![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/bornhack-radio-studio.jpg\")
The BornHack Radio nerve centre.<\/p>\nOver the years I have been to many hacker camps and done a lot of very cool things, but BornHack 2026 brought me something entirely new: Radio. By which I don\u2019t mean radio in terms of amateur radio, LoRa, or whatever, but Radio. Broadcast radio, because the camp had a special event FM radio station for the first time. And because in a previous life I spent an inordinate amount of time in my university\u2019s student radio station and have the Radio Voice to prove it, I was totally there for it.<\/p>\n
The BornHack Radio nerve centre.<\/p>\n
For a hacker camp, one of the special things about BornHack Radio was unexpected, that it was entirely analogue. No online streams, the only broadcast was over the air, 5 watts ERP from a vertical antenna stuck on a mast at the highest point of the Hylkedam scout camp site. I don\u2019t know whether any of the residents of the isle of Funen listened, or what they made of it, but it certainly reached as far as the two closest towns.<\/p>\n
The other unexpected feature of the station was that it had no music licensing. Personally I viewed this as an asset, because it forced the programming to be hacker-focused rather than suit the musical tastes of whichever people are enthusiastic enough to be DJs. I sincerely hope they don\u2019t get a music licence at future events, speech-only gives it a special quality.<\/p>\n
The studio for an analogue station like this one can be surprisingly simple, in that it\u2019s a mixing desk to bring all the different microphones and other inputs together and set the levels, and not a lot else. the whole thing was in a Coleman shelter on the main drag through the camp, so as studios go it could have been quieter. Programming varied from talk shows through interview shows, a live feed from the speaker tent \u2014 is this the first ever Hacker Jeopardy broadcast? \u2014 and a beautifully done robotic numbers station which I suspect may also have been part of one of the on-camp games.<\/p>\n
I brought two shows to the airwaves, both recorded, the first of which was a BornHack take on the Hackaday Podcast format<\/a>, and the second a half-hour roving interview show<\/a>. I believe I may be the first person ever to live-commentate a pixelflood screen in the style of Formula One coverage.<\/p>\n So that was BornHack Radio, a new experience at a hacker camp both for those of us who ventured forth on the airwaves, and I hope also for the listeners. A format in which the live shows disappeared into the aether rather than having an online afterlife gave the whole thing a freedom rarely found in 2026. I really hope this isn\u2019t the last time I break out the fluffy microphone at a hacker camp.<\/p>\n Thanks to [\u2068Morel Sourvalley\u2069] for the images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over the years I have been to many hacker camps and done a lot of very cool things,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-574893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/hackaday-mic-cube-e1785826963665.jpg\")
<\/a>The thing that struck me most in my first foray into radio journalism was how straightforward it was. Wander the camp with microphone (complete with fluffy windshield and 3D-printed Hackaday cube<\/a>), drop the results into Audacity, and a remarkably straightforward editing process compared to video. Last time I did this it involved 1\/4\u2033 tape and a razor blade.<\/p>\n