107.9 FM -- End Of the Dial -- Hacker Radio

June 2014: Spent moving into new location

July 7th, 2014:

Hacker Public Radio is excited to provide additional content for our station! They also gave us a shout out! ^_^

May 25th, 2014

Saint has an engineer willing to make the tower drawings and stamp them for $250! Horray! What a benefit! It seems like he's eager to meet with us early friday Morning.

May 30th, 2014

Saint has managed to get his wires crossed. He missed the engineer at his coffee shop at 7AM. The engineer no longer wants to be part of the project. We are hunting down a new engineer. We have compiled a list of 230 engineers in the City. Saint is slowly cold calling each one's business.

*sigh* and thus begins the long road to finding an engineer.

May 26, 2014

Did a lot of paperwork stuff. I have also been pulled away to work on inventorying a vast amount of electronics donation for MEH and the Bozeman Makerspace. I'll summarize it all in bullets because bureaucracy is boring and tedious in nature:

• Included written permission to use land for tower in the lease
• Obtained initial green light from city zoning commission
• Gathered $90 of stakeholder money. Got things on paper.
• Met with a couple different Professional Engineers regarding tower plans. Met with each twice.
• Got the "call 811" guys to come by and paint lines where there's underground power and city services(sewage etc)
• Drew up a site plan

April 24th, 2014

So we're going to upgrade to a new location. We have to update the FAA and the FCC. *huge sigh* Well at least we're going to be putting our radio tower on the largest hill in the middle of our city! :D yay!

We have a lease drawn up for this building:

It is twice the square footage of our old hackerspace. It has 2642sqft of useable space.

It has a potential hydroponics corridor:

It has a really ugly slope that we intend to turn into a garden:

It has a little grass patch:

9 rooms like this:

And most-importantly, a space on the hill for the tower!

This is going to work for all parties involved!

April 17th, 2014

Per antenna on our tower?!!! PER?!!! Well... that's reasonable for them... but not for us. We were relying on not having to pay an extra bill. This is a sudden and unexpected letdown. We're looking at other properties.

Ferret scouted a freakishly good location today.

We might move locations because the Bank is being a butt. But we'll get the damn radio station for sure! Even if we have to move to do it. We're potentially moving into a 2600sqft building for $25 more dollars a month. Utilities paid. A/C will be installed plus a handicap ramp for notrin. 2 bathrooms. 3 dedicated parking spaces. +15 non-dedicated parking spaces. 11 rooms. It actually isn't on Google street view, but it's in the middle of town. We'll probably be able to install an antenna in our yard(yes yard). I would like to be able to make a yes/no decision when I see it, but I'm not going to.

I want to see if the US Bank is going to start being reasonable. I'll call them in the morning. I think Steve's board has an issue with the word "hacker." I'm not sure. I don't mind having to pay less than $175/mo(that's cheaper than we would have paid in advertising)... but what really pisses me of is: They want to charge Treasure State Internet for using OUR tower. That's just lame. In fact, that torpedoed the whole plan of having him instruct and help in the set up. We now might have to pay for contractors and we might have to pay for all of the steel tubing(instead of part). Rarrr-_-. Fortunately our potential new location has a likely line of sight to Matt's tower. So... maybe we end up bringing Internet to Tower Hill apartments instead. That's actually going to generate Matt even MORE money than if he simply got to the US Bank and some of down town. Plus, he can always pay $175/mo, mount his antenna to the side of the "penthouse" and get Downtown Helena anyways.

Still pisses me off... even if it all works out. I mean... the Steve's board just had to agree to the original tentative plan and we ALL would have immediately benefited. Now MEH(and maybe Matt) are the only ones benefiting... and not as much as if the bank were on board. harumph!

Apr 16, 2014

Quoted $175/mo to rent the roof space! We can't immediately afford it, but maybe next month! Now we just need to get a single advertisee and it's sustainable!

I can't use an antenna disguised as a flag pole; it's just too expensive. For some reason, they want $3000+ -_-. I have to use a professional one; I can't just build one.

March 10, 2014

Good afternoon Steve,

SUMMARY

We want to put an FM radio tower for our newly incubating business on the US Bank in Helena. We would be happy to give you two daily name drops during peek hours(e.g.:"Brought to you in part by US-Bank!"), in exchange for leasing approximately 64sqft of roof space. This will also bring rare, yet affordable, 100Mbps Internet to the building and its tenants. We have been given the opportunity to move to a nearby building for this purpose, but we appreciate our past relationships and we would prefer to continue growing with the US Bank.

REASONING:

For the past 12 months, we were only getting 1 new member every month:

I am taking heavy measures to increase our exposure. We thought about doing radio adverts, but we have a bigger vision than that. My board and I have managed to procure 107.9 FM as a radio frequency. Five of our younger members and I are starting our own radio company. This will be the fourth successful business that we've incubated in our four years of existence(making 4/4). We will obtain advertising for our makerspace through this venture. I will only act as President of this venture long enough to get the ball rolling on its own. We will need to either renttower space or build our own tower. Ideally, we would like to stay in the US Bank building and erect a 26ft tower on the roof access box. Here is a very short concept video.


TECHNICAL DETAILS:

According to the county office of building and planning, your roof might have a membrane. Membranes often come with a 50 year warranty. In order to install the tower, we would need to place four 1-inch guy wire anchors through the membrane(see Attachment). The roof access box would also require four bolt holes which will need to be 1 1/4 inch in diameter and on the corners of the access box. I can pay for a contractor who is certified to modify membrane roofing. I certainly don't want your warranty to be jeopardized. I will, of course, pay for the tower with my skills at fund raising and previous business relationships.

I have two preliminary plans for the construction of the tower itself. I am still working over them with a local radio tower contractor. The roofing is tile/cement(probably no membrane) and theradio tower falls within the 70ft maximum height limit for zoning in this area. The contractors would also like to personally inspect the roof before they draw up some professional plans. I will meet with the contractors again this afternoon to further discuss our plans.

LEGAL STEPS:
We have obtained a license from the FAA to erect a tower as well as a license from the FCC to broadcast. We have also obtained blanket radio rights to play most popular songs.

TIMELINE AND HOURS:
I hope to have the FAA do the final inspection of the tower in late July. If we get your approval, construction would be scheduled with the FAA to begin on the first of July and end on the 28th. We WILL be very mindful of tenants by only drilling and cutting before 8, after 5, and on weekends. I personally know how obnoxious construction can be to an office. I will have our construction workers use the bathroom on the third floor; a lady on the fourth floor has expressed problems with messy contractors in the past. It's in my best interest to stay on magnanimous terms with other tenants.

CONCLUSION:

I and my board are very willing to do whatever it takes to make our radio station a reality. We intend to make this an easy and profitable venture for the US Bank. I think our preliminary work reflects some of that commitment.

I would love to negotiate advertisement possibilities for the US Bank in exchange for leasing your roof space.

Thanks to some help from one of our tech-savvy entrepreneurs: this new addition of a radio tower will also bring fiber optic Internet speed(100Mbps) to the building. This will make your building one only a dozen places in Helena with that current speed.

I greatly appreciate your time and consideration. I look forward to hearing any thoughts, concerns, questions, or ideas you may have.

March 7th, 2014

Facebook ftw.

MEH: Hey. I'm attaching a 26 foot steel lattice mast on the US Bank building. I'll let you stick an antenna on it if MEH can get some free air fiber.

TSI: Sounds good. We can start you on 50Mbps up and 50Mbps download. Then we can bump you up to 50 up and 100 down. Can we have 3U on your rack for some switches in your building?

MEH: "Sure, why not?!"

Sweet! We might be able to get rid of our Internet bill and pay a slightly higher tower rent bill instead! This is going to work out! Nothing can stop this!

Feb 25th, 2014

I think that most of selling an item is just explaining what the fuck it is. If your audience can see the end product, you're at least halfway to getting them to say "make it so". So I put together a rough concept with accurate dimensions. I stitched images from Google Street onto a block-model of the building. This stupid animation took me about 4 hours. Most of that time was spent stretching and stitching streetview images. Turns out it was worth it. We got a tentative go ahead! It was over the phone... but it's still promising.

They're just working out the price. Shouldn't be unreasonable. We'll probably have this tower up by the end of July!

Jan 21, 2014

Our tower, though it's in a valley basin, is too close to the airport. Gotta call up the FAA now...

I guess we're small enough to not need to worry about Fort Harrison, but we exceed the FAA notification for HLN RGNL by 87mtr. What do we need to do in order to start(and possibly expedite) the "FAA notification" process? Here are our new determination results:

DETERMINATION Results PASS SLOPE(50:1): NO FAA REQ-RWY 10499 MTRS OR LESS & 5944.81 MTRS (5.94479 ) KM AWAY Type C/R Latitude Longitude Name Address Lowest Elevation (m) Runway Length (m) AIRP C 46-37-33.00N 112-06-35.00W FORT HARRISON AAF LEWIS AND CLARK HELENA, MT 1234.4 853.39999999999998 FAIL SLOPE (100:1)FAA REQ - 3651.0 Meters(11978.2 Feet) away & exceeds by 87.0 Meters (285.430 Feet) Type C/R Latitude Longitude Name Address Lowest Elevation (m) Runway Length (m) AIRP R 46-36-20.00N 111-59-51.00W HELENA RGNL LEWIS AND CLARK HELENA, MT 1161.8 2743.1999999999998 FAIL SLOPE (100:1)FAA REQ - 3797.0 Meters(12457.2 Feet) away & exceeds by 86.0 Meters (282.149 Feet) Type C/R Latitude Longitude Name Address Lowest Elevation (m) Runway Length (m) AIRP R 46-36-30.00N 111-59-52.00W HELENA RGNL LEWIS AND CLARK HELENA, MT 1161.8 2743.1999999999998 FAIL SLOPE (100:1)FAA REQ - 4752.0 Meters(15590.3 Feet) away & exceeds by 76.0 Meters (249.34 Feet) Type C/R Latitude Longitude Name Address Lowest Elevation (m) Runway Length (m) AIRP R 46-36-14.00N 111-58-50.00W HELENA RGNL LEWIS AND CLARK HELENA, MT 1161.8 2743.1999999999998 Your Specifications NAD83 Coordinates Latitude 46-35-20.8 north Longitude 112-02-19.5 west Measurements (Meters) Overall Structure Height (AGL) 22 Support Structure Height (AGL) 14 Site Elevation (AMSL) 1264 Structure Type BANT - Building with Antenna on top

The region FAA was super-chill: "Yah wanna put up a tower? Where? Bah that should be fine! Just go through our online form and we'll let you know if you can do it in a couple months or so!" less than a month later: "Yeah. You can build. Thanks for letting us know there's a tiny tower there. You've got a year and a half to make it happen. kthanksbye."

I like working with these people.

Now that we know that the feds will let us build a tower on our roof, we just need to get permission from the land owner. Perhaps we can get the local upstart internet company to help us out. Treasure State Internet might be able to use some of our tower space! First let's talk to the land owner.