How we drove our car and recorded radio stations at the same time

Lauterbrunnental or Lauterbrunnen Valley - Courtesy of Wikipedia
Lauterbrunnental or Lauterbrunnen Valley – Courtesy of Wikipedia

It occurred to me that recording and writing down program details while driving might seem unsafe to some of you who may be reading my blog and Facebook posts. So, I would like to explain what we did. It was a team effort. One of us, usually my wife Becky would drive while I did the recording. The process consisted of finding a station, turning on the recorder, and writing the frequency, station, and the time the recording started on a note pad. That way one of us was always focused on driving and the other person could deal with the radio station. I would listen to the recordings later to pick out specific program details. It worked out well, as we were able to hear and record dozens of stations while driving.  We even recorded stuff inside the tunnels in the Swiss Alps.

In Europe and in Korea, I mostly used a white-colored Panasonic radio-cassette recorder. (I don’t know the model.) It had dual cassette capability for dubbing. It got a lot of use until one day the motor in it failed. That was a sad day because it has been a good friend.

These days I use CC Crane Witness to record stations. If the signals are strong enough, I will record them just using the unit’s radio. If the signals are weak, I use the car’s radio. I wired an “auxiliary” output from the car radio speakers, and feed the audio into the Witnesses line input.  I have to watch the audio level or it can get distorted.  It works, and that is all that is important.

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