Tagish Radio Rob

 

Born from a need to communicate from his home in Tagish 120 kms outside of Whitehrose and which did not have phone service, in the early 1990s Rob Hopkins, with a grade 8 education and little to no technical background, taught himself how to aquire and use full duplex radio recycled from a lighthouse, connect it with the telco, and send a fax to a friend overseas in Thailand.

 

Also wanting to communicate without driving into town other folks kept asking Rob to help them. Eventually this led to him building a large area wireless broadband link connecting Tagish and Marsh Lake with multiple hops and mountain top sites to Whitehorse and the world.

 

Being fascinated with radio content as well as infrastructure, in 1997 Rob started broadcasting music over the air from a small 5 watt FM transmitter – underregulated, a.k.a. pirate radio – from a radio tower erected in his yard, scavenged from the dump. By various negotiations and finagling and do-it-then-ask-forgiveness he got an antenna up on Northwestel's radio tower in Tagish as a legit operation (CFET 106.7), and then eventually in Whitehorse as CJUC 92.5 - The Juice.

 

A natural outgrowth of Rob's activities and interest became how to send out emergency and public service messages in underserved areas. Yukon hinterland is one thing, but why not also rural Africa and Asia? This idea “Radio Station in a Box” eventually manifested the open source hard- and software project Open Broadcaster, which has been in operation since 2002. Today OB provides:

 

Tagish Radio Rob is a person who has most certainly cut his own trail through life and achieved supposedly impossible things. A true Yukon innovator, we're lucky to have him manifestly exemplifying the art of the possible, right here in our Yukon backyard..