YURT HISTORY

The full archives compiled by Robin MacEwan are available through the Hampshire College Archives system, contact-  archives@hampshire.edu

The project to construct the Yurt officially started October 1993. Construction was completed May of 1998. 

One of the stated goals was that ...

"Once finished, the Yurt would stand as a visible symbol and reminder of the potential in this educational community."

Many hands and many hours went into the completion of Hampshire College's YURT building, but how did it become a RADIO station?

In 1994 John Bruner and David Murphy offered students a course on Pirate Radio. During this Jan.Term course students built their own short range FM transmitters.  

(You can build one too, click here to learn how.)

The course was extremely popular and was offered twice more, but the Hampshire College Community was smitten and the requests started pouring in for Hampshire to have it's own radio station.   At that time the television airwaves had just switched from Standard Definition to High Definition and for a short while there was the promise of Low Power FM, which is what everyone intended to use. At this time a student group was formed and notably Peter Harkawick and Josiah Litant generated funds to supply the building with the needed technology.  Counters were installed, mixers and mics too, but before the installation was complete Low Power FM was no longer viable. For awhile plans included Radiant FM and even using the many short throw transmitters to ping pong the signal across campus, but shortly the move was made to I.P. only.  At first it was local and on campus only, but eventually we moved to the IceCast system we have today and anyone anywhere in the world with internet access can listen seven days a week, twenty four hours a day to Hampshire College's Own YURT RADIO.