*The following text was taken from the Introduction.doc file from the RAIN
Collection Volume 1 CD.
The following was written by Hap Holly, KC9RP, Founder and Producer of the RAIN
Report.*
MY EARLY RECORDINGS
My mother used to correspond with my grandmother using an old recording machine
called a Soundscriber in the early 1960's. It used flexible discs about the size
of floppy disks but a lot floppier. I would borrow that recorder and place the
microphone in the open bedroom window to pick up whatever was going on outside.
I loved the sounds of nature and with no airplane noise overhead or traffic roar
nearby in those days, I'd captured the songs of meadowlarks and mockingbirds
perched atop the telephone line along Avocado Avenue on flexible disc. A pity
that none of those recordings of Escondido, California unfortunately have
survived the decades since.
Severely bitten by the "tape worm", I was given a portable,
battery-operated Norelco tape recorder for Christmas in 1963 by my parents. It
used three-inch reels. I was in heaven. Alas, my carelessness and the fragile
design of the machine doomed it to an early demise, but the damage had been done
and the archiving seeds permanently planted.
In junior high school I created what I called "rain music". Grabbing
empty tin cans of all sizes, I would position each upside down under a stream of
rain water dripping off the eaves just outside my bedroom window. Like a
Caribbean steel drum band, the large fruit cocktail cans played the low notes
and the smaller juice cans chimed the highest. The cans under constant streams
gave me the basic rhythm line while simultaneously some short distance away the
accent beats resounded from the intermittent drips. I learned some years later
the racket drove my Mom and Dad crazy because the "music" was a bit
too close to their bedroom window! What I would give to have saved any of those
recordings.
Later I began to record special family events, like Christmas. Many of those
recordings were saved, thus started my archiving pastime. In 1967, as a
sophomore at Escondido high school, I started keeping an audio journal. The
open reel tape recorder became my confidante. I would talk to it often ... about
everything. My blind parents and I got along well overall but there were just
some things I as a blind teen did not feel I wanted to discuss with them; pretty
normal actually.
After attending Palomar Junior College in nearby San Marcos for a year, I spent
the summer of 1970 at the Adventure Unlimited ranches in Buena Vista, Colorado,
where I was a bunkhouse counselor and resident musician. My trusty portable
cassette recorder was seemingly attached to my hip or hand during that summer.
Sometimes I connected my cassette and open reel equipment to the sound system in
Valerie Lodge at Roundup ranch; that began the archiving of my summers there
from 1970 to 1976 at that camp. My summer camp sweetheart, Stephanie Eckman,
whom I met in July, 1975, has been my forever-young wife since August 28, 1976.
I still archive important events in my life, many of which I am preserving
digitally, like the MP3 files on Volume 1 of the RAIN Collection .
HAM RADIO PRODUCTIONS
In 1984 I began producing local ham radio programming as part of the newly
organized BEAR Information Service, a weekly Chicago-based Amateur Radio
program, sponsored by the Broadcast Employees Amateur Repeater. From 1987 till
1989 I produced ham radio programming under the name of the RP Report. Those
archives will eventually be released as part of the RAIN Collection. In the
early 1990's all my audio and ham radio production work became associated with
the acronym RAIN, the Radio Amateur Information Network. I've been conducting
interviews, scripting, editing, packaging and encoding RAIN Reports for http://
www.rainreport.com since 1996, thanks to the talent and generosity of Mark
Bohnhoff, WB9UOM. Mark has donated the web site and the necessary audio
bandwidth for the RAIN Report ever since at no charge to me.
I was honored to be named 2002 Radio Amateur of the Year by the Dayton
Hamvention for my "years of service" to the U.S. Amateur Radio
Service.
Today all RAIN audio is produced in the digital domain using Sound Forge 6.0, a
suite of programs that enables the blind and visually impaired to do what I do.
While the current RAIN files are produced digitally, all 100-plus RAIN
highlights in the 1990 and 1991 folders on Volume 1 of the RAIN Collection CD
were converted from audio cassette--an arduous task indeed.
This first CD of RAIN programming allows folks, who are likewise fascinated with
recording, archiving and listening to history, to own a piece of ham radio
history for their personal use. Except for a reasonable fulfillment fee being
collected by M. Bohnhoff Inc. the proceeds from the sales of this first RAIN CD
will be used for the Dayton Hamvention presentation of RAIN.
Copyright 1990-2006, R.A.I.N. and Hap Holly All rights reserved.
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