on a yearly basis. If this is what you play blues and jazz then Honey I need in 100%. I’m a huge Chris Cantore listener but I was also a huge Madison listener also. I will gratefully support you station also…..faithful listener Becky
March 13, 2015 at 10:18 am
admin
Hi Beck… The easiest way is just to log onto the http://www.caribbeancloudradio.com page… it starts automatically… don’t push the blue button unless you want to pause it… we play a pretty eclectic mix of songs… in truth, we play about 2000 more songs than the average commercial radio station because we can… We play everything from rock to reggae to rhythm and blues to blues and even sprinkle in some country tunes that are artistic… I’ve listened to every song that we play… and made the decision personally. Sometimes the songs only make sense to me and that’s ok… if you think of this as a museum, I’m the curator… We also represent the people of the Island of Roatan in all there language diversity… we have Islanders, expats, Creole, Jamaican, and gringos like me… as it should be … because music is a universal language… it opens our hearts and opens our souls and if we listen, it opens our minds and lifts our spirits… Thanks for listening… Much Love, Madison
March 15, 2015 at 5:07 pm