1) Who are you and why do you do this?

2) Why do you play the music you do?

3) How do I listen to your stream?

4) Can I advertise or sponsor your station?

5) Your station is offline! Oh No!

6) Contacting me

 1) I'm just some ordinary person who has a passion for music and radio. I'm in my mid 40s, married, have a child and a nice day time job. As a teen I was a radiophile who loved listening to radio stations all over the continent on the AM dial at night. Then I graduated to shortwave radio, CB radio and then amateur radio. I always thought it would be neat to have my own broadcast station, but as you may know that is a pretty expensive proposition. Stations aren't cheap and the overhead is pretty high. There is a process for Low Power FM stations here in the US, but it takes forever and paperwork is a hassle. So the next best thing is doing this. Actually I wet my feet by broadcasting via some low power transmitters assembled from Ramsey Kits starting in 2004. The FM station is still active on 91.1 MHz and the AM station needs some new coaxial cable to get back on the air at 1620 KHz.

2) My music collection is pretty extensive and broad in depth. It's currently in the 15,000 track range with about 12,000 in the station playlist. The playlist is basically the soundtrack of my life. Born in 1965 I was exposed to 60s music still playing on the radio and during the "60s at 6" shows on the local radio stations. My youth and young adulthood covered the 70s and 80s where I took in my music from the radio and MTV. By the time the 90s came around I lost interest in popular music. It was pretty bland or at best just plain derivative. As I started to grow my music collection in the early 2000s I rediscovered tunes I hadn't heard on 20 plus years and was introduced to music I had missed in my youth. That music constitutes the majority of my tunes. I'm also into less common stuff like TV theme music, Mashups, Parodies and the like. You'll find those tracks popping up every now and again in the rotation.

As far as genre it depends on who you ask. Oldies are considered to be music from 1960-72. Classic Hits covers the 70s and early 80s. I overlap the two genre so take your pick. In the shoutcast directory I am listed as Oldies and in Tunein.com as Classic Hits. I often describe my playlist as a mix of mainstream rock, pop, and Motown with a dash of country, Mashups, parodies and sound tracks.

3) You're probably reading this because you're having issues tuning in or want to know what other options you have. This section will grow over time as I draft a few picture laden tutorials to illustrate how to tune in.

Here are some basic ways to listen in:

 a) Click the LoudCity link on the main page. It takes you to my official launch page which in most case will automatically start playing the music. This assumes you have Windows Media Player on your computer (it is not a flash player). If it fails to play you can click any of the icons to launch an external media player such as Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, Real Player, etc... The stream is in the AAC+ format, 48Kbps stereo and it is near CD quality. If you click the green OGG link then it will launch the an external media player that can handle the OGG-Vorbis format. Typically this will be Winamp on the PC or FStream on the Mac. This stream is also 48Kbps stereo. To save you some steps in the future you can bookmark the IP address in your media player.

 b) If you have a smart phone my station is listed in the Tunein app ; my listing on their site.

 c) My AAC+ stream is also in the Shoutcast directory. You can find it here: KONA Stream on Shoutcast.com .

4) This station is primarily a hobby. All hobbies cost money but because I am sharing with a public audience it's fair of me to ask a little bit in return to cover my expenditures. The royalty fees I pay go to the performing artists via Loud City. I could go the advertising route but I'd have to acquire an additional license to the tune of $200 a year to cover it. I just don't see enough listeners and ad revenue to justify going that route. That being said I can take on sponsors. Like an advertiser they can get air time and a link on the home page. The main difference is that a sponsorship does not allow the disseminating of sales, prices and services over the air. Your name, slogan and website can be mentioned but that's pretty much it. Contact me if you're interested in supporting the station that way.

You can donate to us via PayPal two ways. You can make a one time donation of any amount via a link on the front page. You can also subscribe to a monthly amount to the tune of $2.50, $5.00, or $10.00 USD.

To Unsubscribe you can use this link:

We also get money via the Amazon Affiliate program too. If you click the Amazon links on the site and subsequently make a purchase then I get a small percentage of the transaction. If you're a regular Amazon shopper then please access them via our links!

5) You were listening in and bam, nothing. You click the play button and nothing plays or it says re-buffering. The internet is not a perfect place and there are many points of possible failure between my station and your computer. Working backwards:

 a) There may be connection issues with your modem or ISP. If so you'll see problems elsewhere while surfing or viewing online.

 b) The path between you and the servers may be down or congested. Not much can be done about that. Try the other stream and see if you can receive it.

 c) One of the servers may be down. This is a pretty rare occurrence. Most of the time it is because of a server restart or system reboot. Rarely are my servers down due to hardware failure or power outages. If one stream is down, try the other.

 d) My connection may be poor or down. I am streaming from my residence using Comcast as my ISP. I can go for vey long periods of time with so much as a hiccup in my service, and then endure seemingly long stretches where my connection drops at odd time. I do my best to keep on top of things but just like you I have to suffer through the outages. The OGG stream has an AUTO-DJ but as of date I have not been successful in getting it to seamlessly take over in the event my connection drops. If I discover my stream is down I try my best to log into the control panel for the server and initiate the Auto-DJ. When my stream does come back up unfortunately it kicks everybody off during the transition. You will need to wait a minute or two and then click play until it reconnects.

 e) Computers are a pain. Sometimes they crash, lockup, or otherwise misbehave. Same as d) above. As soon as I discover there is a problem I'll try to activate my Auto-DJ or get a 3rd party to intervene and restart the station.

 f) I try to post status updates to twitter. The blog page shows the latest tweets or you can subscribe here:

6) There are several ways to contact me. On the front page you will see a Meebo Chat gadget. If it has a green light you can IM me. If it's red it will send me an offline IM. You can also email me Ravishal@konastream.com. You can also Send me voicemail via the Google Voice call gadget if you're in the US or Canada:

Click it, type in your number and it will call you back and prompt you to leave a voice message. I can access my voice mail via the web and listen to it anywhere. If you do not want your number revealed to me it will mask it.