[REQ] Changing radio washington to many small stations

tedhealy · 03-24-07, 08:10 PM

Is anyone interested in changing radio washington from one all encompassing station that broadcasts around the world, to many smaller stations that go on and off with the war's progress?

It would require researching who had what territory when, coming up the latitude and longitude for a radio base in the area, and working with the map to come up with a good range for that station.

The tech details for example, the default radio washington is:

[CHANNEL]
Name=Washington
Folder=Washington
Freq=22
Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:38.53,-77.02:100000

The antenna portion is what we are interested in. First you have the date of operation, then the latitude and longitude, and then the power. Currently power is 100,000 meaning the station goes out 100,000 nm - around the world.

I'd like a mod to change this so that radio washington becomes many smaller stations broadcasting with limited ranges.

So for example we could have a radio San Fran with a power of 2500 to just reach hawaii. We could have radio pearl with power of 1200 to just reach midway. Radio Midway with power of 700....and so on with stations at dutch harbor, one or two in australia depending on their power, one or two in the philipines depending on their power, one at port moresby, and then as the allies gain territory, add small stations to places like Guadalcanal, marshall islands, mariana islands and so on. Then probably at some point in late '44, most of those stations could be replaced by a handful of ultra powerful stations that will range right up to and maybe even including some of Japan. Then sometime in the spring of '45 add one last station that encompasses all of japan and the pacific so you can hear radio washington no matter where you are.

The content itself could come later, if ever. For now they could just broadcast the same stuff as the current radio washington, but on different frequencies. This way though there would be spots where you could not pick up radio washington and as the war progresses, radio washington's range will increase.

As a similar project, if we ever get enough japanese content, the same thing could be done with radio tokyo stations. A few other similar ideas would be to have the sub bases broadcasting something with a very short range like 100 - something that would probably require some voice recording. Have them broadcast the latest news of top aces, subs that haven't come back, or just general war news. Another idea that would require new voice recordings would be to have either many short range stations out in the pacific broadcasting as other subs or one large range station broadcasting on one frequency. You could tune into the submarine frequency and hear reports of sinkings, sightings, sos, or whatever.

So enough rambling, anyone want to work on this? I'm finishing up a radio mod that will add a ton of war years old time radio shows for a new station/frequency. When done with that I want to actually play the game some, then I'll probably start looking into this idea. If someone wanted to get a head start on this or take it over entirely, it would help. Or just tell me this is stupid and it will be forgotten

tedhealy · 03-24-07, 10:12 PM

I found out sh4 doesn't like different stations/frequencies pulling the same content from one folder. Seems like there would be 2 options: either duplicate all the audio files into a separate folder for each station which increase the size sh4 takes up on the hard drive, or provide separate content in a separate folder.

1st option isn't too bad in that the radio stations that come on line later wouldn't need the earlier content. If I find out any more, I'll post.

clayton · 03-24-07, 10:16 PM

I will help all I can. Wonderful idea!

clayton · 03-24-07, 10:31 PM

Some WW2 Australia stations...

http://www.radioheritage.net/Column5.asp

clayton · 03-24-07, 10:34 PM

The link above is a wealth of information on WW2 Pacific radio...

tedhealy · 03-24-07, 10:55 PM

Indeed it is. I personally wasn't planning on making the radio stations 100% accurate, I guess that's always an option if we can get a heck of a lot more info on allied radio in the pacific.

Right now I'm more interested in getting the dates correct and sort of winging the area covered. For example a station could be modded to start on Saipan in June of 1944. Was there one there at that time? I don't know, but the allies invade Saipan at that time so it provides an opportunity to start a new radio station there. Is that 100% accurate? Probably not, but it will help to give a sense of how the war is progressing as you are able to hear radio washington further and further out into the pacific.

My plan would be to have most areas not covered in december 1941, by august 42 increase coverage to the solomons and north of australia covering most of new guniea, by mid 44 increase coverage to the central pacific island chains, by early 45 increase coverage to the phillippines, and by spring of 45 the whole map gets covered.

clayton · 03-24-07, 11:59 PM

Sounds great! I believe the 'base' radio stations should be up first though their distances should be shortened. Not familiar with radio atmospherics and all that, but would like to pick up Radio Hawaii after a successful patrol just before Wake or so! Makes it more realistic. Once Tokyo, Australia, Hawaii, and the States are up then we progress smaller stations are the war advances...

tedhealy · 03-25-07, 11:52 AM

Ok, here's where my thinking on this is at right now in crudely drawn circles to highlight radio ranges.

Dec 41. Only 2 stations - Hawaii and Manila with Manila stopping it's broadcast sometime in January 1942.

Jan 42
About the same time Manila falls, a station for Australia begins. I toyed around with this station in lots of different spots and as 2 or 3 different stations, but I'd really like to limit the number of stations where possible. With a station in the middle of Australia more or less, it covers the ride up from Brisbane and Fremantle into the war zone and you get coverage of Port Moresby.

August/Sep 42
A station for Guadalcanal/Tulagi is added.

Now there is a long gap where no stations are added for 1943. Possibly one for Bouganville could be added, but it sort of overlaps a Guadalcanal station too much to be worthwhile. Any suggestions for any additions for 1943?

June 44
A station gets added for Saipan. I put this one in arbitrary spot on the map in order to maxmize coverage and minmize overlap. That is the broadcast would not actually originate from Saipan on the map, but would cover that area.

Sep 44
Possibly could add a station for Pelilu. Even though it's small, it would help to broaden coverage for 1945.

Jan 45
Turn Manila back on

Late Feb 45
Add Iwo. I forgot to draw the coverage for Pelilu on that one. You can see the gap to the east of the Phillipines.

It might be nice to never really fully cover Japanese waters, but then again, maybe it should be covered at the end of the war. I want to keep the number of stations to a minimum where possible, so I'm not sure on that one. At the end of the war we'd have 7 stations going with Pelilu added, but without anything covering Japan's coast. The Iwo station does encompass some of the southern part, but not much.

Any ideas or suggestions?

CaptainCox · 03-25-07, 12:16 PM

Great stuff !!! I like the way this is heading! I will try to look up some more audio files, especially news stuff. Maybe one should do a sort a pool on filefront or something where one could dump sound files...only thinking loud now. As this feature has become so diversive it really opens up many possibilities. Keep it up man!!!

clayton · 03-25-07, 12:31 PM

Spot on! I like your setup. Noticed a gap around Japan that can be filled nicley by Radio Tokyo. I remember reading about how guys would change to Radio Tokyo because they perfered their music. This leads me to believe that their station must have been very reachable. Food for thought.

tedhealy · 03-25-07, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by clayton

Spot on! I like your setup. Noticed a gap around Japan that can be filled nicley by Radio Tokyo. I remember reading about how guys would change to Radio Tokyo because they perfered their music. This leads me to believe that their station must have been very reachable. Food for thought.

What would we play on radio tokyo though? I have a grand total of 3 Japanese audio clips.

A short 15 some second clip of Tojo announcing war in 1941
A short intro from Tokyo Rose and a song
The Emperor's speech announcing surrender.

It would be kind of odd to get USA news from radio tokyo. I guess we could just have it play music and no news events.

EDIT: I could include a rather poor attempt at radio tokyo. I do have a grand total of about five 30 second tokyo rose clips of intros and sign offs. I could just throw those in with a bunch of music that would play randomly.

For now I'll plan on adding a simple radio tokyo with this mod, but hopefully a much better radio tokyo can be made with a different mod. I'll have the station broadcast the whole war and it's range will go from tokyo to just short of midway.

tedhealy · 03-25-07, 01:52 PM

With the above map drawings, I'll try and get these radio stations up and broadcasting with no content just to get the framework of frequencies up. I'll run some tests for different years and do some sailing to test ranges and how well this can work.

clayton · 03-25-07, 02:02 PM

I seem to remember reading a couple different accounts about how GI's liked Radio Tokyo because they liked the music they played! Below is the music itinerary from the Tokyo Rose show! I think it was called 'Zero Hour'

loud opening number Strike Up the Band by the Boston Pops Orchestra
Messages from POW's: 'Hi mom, this is Corporal X, we are OK but we need socks and food
The Orphan Annie Show: 20 minutes of high quality American jazz and semi-classical records introduced by Annie
American home-front news: titbits picked up from America by Japanese monitoring stations
'Juke Box' 15-20 minutes of popular jazz
'Ted's news highlight tonight': more news from overseas SW broadcasts
News summary: sometimes read by Charles Yoshii, the Japanese 'Lord Haw Haw'
Military marches

http://www.radioheritage.net/Story41.asp

clayton · 03-25-07, 02:12 PM

Tokyo Rose Click on broadcasts. Sign-on's for her...

BINGO! THIS IS REAL BROADCASTS FROM RADIO TOKYO AND LONG TOO

http://www.earthstation1.com/Tokyo_Rose.html

tedhealy · 03-25-07, 02:43 PM

After some quick testing with radio manila, I've found that I didn't judge the ranges quite right. They are coming out to be about half of what I expected.

I'm guessing maybe the range in the radio.ini file is in kilometers but the range on the map I've been using is nautical miles. More testing.

earthstation1.com is where I got the few tokyo rose clips I have. The problem right now with the longer ones is that they are streaming files so someone would have use a stream ripper to grab them.

03-24-07, 08:10 PM	#1
tedhealy Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Posts: 772 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	[REQ] Changing radio washington to many small stations Is anyone interested in changing radio washington from one all encompassing station that broadcasts around the world, to many smaller stations that go on and off with the war's progress? It would require researching who had what territory when, coming up the latitude and longitude for a radio base in the area, and working with the map to come up with a good range for that station. The tech details for example, the default radio washington is: [CHANNEL] Name=Washington Folder=Washington Freq=22 Antenna=01.01.1930-01.01.2000:38.53,-77.02:100000 The antenna portion is what we are interested in. First you have the date of operation, then the latitude and longitude, and then the power. Currently power is 100,000 meaning the station goes out 100,000 nm - around the world. I'd like a mod to change this so that radio washington becomes many smaller stations broadcasting with limited ranges. So for example we could have a radio San Fran with a power of 2500 to just reach hawaii. We could have radio pearl with power of 1200 to just reach midway. Radio Midway with power of 700....and so on with stations at dutch harbor, one or two in australia depending on their power, one or two in the philipines depending on their power, one at port moresby, and then as the allies gain territory, add small stations to places like Guadalcanal, marshall islands, mariana islands and so on. Then probably at some point in late '44, most of those stations could be replaced by a handful of ultra powerful stations that will range right up to and maybe even including some of Japan. Then sometime in the spring of '45 add one last station that encompasses all of japan and the pacific so you can hear radio washington no matter where you are. The content itself could come later, if ever. For now they could just broadcast the same stuff as the current radio washington, but on different frequencies. This way though there would be spots where you could not pick up radio washington and as the war progresses, radio washington's range will increase. As a similar project, if we ever get enough japanese content, the same thing could be done with radio tokyo stations. A few other similar ideas would be to have the sub bases broadcasting something with a very short range like 100 - something that would probably require some voice recording. Have them broadcast the latest news of top aces, subs that haven't come back, or just general war news. Another idea that would require new voice recordings would be to have either many short range stations out in the pacific broadcasting as other subs or one large range station broadcasting on one frequency. You could tune into the submarine frequency and hear reports of sinkings, sightings, sos, or whatever. So enough rambling, anyone want to work on this? I'm finishing up a radio mod that will add a ton of war years old time radio shows for a new station/frequency. When done with that I want to actually play the game some, then I'll probably start looking into this idea. If someone wanted to get a head start on this or take it over entirely, it would help. Or just tell me this is stupid and it will be forgotten

03-25-07, 12:16 PM	#9
CaptainCox Sea Lord Join Date: Feb 2007 Location: A Swede in Frankfurt am Main Posts: 1,897 Downloads: 4 Uploads: 0	Great stuff !!! I like the way this is heading! I will try to look up some more audio files, especially news stuff. Maybe one should do a sort a pool on filefront or something where one could dump sound files...only thinking loud now. As this feature has become so diversive it really opens up many possibilities. Keep it up man!!! __________________ DOWNLOAD MY MODS HERE

03-24-07, 10:12 PM	#2
tedhealy Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Posts: 772 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	I found out sh4 doesn't like different stations/frequencies pulling the same content from one folder. Seems like there would be 2 options: either duplicate all the audio files into a separate folder for each station which increase the size sh4 takes up on the hard drive, or provide separate content in a separate folder. 1st option isn't too bad in that the radio stations that come on line later wouldn't need the earlier content. If I find out any more, I'll post.

03-24-07, 10:16 PM	#3
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	I will help all I can. Wonderful idea!

03-24-07, 10:31 PM	#4
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	Some WW2 Australia stations... http://www.radioheritage.net/Column5.asp

03-24-07, 10:34 PM	#5
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	The link above is a wealth of information on WW2 Pacific radio...

03-24-07, 10:55 PM	#6
tedhealy Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Posts: 772 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	Indeed it is. I personally wasn't planning on making the radio stations 100% accurate, I guess that's always an option if we can get a heck of a lot more info on allied radio in the pacific. Right now I'm more interested in getting the dates correct and sort of winging the area covered. For example a station could be modded to start on Saipan in June of 1944. Was there one there at that time? I don't know, but the allies invade Saipan at that time so it provides an opportunity to start a new radio station there. Is that 100% accurate? Probably not, but it will help to give a sense of how the war is progressing as you are able to hear radio washington further and further out into the pacific. My plan would be to have most areas not covered in december 1941, by august 42 increase coverage to the solomons and north of australia covering most of new guniea, by mid 44 increase coverage to the central pacific island chains, by early 45 increase coverage to the phillippines, and by spring of 45 the whole map gets covered.

03-24-07, 11:59 PM	#7
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	Sounds great! I believe the 'base' radio stations should be up first though their distances should be shortened. Not familiar with radio atmospherics and all that, but would like to pick up Radio Hawaii after a successful patrol just before Wake or so! Makes it more realistic. Once Tokyo, Australia, Hawaii, and the States are up then we progress smaller stations are the war advances...

03-25-07, 11:52 AM	#8
tedhealy Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Posts: 772 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	Ok, here's where my thinking on this is at right now in crudely drawn circles to highlight radio ranges. Dec 41. Only 2 stations - Hawaii and Manila with Manila stopping it's broadcast sometime in January 1942. Jan 42 About the same time Manila falls, a station for Australia begins. I toyed around with this station in lots of different spots and as 2 or 3 different stations, but I'd really like to limit the number of stations where possible. With a station in the middle of Australia more or less, it covers the ride up from Brisbane and Fremantle into the war zone and you get coverage of Port Moresby. August/Sep 42 A station for Guadalcanal/Tulagi is added. Now there is a long gap where no stations are added for 1943. Possibly one for Bouganville could be added, but it sort of overlaps a Guadalcanal station too much to be worthwhile. Any suggestions for any additions for 1943? June 44 A station gets added for Saipan. I put this one in arbitrary spot on the map in order to maxmize coverage and minmize overlap. That is the broadcast would not actually originate from Saipan on the map, but would cover that area. Sep 44 Possibly could add a station for Pelilu. Even though it's small, it would help to broaden coverage for 1945. Jan 45 Turn Manila back on Late Feb 45 Add Iwo. I forgot to draw the coverage for Pelilu on that one. You can see the gap to the east of the Phillipines. It might be nice to never really fully cover Japanese waters, but then again, maybe it should be covered at the end of the war. I want to keep the number of stations to a minimum where possible, so I'm not sure on that one. At the end of the war we'd have 7 stations going with Pelilu added, but without anything covering Japan's coast. The Iwo station does encompass some of the southern part, but not much. Any ideas or suggestions?

03-25-07, 12:31 PM	#10
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	Spot on! I like your setup. Noticed a gap around Japan that can be filled nicley by Radio Tokyo. I remember reading about how guys would change to Radio Tokyo because they perfered their music. This leads me to believe that their station must have been very reachable. Food for thought.

03-25-07, 01:52 PM	#12
tedhealy Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Posts: 772 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	With the above map drawings, I'll try and get these radio stations up and broadcasting with no content just to get the framework of frequencies up. I'll run some tests for different years and do some sailing to test ranges and how well this can work.

03-25-07, 02:02 PM	#13
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	I seem to remember reading a couple different accounts about how GI's liked Radio Tokyo because they liked the music they played! Below is the music itinerary from the Tokyo Rose show! I think it was called 'Zero Hour' loud opening number Strike Up the Band by the Boston Pops Orchestra Messages from POW's: 'Hi mom, this is Corporal X, we are OK but we need socks and food The Orphan Annie Show: 20 minutes of high quality American jazz and semi-classical records introduced by Annie American home-front news: titbits picked up from America by Japanese monitoring stations 'Juke Box' 15-20 minutes of popular jazz 'Ted's news highlight tonight': more news from overseas SW broadcasts News summary: sometimes read by Charles Yoshii, the Japanese 'Lord Haw Haw' Military marches http://www.radioheritage.net/Story41.asp

03-25-07, 02:12 PM	#14
clayton Samurai Navy Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: At your mom's house... Posts: 571 Downloads: 218 Uploads: 0	Tokyo Rose Click on broadcasts. Sign-on's for her... BINGO! THIS IS REAL BROADCASTS FROM RADIO TOKYO AND LONG TOO http://www.earthstation1.com/Tokyo_Rose.html

03-25-07, 02:43 PM	#15
tedhealy Grey Wolf Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: St. Louis, MO, USA Posts: 772 Downloads: 13 Uploads: 0	After some quick testing with radio manila, I've found that I didn't judge the ranges quite right. They are coming out to be about half of what I expected. I'm guessing maybe the range in the radio.ini file is in kilometers but the range on the map I've been using is nautical miles. More testing. earthstation1.com is where I got the few tokyo rose clips I have. The problem right now with the longer ones is that they are streaming files so someone would have use a stream ripper to grab them.