We seek to understand and document all radio transmissions, legal and otherwise, as part of the radio listening hobby. We do not encourage any radio operations contrary to regulations. Always consult with the appropriate authorities if you have questions concerning what is permissible in your locale.

Author Topic: Brother Stair Dies  (Read 2311 times)

Offline MDK2

  • Marconi Class DXer
  • ********
  • Posts: 6133
  • Denver, CO
    • View Profile
    • My radio reception videos
Brother Stair Dies
« on: April 04, 2021, 2233 UTC »
https://www.live5news.com/2021/04/04/colleton-county-pastor-ralph-stair-dies/

Will his ministry live on in syndication? Honestly I don't know, his version of things depended a lot on commenting on current events, which is different from most of the other dead preachers whose old sermons have been rebroadcast for decades. Let's hope that if they do disappear it's not bad news for WRMI and other stations that sold lots of airtime to him.
Denver, CO.
SDRPlay RSPdx & RSP2pro, Airspy Discovery HF+, Icom IC-7100, Grundig Satellit 750, Realistic DX-300, Tecsun PL-600.
MLA-30 active loop, G5RV dipole.
eQSLs appreciated wickerjennie at gmail

Offline atrainradio

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 942
  • Ask your doctor if shortwave is right for you
  • Magic Mushroom Salad
    • View Profile
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2021, 0041 UTC »
He was a pedophile, a sexual predator. He was pure evil. Few will miss him.
QTH, New Jersey, America's landfill
Tecsun PL-990 W/ Extendable Whip Antenna

Offline Beerus Maximus

  • Administrator
  • DX Legend
  • *****
  • Posts: 1409
  • Boston, Massachusetts
  • hold my beer and watch this
    • View Profile
    • Beerus' 30 Below Site
    • Email
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2021, 1211 UTC »
You have to give him credit for having the cajones to say "when I committed adultery the women were old enough and we had a good time" lol.

This is good news for humanity but not great news for the shortwave stations that profited from his criminal cult *waves towards Monticello*
# Genetically engineered sentient sausage & undisputed inventor of the end-fed dipole. I also invented the schlumpy dipole.
# KiwiSDR, NetSDR, Airspy HF+, Airspy HF+ Discovery, TS-590, IC-7610, FTDX10, ANAN 7000 DLE MKII
# beerusmaximus@gmail.com * North Shore, Massachusetts

Offline BoomboxDX

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 804
    • View Profile
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #3 on: April 06, 2021, 0146 UTC »
He used to cover the SW at night, and gave the domestic (and some foreign) SW broadcasters a lot of business.

His death, along with covid, and the teetering state of the economy, and the bad propagation we've had since 2016 or so, and the slow disappearance of SW broadcasting in general, all are portents that we are entering the days of 'log 'em before they go off the air'.
An AM radio Boombox DXer.
+ GE SRIII, PR-D5 & TRF on MW.
The usual Realistic culprits on SW (and a Panasonic).

Offline N0TLD

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Posts: 24
  • somewhere in the Ozarks
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #4 on: April 10, 2021, 0851 UTC »
He was a pedophile, a sexual predator. He was pure evil. Few will miss him.


I certainly won't. A wicked man, spewing hateful things, a perverter of faith and far worse a perverter of people -- including children --  who believed in and trusted him. He victimized people for decades, and if there had been any justice, he'd have spent his last long years alone behind bars, instead of dying at home in hospice care.

Now, I can understand some feel his 'loss' is a blow to domestic shortwave broadcasting -- I can almost picture panicking RMI and BCQ and a half dozen MW stations frantically sending heart pumps and resuscitation gear to him the last few years. I wouldn't blame them. And of course, it was entirely his right to produce and pay for airtime to broadcast whatever the hell he wanted. I've never been about censorship; I know what a tuning knob is. And I want those stations to succeed and grow and go on.

But in all honesty, if it turns out his brand of grating, delusional garbage is the only thing holding up American SW, then American SW deserves to die with him.

Yet I imagine Stair will be in syndication for however long whomever has the rights to his recorded rantings also has the cult cash to air it. Maybe it will be a little less often, a diminished schedule, not as many freqs/stations, etc... but it will probably still be going for years to come.

I'm not bitter or anything. I just have an issue (and hard experience) with cults, and cult leaders, and the damage they cause, from innocent children's lives to entire families and communities.

Good freaking riddance.

Mike
N0TLD
« Last Edit: April 10, 2021, 0903 UTC by N0TLD »
Kenwood TS940s/at; Kenwood TS450s/at; modified Icom R75; modified Sony ICF2010; Panasonic RF2200, RF2600, RF2800, RF2900; Zenith Trans-Oceanic R-7000-2; numerous other vintage multi band receivers; Silvertone 4565, Grundig 2440U, Hallicrafters S38 and numerous other vintage tube radios; numerous homebrew crystal sets; numerous homebrew long/randomwires and loops including a 290' Loop On Ground with a homebrew 9:1 transformer; Par EF/SWL sloper; Wellbrook ALA330 and ALA1530LNP loops; 5/8 ground plane vertical.

Offline Ct Yankee

  • Marconi Class DXer
  • ********
  • Posts: 6792
  • 2 of our 4 food groups in Durham CT - Play ball!
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #5 on: April 10, 2021, 2335 UTC »
From N0TLD:

"Now, I can understand some feel his 'loss' is a blow to domestic shortwave broadcasting -- I can almost picture panicking RMI and BCQ and a half dozen MW stations frantically sending heart pumps and resuscitation gear to him the last few years. I wouldn't blame them. And of course, it was entirely his right to produce and pay for airtime to broadcast whatever the hell he wanted. I've never been about censorship; I know what a tuning knob is. And I want those stations to succeed and grow and go on."

Excellent and heartfelt post, Mike.  I will just touch on the financial aspects for now as they were brought to my attention.  I correspond regularly with Brice Avery of Scotland who produces the wonderful classical music program Encore on Radio Tumbril.  He shot up the flare below to me:

"Hi Dean,
Hope all well with you.
If you happen to be tuning in at 0100 - 0200 UTC Sunday - in a few hours - I wonder if you could let me know if you can hear both 7780 and 5850.
WRMI are having to turn off some of their transmitters at random times because one of their major customers - Brother Stair - the preacher - died about a week ago.
Their income from his broadcasts is now at risk and they have been saving electricity...

I have to go to sleep now so if you get this in time you could perhaps monitor for me.

Thanks,

Brice"


I did hear Brice's Encore program on both frequencies at 0100 utc.
« Last Edit: April 11, 2021, 0105 UTC by Ct Yankee »
Tecsun H501x (broadcast received on this unless noted), Zenith T/O G500, Zenith T/O Royal 7000, Emerson AR-176, Zenith 8S154, T/O 7G605 (Bomber), Tecsun PL-600, Tecsun PL-880, Zenith 5S320, Realistic DX 160 using 40 feet of copper wire.  With apologies to Senator Gramm for his thoughts on firearms, "I have more radios than I need but not as many as I want."
QTH:  Durham, Connecticut (rural setting, 15 miles north of Long Island Sound)
qsl please to:  jamcanner@comcast.net  (Thank you)

Offline Azimuth Coordinator

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 247
  • Listen for Us on 4185 Khz or 5185 Khz
    • View Profile
    • Email
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #6 on: April 12, 2021, 1048 UTC »
At one point you could find him on no less than 4 frequency's a day..  And when you ask yourself "Who is listening to this"  I guess there is always someone somewhere..  “Nature abhors a vacuum.”    So someone will come along and fill his time slots  Especially now that there is Corporate Social Censorship on most all internet platforms.  SW might be one of the only ways left to get your message out...  To be Continued...


Just my 14 cents  ( Adjusted for Inflation )

tAC
QTH: A Clandestine location on the East Coast
Watkins Johnson WJ-8716, WJ-8718A, WJ-8618B
Radio.Illuminati6150@Gmail.com

Offline Rob.

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 622
    • View Profile
    • N1NTE KiwiSDR online
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #7 on: April 12, 2021, 1418 UTC »
I see a great opportunity here for pirate broadcasters to create a legal "alter ego" by buying some of the empty time on these stations. No doubt these broadcasters would be in a position to offer some deeply discounted pricing right now. WBCQ was, at one time, down to $25/hr of air time. Get/find a sponsor who will help pay for the broadcast time or start a GoFundMe (or similar) to raise the funds. Maybe some enterprising individual could pool the pirate talent and put on a show with multiple pirates' content in say, half hour time slots, to further keep costs down.

I'm sure that there are SW listeners that would donate a few bucks toward this effort. It would be interesting if pirate radio played a part in the salvation for some of these SW broadcasters.
- Rob

CT/MA border
Email: n1nte.rob@gmail.com
KiwiSDR (x4) online - http://sigmasdr.ddns.net:8073/
ΣSDR Blog - https://n1nte.blogspot.com/

Offline Rizla

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 239
  • Sonoran Desert, AZ
    • View Profile
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #8 on: April 18, 2021, 0051 UTC »
Some great comments above, particularly the idea about pirates renting the empty space.

However, before the topic of B. Stair dies away, I would like to sincerely thank whoever it was that made the so-called "Brother Stair Numbers Station."

That was really a riot, a classic, a million good things you could say about it. It needs to be better known or re-appear.
QTH: Sonoran Desert, AZ. Kenwood TS-820S, FT-891, Tecsun 880, neophyte in a forest of antenna wire.

Offline Looking-Glass

  • DX Legend
  • ******
  • Posts: 1139
  • Condobolin, NSW, Australia
  • "Old fashioned DXer, no offshore computer rxing!"
    • View Profile
Re: Brother Stair Dies
« Reply #9 on: May 12, 2021, 1050 UTC »
His rantings were always a good propagation indicator on the low HF bands over here. 
Condobolin, NSW.

Grid Square:  QF37ub

Yaesu FT-1000D, Yaesu FT-2000D, ICOM IC-736 HF/50MHz, ICOM IC R75 & Tecsun S-2000 to 450 feet of wire, 27MHz 1/2 wave CB antenna converted to 21MHz & a multi band vertical of dubious reliability.

 

HFUnderground T-Shirt
HFUnderground House Flag
by MitchellTimeDesigns