KGLP is on a mission to improve and sustain our public radio station's rural service to the residents of the borderlands in Northwestern New Mexico and Northeastern Arizona, a diverse but particularly low-income region of the United States that includes Gallup, New Mexico, the Navajo Nation, and the Pueblo of Zuni. Recent problems have affected our on-air signal, and we're also in need of better equipment to ensure improved audio coming out of the two little studios in our compact station. Each year we get donations from some 200 of our approximately 2000 listeners that help with equipment maintenance, utilities, and general cash flow, but a recent transmitter failure put us in a bit of a bind. While we did proceed with purchase and installation of a new transmitter, it will leave us a bit overbudget by year's end, and we aren't sure that we can expect increased contributions from our stalwart members to help catch up to the station's pending needs. Hence, we're reaching out further, with CrowdRise, on the chance that a few folks who know nothing about our work here might consider assisting our efforts to provide alternative news, music, and public affairs programming to the area. In 1785, Scottish writer Robert Burns wrote a poem that lamented his destruction of a mouse's nest as Burns plowed his field. "To A Mouse, On Turning Her Up In Her Nest With The Plough" featured a line that later was immortalized by John Steinbeck: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an 'men gang aft agley", or as current English speakers might interpret, "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry in the end." Nineteenth century engineers gave rise to what has become known as Murphy's Law: "Anything that CAN go wrong WILL go wrong," and its corollary, "Murphy was an optimist!" During maintenance at our little Gibson Peak transmitter site Northeast of Gallup, New Mexico in late February of 2018, our main transmitter short-circuited, dropping it's modest output of 1500 watts down to 200 watts, reducing our signal strength and on-air sound quality within a few miles of town. A month or so before, our two automation computers' DVD drives failed, with one short-circuiting and almost starting a fire (we removed the drive and cleaned up the scorch marks, but we're wondering how long the very expensive units will hold up - It certainly slowed down the digitizing of our music library!) Additionally, our two little studios are not producing audio of a quality that our listeners deserve, and we are hoping to upgrade them both to a more professional standard, easing access for students and community volunteers and improving our on-air sound for a very diverse listening area. While KGLP successfully returned to full power with a new transmitter on June 1, 2018, we used over $10,000 for the purchase and installation that has depleted our reserves, likely leaving us "in the red" by the end of the year. With more money, we can not only get "back in the black", but will hopefully bring our studios' audio quality up to a level that maximizes the benefits of our new transmitter, enhancing our community's listening experience and aiding orientation and training of volunteers at our little community station. If there is any additional money left over, we could refurbish our 2 little automation computers with new towers, hard drives, and hopefully DVD drives that won't burn (oh, we did get a new Halotron fire extinguisher, of course! That we can afford...) Blue Sky, we also hope to install a local area network so that we don't have to port audio between our studio's computers, and perhaps breadboard a prototype for a haptic interface to help visually challenged students and community volunteers monitor audio levels with vibrating cuffs on their arms or legs, an ADA accommodation that we could then share with other stations. We might even be able to swing an IP connection between the studio and the Gibson Peak transmitter site that will keep us on the air even if our microwave link fails at some point...contingencies such as this will help us ensure KGLP's future in the Gallup area.
