Talk:WQAX

To be fair, I was only involved at WQAX for the summer of 1992, when Sean Sowder talked me into doing a show. Eric Sinclair was much more involved and still keeps the WQAX website, and there were a lot of other people much more religious about keeping the station alive. Unfortunately, I don't know many of them, because everyone was gone for the summer when I was involved. --Jkonrath 10:29, 8 May 2006 (EDT)

What is Cable FM?

Sorry, I'm from the sticks. I don't understand, what is the difference between Cable FM radio and normal FM radio? Is this the type of radio that you usually find on the higher or lower cable channels in bigger cities? I found this article on Cable FM on wikipedia that provides some info, but its still not quite clear. If it is something you listen to on TV, was there any picture? -- Mark 23:26, 21 May 2006 (EDT)

I think Cable FM refers to the transmission medium. My understanding of the FCC regulations is that you can't just bring up a station on a broadcast frequency without buying a license. That's known as a "pirate" radio station. Some colleges get around this by utilizing the campus coaxial cable system. Cable is really just RF sent over a wire instead of broadcast. (At times, it can also leak out, which is why the cable company always tells you to cap your unused cable outlets. The FCC apparently does regular flyovers to check for the RF leak of the city and will fine Insight for it!) I believe the only way to hear the station is to make contact between your antennae and the coax. Thus, it gets a pretty small audience. -Chrobb 06:56, 22 May 2006 (EDT)

Chris is correct. The only way to get WQAX was to connect a cable line (using an little coax to antenna converter) to your stereo. Part of the problem we had at WQAX was that we endlessly had to promote this option to our potential audience; I have some business cards showing how it worked which I should scan in for the wqaxproject.org website... There were two other interfaces between WQAX and the cable system worth mentioning - we used a cable 'backfeed' to get our signal TO the cable company at the time, and had to set this up at any venue (the Uptown, the Bluebird) where we wanted to do a live event from. And second, for various points in time WQAX was broadcast at lunchtime on BCAT; this became a popular, but controversial shift which had a larger audience (thus the controversy if mistakes or poor taste was exercised in programming...). -Esinclai 22:10, 23 May 2006 (CDT)

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I briefly shared a "show" on WQAX as a middle-school student with my friend Daniel. It was tremendous fun. One never knew whether anyone was listening! The studio itself was fantastically crowded with tight shelves full of records. Daniel and I focused heavily on Jello Biafra's spoken word albums, along with bits of Firesign Theater. -Ian