<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If one checks out the WOAS-FM website (<\/span>www.woas-fm.org<\/span><\/a>), one can find an archive of FTV articles stretching back several years.\u00a0 The site is hosted by the Regional Educational Media Center (REMC) that is part of the Intermediate Schools District (ISD) office located in Hancock, Michigan.\u00a0 The ISD office is responsible for providing educational services that school districts in the Western Upper Peninsula would not be able to provide on their own.\u00a0 The Regional Educational Media Center has always been part of this consortium.\u00a0 Even though the technology they employ has evolved since I arrived in Ontonagon in 1975, their mission has not.\u00a0 In order to explain how important REMC is for our mission at WOAS-FM in 2020, we need to go back thirty years or so to the time computer technology was first making inroads into the local educational scene.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When the new fangled thing called the internet first became available in our schools, Lois Gregory and I used to marvel at how silly it all seemed.\u00a0 Lois had an office tucked into the corner of the old Ontonagon Area Schools Jr-Sr High teacher\u2019s lounge (the space now occupied by the Caring Closet).\u00a0 My desk and computer station were located in the back of Room 109 in the same building, separated from Lois\u2019s desk by a concrete block wall.\u00a0 We often laughed about emailing each other.\u00a0 It involved sending messages to the computer servers at the REMC office sixty miles away so they could be delivered to a computer that was located on the other side of a brick wall, all of three feet away.\u00a0 As they say, you have to start somewhere.\u00a0 When the Board of Education in Ontonagon decided to take the plunge and wire our buildings, we went straight to fiber optic cable.\u00a0 A group of teachers volunteered to help string the cables around the building to speed up the process.\u00a0 Once they were connected to a central hub by the tech crew of REMC employees, we went from \u2018snail-paced to 100 mph\u2019 with our classroom internet service.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first steps in the process of linking our building to the world wide web involved a tech guy in one room hollering port connection numbers down the hall to another tech at the central hub.\u00a0 They were able to improve this method of communication when I loaned them the handheld CB radios we kept on hand for our orienteering hikes in the Porkies.\u00a0 As with any newly installed technological system, there were bugs in the system that required the servers to be rebooted from time to time.\u00a0 If something crashed, I would get a phone call directing me to the central hub (located then in Room 117) where I would either press this switch or that button, or in some cases, recycle the power to see if that fixed the problem.\u00a0 There were no phones in the classrooms yet, so I would trot back to the office and if it worked, I got a \u2018thanks\u2019.\u00a0 If it didn\u2019t work, there would be some grumbling on the other end of the line indicating that someone would have to come from Hancock to do some more extensive exploration of the problem.\u00a0 The whole operation became smoother and less cumbersome as time passed.\u00a0 Eventually, all of the internet connections to school districts west of Ontonagon (including the ISD\/REMC satellite office located in Bergland) passed through our building.\u00a0 If our hub went down, everything from Ontonagon to Ironwood also went dead.\u00a0 I won\u2019t pretend that I actually knew what I was doing, but the ISD was happy that they had someone to call if a switch needed flipping or the power needed recycling.\u00a0 They charged a small fee for email accounts using the system back then and the ISD picked up the tab for me as a small \u2018thank you\u2019 for being on call.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Prior to the district being connected to the web with the fibre optic cables we helped install, the district did have a computer class.\u00a0 The older computers relied on phone lines that were slower than the newly installed lines.\u00a0 Our new high speed lines finally gave us a reason to begin upgrading the old computers to match the performance of the new connections.\u00a0 The first small cadre of teachers who received the newer computers were offered a chance to attend a training session at the ISD building in Bergland.\u00a0 It was a B.Y.O.C. (bring your own computer) affair as the ISD\u00a0 did not have their computer lab up and running yet.\u00a0 We expected this would be a \u2018how to use your computer\u2019 training session and were totally surprised when the instructor greeted us.\u00a0 He said, \u201cOkay, the first thing that we are going to do is pop the cover off your computer so you can see what makes them tick.\u201d\u00a0 Okay, this sounded familiar.\u00a0 The first day of Driver\u2019s Education usually started with a peek under the hood for the benefit of those students who had never seen an internal combustion engine up close and personal before.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As we gazed at the internal workings of our brand new computers, the instructor handed out little tool packets.\u00a0 He continued, saying, \u201cThe best way for you to not be scared of your computer is to take it apart right down to the frame, and then put it back together again.\u00a0 It is not as complicated as some people make it out to be and I assure you there are very few things you can do to actually hurt your computer.\u00a0 Oh, by the way, did anyone bring one of those little cables to clip to your chassis to prevent static shocks?\u201d\u00a0 A couple of attendees put their hands up.\u00a0 \u201cThrow them away,\u201d the instructor told them, \u201cI will show you how to do this without them.\u00a0 If you do manage to do something stupid while wired to your computer, you could get hurt.\u00a0 Now let\u2019s begin.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0By the end of the second day, we had reassembled our computers and all were still in working condition.\u00a0 We spent the rest of the time on the practical uses of computers in the classroom.\u00a0 For a period of time, I actually felt like I understood the inner workings of a computer enough to do some of the upgrades.\u00a0 As the system grew more complex, REMC began consolidating more of the programming and fix-it functions under one umbrella.\u00a0 Early on, many of the upgrades and fixes had to be done one machine at a time. \u00a0 As the number of computers hooked to their network grew, they eventually locked users out of the \u2018upgrade and fix-it\u2019 game.\u00a0 There were two goals accomplished by this move:\u00a0 First, it kept users with little training from tinkering and doing serious damage to their computers or the network.\u00a0 Secondly, it put the critical job of keeping the network running and bug free in the hands of trained techs who could do much of the work remotely from their Help Desk located in Hancock.\u00a0 Considering how rapidly the technology changed in a short period of time, it would have been difficult for me to keep up on the network protocols while trying to teach.\u00a0 Being \u2018just a user\u2019 is fine with me as long as I know that help is a couple of mouse clicks away.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As the REMC computer network evolved, we immediately saw a way to expand the reach of WOAS-FM via the internet.\u00a0 Our ten watt signal reaches a radius of around 17 miles from Ontonagon, depending on the terrain.\u00a0 From what I had read about broadcasting over the internet, we would be able to expand signal\u2019s reach around the world without a costly power boost.\u00a0 At the time, my former classroom aide, Mark Szaroletta, was building us a new home computer from scratch (dubbed the Szaromatic 1000).\u00a0 When I showed him an older set of servers that had been handed down to the station by the resident computer guy, he said, \u201cSure, let me see what I can do.\u201d\u00a0 He took them home and basically rebuilt them from spare parts he had laying around.\u00a0 We dubbed them Kang and Kodos (fans of the Simpsons will recognize the names).\u00a0 One would be used to broadcast our audio signal and the other was being groomed to carry our image to the world via a studio camera I had salvaged.\u00a0 We had set up a distance learning classroom in the school when we first wifed the building.\u00a0 It was intended for online instruction between schools and was eventually replaced by a more portable version with all the equipment on a cart that can be moved room to room.\u00a0 When the room was put back into general classroom configuration, I rescued one of the cameras for \u2018future use\u2019 in the radio lab.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The audio broadcast server worked pretty well, but our connection to the entire network in place at that time tended to crash quite often.\u00a0 A crash in one place meant a reboot in another and I seemed to spend a lot of time putting us back on the air.\u00a0 We did get the video signal to work, but the connections between Kang and Kodos left much to be desired.\u00a0 We had an internet presence for nearly a decade before the entire system was upgraded enough to become a reliable way to tune in to WOAS-FM.\u00a0 In the early days, I spent a lot of article space apologizing for the latest breakdown in our internet broadcast capabilities.\u00a0 We were ahead of our time (in terms of getting on board with the concept of radio on the internet), but our low budget operation needed to get some newer computer gear to have a stable platform so our listeners could connect with WOAS-FM.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Mark left the area, we had a series of REMC tech people who rotated from school to school to work on the computer network.\u00a0 Most were busier than one armed paperhangers and our quest for digital radio was, in the scheme of things, \u2018low priority.\u2019\u00a0 All were kind enough to spend what little free time they had assisting us.\u00a0 The first upgrade came in the form of a new computer.\u00a0 We saved nickels and dimes from our ink and laser jet recycling program until we could afford a newer, faster computer.\u00a0 We eventually added a power supply back up, a rooftop weather station, and a webcam to the mix of things we posted on the internet.\u00a0 The move toward a reliable internet presence was fueled by Steven, an MTU student working at REMC\u2019s help desk.\u00a0 We were chatting on the helpline as he worked on a computer problem for me and he mentioned that he had set up a website for his high school radio station down state.\u00a0 He was happy to give us a price to do the same thing for WOAS as a private contractor and with his knowledge of the REMC system, it would have been a fool\u2019s bargain to say \u2018no\u2019.\u00a0 Steven has long since gone off into the world of work, but the foundation he laid for <\/span>www.woas-fm.org<\/span><\/a> is still in place.\u00a0 If it is true that you \u2018get what you paid for,\u2019 WOAS got our money\u2019s worth and then some when we hired Steve.\u00a0 Aside from the occasional computer glitch or power outage, the last half decade has been more or less smooth sailing for our digital outreach program.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0As of this writing, COVID-19 dictated our entire broadcast schedule for the last three months of the 2019-20 broadcast year and the beginning of the 2020-21 school year.\u00a0 With no students or volunteers broadcasting, yours truly went about the business of keeping WOAS on the air while learning how to navigate a new system set up by the FCC to streamline the license renewal process.\u00a0 It has been my pleasure to run the license renewal gauntlet four times since I became the General Manager in 1997.\u00a0 The learning curve on my first renewal was steep.\u00a0 I had just been approved as the GM when I learned that our license renewal materials had been gathering dust on a shelf deep with old mail.\u00a0 We were weeks from losing our broadcast license, but at least the forms I needed to fill out closely resembled the last renewal form in our files.\u00a0 The second renewal followed a similar vein, except for a small clerical mistake I made by checking a \u2018yes\u2019 box where I should have checked \u2018no\u2019.\u00a0 All this filing experience came to naught, however, when the FCC went to a computer based system.\u00a0 When I got completely balled up, a very helpful man at the FCC help desk walked me through my problems and he assured me that once I had used the electronic filing system once, it would be a breeze the next time.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0License renewals happen on a seven year cycle.\u00a0 The \u2018next time\u2019 turned out to be the COVID shortened 2019-20 broadcast year.\u00a0 There were two compounding factors that put this round of license renewal into panic mode.\u00a0 The first was the matter of converting our mandated Public File into an electronic file.\u00a0 There was a two year window to get this done and I had let the time slip long enough that I finally got a friendly note reminding me that this needed to be done before our license renewal could be processed.\u00a0 Checking the calendar in early May, it dawned on me that all of the paperwork to renew our license for the fall of 2020 had to be done by June 1.\u00a0 The second factor slowed progress to a crawl:\u00a0 The renewal portal has been revamped and looked nothing like the one that had been in place at the last filing.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The first phone call to the FCC help desk was like shining a light into a dark tunnel.\u00a0 The helpful voice gave me a guided tour around the new site and suddenly, the Public File migration to the new online system was posted.\u00a0 While waiting for the \u2018your Public File has been accepted\u2019 message, I made a second call to sort out the new filing portal.\u00a0 As the second helpful voice pointed me in the right direction, I couldn\u2019t help but hear what sounded like a bit of a sibling battle of wills taking place in the background.\u00a0 \u201cIt sounds like you are working from home with the COVID shutdown,\u201d I said.\u00a0 My FCC helpdesk voice said, \u201cYes, and there are days when the kids get a little stir crazy without school.\u00a0 We live just outside Gettysburg.\u00a0 We have not had many cases here, yet, but we are dreading what will happen when the tourist season begins.\u201d\u00a0 After explaining where Upper Michigan is, I expressed the same concerns.\u00a0 Again, as of this writing, our license renewal has been confirmed and we are good to go for another seven years.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Hats off to REMC-1, the FCC, and all the other organizations who employ people with patience and empathy to answer their helpdesk phones.\u00a0 Our latest encounter was with the repair department at BEXT in San Diego, CA.\u00a0 They answered our questions about our recent transmitter problem.\u00a0 It only took a couple of weeks to get the unit repaired and returned.\u00a0 It has now been reinstalled, so once we get the station put back in order, we will be good to go.\u00a0 Keep checking 88.5 FM as we return to the business of broadcasting over the airwaves, but remember that we are also available at <\/span>www.woas-fm.org<\/span><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 Top Piece Video – couldn’t find the right tune to go with this, so in honor of our Kang and Kodos reference, I give you Cub Koda with Brownsville Station’s epic ‘Martian Boogie’.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0If one checks out the WOAS-FM website (www.woas-fm.org), one can find an archive of FTV articles stretching back several years.\u00a0 The site is hosted by the Regional Educational Media Center (REMC) that is part of the Intermediate Schools District (ISD) office located in Hancock, Michigan.\u00a0 The ISD office is responsible for providing educational services 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