For decades, I’ve been fascinated with radio and TV reception and the stations themselves, and I’ve gone on dozens of roadtrips short and long that combined my media hobby with more conventional tourism. It’s always a balancing act trying to make sure I don’t get so engrossed in my media hobby that I become distracted from the glorious places I’m visiting and the people I’m supposed to be spending time with.
Back in the analog era, I was one of those guys who had a whole bunch of cassette recorders, and I was even known to lug a VCR into a hotel room with a stack of blank tapes. I’m glad technology has improved over the years!
First, I started recording radio stations using conventional audio programs on a laptop. Then, I found these:
These little C.Crane CC Witness radios are great for media hobbyists. You can schedule timers to record stations, which is ideal for someone who wants to get a lot of airchecks while they sightsee or sleep.
I initially bought one and liked it so much I bought two more! I’m glad I did because it appears they are no longer being sold, at least not directly from C.Crane. Perhaps this is because of issues with reception, battery life, and software, but there’s no need for me to detail those concerns if the product is no longer available.
One way to overcome the reception problem is to use the line input on the CC Witness and use another radio as the source.
The two radios that I use for line input recordings are the C.Crane CC Skywave, which is excellent for its price and size, and an Insignia (Best Buy store brand) HD radio, which is terrible. The Insignia HD Radio gets extremely poor reception so I only use it to record HD subchannels. (I still miss two far better tiny Insignia HD radios intended for runners that worked much better, but that both suffered headphone jack failure and are no longer sold.)
The CC Skywave is pretty small and I like to throw it in my backpack to take on hikes to remote peaks, so I can scan the band while I enjoy the view.
You can also see a Terk AM antenna in the background of the CC Skywave. These type of loop antennas are great for improving AM reception, but they won’t overcome local interference, which is prevalent almost everywhere these days.
If you search online, you will also find a number of lower-cost radios with recording functions. I bought one called a “Tivdio” a couple of years ago. Since it doesn’t have a clock, there is no time or date stamp for any of the recordings. Also, the recording is limited to a medium bitrate, which is subpar for FM recordings, so I use this radio only for AM recordings.
But really, for radio recordings, the up-and-coming tech seems to be software-defined radios. These are radios such as the Airspy that run on a laptop. With the Airspy R2 you can record a nearly 10 MHz chunk of bandwidth and scan the dial when you get home! (No, this is not a paid post.)
I showed a screenshot of an SDR recording on my post about my recent visit to Mount Wilson:
The software I’m using here is SDR Console, which seems to be the only SDR program (at least that I’m aware of) that allows 10 MHz bandwidth recordings. You also get to see the RBDS data.
You can essentially record the entire FM band with just two recording sessions. The data recording can be played back using the SDR Console program at a later time and place. You can scan the dial just as if you were there! You can also record stations as traditional audio files (either from the data recording or live), and you can have multiple “receivers” open at any given time, allowing you to record multiple stations at once.
The 10 MHz bandwidth recordings are huge — they’re about 72 GB for a half hour! A bigger issue is that the wide bandwidth recording process uses a lot of your CPU, so it can quickly overwhelm a cheap laptop like the one I have. (I’ve had a lot of crashes and failures.)
Most importantly, you have to make sure you’re buying the right receiver if you want to do a wide bandwidth recording. I first bought the newer model, the Airspy HF, but found that it couldn’t record a wide bandwidth, so I then bought the Airspy R2.
Of course, this is just one of many uses for SDR’s. They’re used a lot more by amateur radio operators, and a lot of the documentation is better understood if you are a ham and/or an IT person (of which I am neither). But going through the learning curve makes the hobby a lot more efficient and fun.
Unfortunately, after a year of fun and experimentation, the micro USB plug on my Airspy R2 broke on a roadtrip a couple of weeks ago. Now I have to see if I can figure out how to fix it or just buy a new one and be more careful.
For TV recordings, VCR’s are obviously no longer required or even desired. I tried using some recording programs on my laptop over the years and found the process to be unreliable and frustrating, but maybe I just never found the right program (or laptop).
Instead, I’ve picked up a series of cheap digital TV “converter” boxes at Menards that have a slot for a USB sticks for recording. They’ve sold a number of different models over the years. Some of them run on DC power, meaning you can actually run them off a portable battery charger!
The one I like the most is this tiny QFX box, which is smaller than an old VHS tape, but I haven’t seen it at Menards lately — the unit they have now is slightly larger and has only an AC plug.
Of course, one major change over the years is that online streaming of both radio and TV has made it unnecessary to go on a roadtrip to hear and watch out-of-town stations. But there is something special about the actual over-the-air sound of a radio station, with the actual local commercials, audio processing, and maybe even a little static. For TV, you may be able to stream out-of-town newscasts online, but what you see online is different than what people are actually getting in the local market. So I think I’ll continue media roadtripping!
So, what am I missing? What are your secrets for efficient media roadtripping? Let me know at [email protected]!