One of my current favorite places in Talkeetna! This is the main studio in the KTNA building and is really a view of the desk area. To the lower right you see one of the two manual turntables and underneath them is another cabinet of equipment. Moving further to the left there’s an ancient cart machine with two single play CD player beneath it and then a control panel for auxiliary inputs like iPods, MP3 players and similar; finally the telephone is beneath all that stuff. Further left is the Mac which handles a myriad of duties including the NWS weather reports, the sound bites that identify underwriters, sound clips of show promos and access to the KTNA.org website. On the desk beneath the Mac is the sound board which controls what inputs are going to which outputs along with which pots are active and the gain on each pot; the board is fully programmable and along with the Mac forms the backbone of the newscasts. A bit further to the left you can see the digital temp readout for the station’s exterior thermometer (silver square) and then two of the three studio microphones; the main mic is the pink one while the other two are used with in-studio guests. All in all I’m still learning to use the gear and make regular and often painful mistakes but I’m finding I really do enjoy the work. Just another one of those ‘stretches’ I seem to be enamored of since retiring..! This is especially true as I had no experience with anything like this previously and as a child I stuttered to the point I had speech therapy and hence harbored an all consuming fear of speaking to unknown people and especially in front of groups of people.