Here it is--Radio Stories

[Tom Taggart]

The STL was the cheapest brand on the market at that time--and it had a receiver with it. I had to float the 3K to buy it. The previous 505C transmitter had those TI chips that rusted, destroying circuit board traces. Also believe it had been struck by lightning at the previous studio site, in any even it was defunct when we were brought in after the FCC inspection. The STL dish was mounted on the roof of the "new" studio building (another old downtown 3 story building), attached to a 2X6 wood frame held down by concrete blocks. On those old 19th century buildings it is not wise to try to mount anything directly to the roof.

The Collins 820D had been rebuilt, and was working when the LMA ended. When we found it, it had to be re-capped, and the SCR power control circuit rebuilt (it was disconnected when we found it). That circuit did like to "hunt" a bit, as I remember, there was a circuit board that ran it which had the original-(leaky) caps in it which I rebuilt, was happier after that. Electric power was always a problem at that site, not that reliable nor clean.

WETZ AM uses a 225' Blaw-Knox self-supporting tower. Originally was built on vacant land by the river, then half the site was taken for the bridge in the 50's, then the land to the west of the tower was sold off, and filled for houses. There is a house less than 50 feet from the west side of the tower--and about 15' higher. The tower and transmitting building now sit on a 25' X 100' lot, all the rest of the land has been sold off over the years. The tower sits immediately behind the transmitter building, at the back edge of the lot, there was a driveway and small patch of grass in front of the transmitter building. On the east side there was an old abandoned house, behind, a field, belonging to someone else. Now there is a paved parking lot and funeral home beside the tower.

When we got there the transmitter, a Gates BC-1T, was not grounded to either the ATU (mounted on a metal panel on the back wall of the transmitter building), nor anything else except the electric ground. Nor was there any ground system--or ground to put it in. The FCC had cited the station in '92 for being "over power," since the base impedance had changed so dramatically over the years that a calculation based on the licensed base impedance & base current put the power at 1200 watts.

There had been a ground screen under the tower, but nothing much was left of it, nor was it connected to anything. After taking out all the weeds growing around the tower, we built a box around the base of the tower with railroad ties, and filled the center of that box with gravel over landscaping vinyl (to keep the weeds down). The "spider web" was a counterpoise built with #12 insulated wires soldered to copper strap nailed to those railroad ties and then run to ground rods driven in the ground under the center of the tower. Copper strap was then run into the building, tying the ATU panel and transmitter to this counterpoise, strap was also run around the perimeter of the building, and some copper put in the postage stamp piece of grass out front. Some radials were also snuck into the weed covered field behind the station (which was owned by someone else). This stabilized the site so a new base impedance measurement could be taken. Probably "engineer" assumed the land belonged to Nelson & that a "ground" system had to be in contact with a ground.

The BC1T had major problems, the MW-1 was not much better. However, by the time the MW-1 arrived, the LMA had been terminated, so we never did get to dig into it. Eventually the station bought a new transmitter.

[engineer]

Probably "engineer" assumed the land belonged to Nelson & that a "ground" system had to be in contact with a ground.

The BC1T had major problems, the MW-1 was not much better. However, by the time the MW-1 arrived, the LMA had been terminated, so we never did get to dig into it. Eventually the station bought a new transmitter.

No, not really. I'm a pretty grounded fella. I have seen several elevated ground systems, even ones strung out through trees. The copper straps I saw were being used to series feed the tower from the wall of the transmitter building. They were suspended in a hammock fashion, and tied to two legs of the tower. Maybe at one time there was a standard loop tube, but not when I was there. The MW-1 was in service in 1995 and had major problems, including being full of dust as it had no back door. Nelson purchased a new rack transmitter later, albeit a very cheap one, Omnitronix I believe. It was definitely not one that I would have suggested. I helped Kerry tie it into the remote control, and make the RF connections. There was some nasty + J between the transmitter and the ATU. I finally got it down to being slightly capacitive, as the transmitter manufacturer indicated the sweet spot was between -5 and 10 J-0. The tower Z would constantly change, so you had to measure three times and cut once. It was a very unusual site.

[Tom Taggart]

That "hammock" feed was the original feed--or at least the one I found. Left it in place, had enough problems with the lack of ground system. Don't remember what the situation was with the MW-1, I think it was ours ( we had a MW1A on 630, vague memory that the MW1might be good for spares, if nothing else)--I remember it came from a defunct station in Arkansas and cost next to nothing. I know the LMA fell apart soon after it arrived. The BC1T ate 833a's for lunch, and didn't modulate worth a damm. Might of had a failing mod transformer. At that time 833A's were outrageously expensive (don't think China was exporting them yet), and very poor quality. Remember telling them at the time that something newer was needed.

[philo]

Back in the seventies I was the engineer for a hometown mom and pop. Format was country with the usual toss of weekend live gospel. Mom and Pop had a neighbour Ray that was a listener 24/7. Anytime a dj went off kilter, Ray calls Pop, dj gets ass kicked.

Nashville had the afternoon drive, and a number of kickens under his belt when he found out about Ray from the office manager. During good upbeat songs he would open the mic and in a low sub audable voice say.."Ray".."R.a.y"..R.ay.

I never heard "Ray" on the air, Ray quit listening, Pop didn't get anymore calls, Nashville went back home.

Years later I ran into Ray at another stations gospil show. I knew some of the people that was with their group. They told me about how she use to hear voices on the radio and that he was talking to her. She thanks that as to the reason for her strong belief.

"..Hay..Listen..... Did you hear that"?


All names characters and incidents portrayed are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places and buildings is intended or should be inferred.

[philo]

Shhhh .. I told you to take your medicine, turn off that radio....
You remember what the doctor said.

The preacher will be here in a little bit!

[Bob Campbell]

UH, gee, I thought this was a thread about radio stories, not engineering stories. Are they the same?

[genlock]

Yes, engineering is a large part of radio.

I, too used to mess with the off-air rcvr when a rookie was in the booth.
I also used to switch albums and jackets to confuse the DJ types who played the same stuff over and over.
It was I who put the carts in the machine and then ran them somewhere into the spot, stopped the cart,
and returned it to the rack, Sometimes I removed the staple from the program log and changed the page order for spots.
I would replace the silent chair with a squeaky one.

Indeed, engineering is a large part of radio.

[lastone]

UH, gee, I thought this was a thread about radio stories, not engineering stories. Are they the same?

Such is the life of an engineer. Un noticed and un necessary.....until the damn thing goes off the air. No need for engineers now, everything's automatic. Quality? What's that?

[Bob Campbell]

Half the fun of this business is messing with engineers' heads. I think we all know they are a different species.
Homo electronicus.

[Greg Goodfellow]

I somewhat remember the "WKRP in Cincinnati" episode where Bucky the engineer asked Arthur Carlson, "Do you know what that switch does?" to which Carlson replied, "No." Bucky responded, "I do," then walked off. God bless engineers, especially Tom Taggart. Without him and Bob Eddy, our high school station (WRSG) would have been toast long ago.

[amayo]

Without a doubt engineers are the lifeblood of radio--While they're not always the most social people, no one comes close to doing what they do. They are also the source of COUNTLESS radio stories!

[Bob Campbell]

Quick engineer story. The engineer (contract I think),who shall remain nameless, at a certain group in St. Albans for whom I worked in 2004 is a fairly, uh...not dull personality. One day he may or may not have been chasing me down the hall after I'd laid some salty "what a dumb ass engineer" line on him. As he is much larger than me, and I am a total nancy, I was fleeing for my life. As we reached the front door I nimbly ducked out of the way (yes, I'm nimble) and he ran full speed into the glass door, cracking it badly. Fortunately, the way it cracked looked like someone had thrown a rock or something at the door, so that became the official story.
Don't tell the current GM, Steve something, kind of an animal last name. I think the statute of limitations has run out on this one, but I'd hate to get the engineer in trouble.

[genlock]

Engineers are usually large because of the extreme burden of the job.
And Pizza.

[ashton]

Quick engineer story. The engineer (contract I think),who shall remain nameless, at a certain group in St. Albans for whom I worked in 2004 is a fairly, uh...not dull personality. One day he may or may not have been chasing me down the hall after I'd laid some salty "what a dumb ass engineer" line on him. As he is much larger than me, and I am a total nancy, I was fleeing for my life. As we reached the front door I nimbly ducked out of the way (yes, I'm nimble) and he ran full speed into the glass door, cracking it badly. Fortunately, the way it cracked looked like someone had thrown a rock or something at the door, so that became the official story.
Don't tell the current GM, Steve something, kind of an animal last name. I think the statute of limitations has run out on this one, but I'd hate to get the engineer in trouble.

If it's who I'm thinking of, there's a difference between throwing a rock through the door and running a Brick into it.

[Cameron]

Quick engineer story. The engineer (contract I think),who shall remain nameless, at a certain group in St. Albans for whom I worked in 2004 is a fairly, uh...not dull personality. One day he may or may not have been chasing me down the hall after I'd laid some salty "what a dumb ass engineer" line on him. As he is much larger than me, and I am a total nancy, I was fleeing for my life. As we reached the front door I nimbly ducked out of the way (yes, I'm nimble) and he ran full speed into the glass door, cracking it badly. Fortunately, the way it cracked looked like someone had thrown a rock or something at the door, so that became the official story.
Don't tell the current GM, Steve something, kind of an animal last name. I think the statute of limitations has run out on this one, but I'd hate to get the engineer in trouble.

At least it wasn't the guy he replaced that stared-blankly at me when I tried to expain a mix-minus and it's use for talk radio call-ins.
Or that same guy that used a 2x4 to shove the fingers of a three-phase disconnect into place and almost blowing himself across the room.
(The new disconnect was on order as a result of my play-by-play of that event to Chris).
That boy was a peach.

[TimeEnuf]

The one aspect of radio, that I don't like, is how engineers' are treated....yeah, we may be a different breed, BUT we are not janitors, manual laborers, or the only one in building smart enuf to change a light bulb or unclog a toilet . We are the guys that get the call at 2am because a transmitter is off the air, but are expected to still be at work from 8-5 the same day....... we are the guys that have to set up the remote, just because the promotion's guy has another gig, that is paying him more.
I won't even mention the number of calls on a Friday evening because the sports guy isn't smart enuf to plug the phone cord into the right jack that you labeled for him the day before. If I had it do over again, I would have pretended to no nothing about electronics and just depended on my voice to get a job in radio....nuf said.

[Bob Campbell]

But that's why you're getting paid more than the sports guy, and the promotions guy, and every other air talent except the morning guy.

[genlock]

Sometimes the engineer is the only one in the building with any skills other than voice skills.
No one else will change a light bulb, open a locked desk or file cabinet, diagnose a dead battery in a piece of remote gear,
unclog toilets, fix the copier/printer/coffeemaker, jump start someones car after they left the lights on all day,
escort secretaries to their car because he is the only one who carries a gun, and a myriad of other chores
including fixing electronic stuff.

They may be cranky at times.

[TimeEnuf]

Don't get me wrong, I will forever love radio, I just wish my path to get here had been different.
Here is a recent radio story ...... not all that funny, but it is a good example of what engineers' do on a daily basis.

An older sales person brought in an old portable tape recored that had stopped working for me to see if it was fixable.
The batteries had corroded to the point that it was not repairable. A few days later, he brought in a new portable digital recorder, that he was having trouble figuring out how it worked. After figuring out the basics and showing him how it worked, it took me forever to convince him that there was no need to rewind the digital recorder to play back what he had just recorded.

[Jay Nunley]

I have to leave out names, market, and date so you bastards can’t google shit and end up getting me sued, but here is the wildest radio story I have. I have dozens of good ones, but this one is the one that always gets the biggest reaction.
The station I was programming at the time did an all day festival. Most of the bands are not really around anymore or bands you wouldn’t remember. The two headlining bands were big name acts.
We had about ten thousand people there including numerous local dignitaries and a rather large number of big dollar clients.
I had my air talent rotating doing the live broadcast and stage announcements/introductions. This included my overnight guy (the fact that there was an actual overnight guy should give you a hint of how long ago this was). He was batshit insane, amoral, a drug addict/alcoholic and had a voice that sounded like gravel was being crushed in his throat. In other words, he was a perfect and quintessential rock radio overnight guy.
Midway through the day he goes on stage to intro one of the mid level bands. I’m standing at the broadcast booth with another air talent and the GM, watching. All of a sudden the other air talent says, “What the fuck are those cops doing?”
I hadn’t noticed the ten or more police coming from backstage until she said that. They were coming at the overnight guy from either side. He didn’t see them until they were almost on top of him. He was in the middle of promoting the morning show and exhorting the crowd. He sees the cops, stops mid sentence, and tries to jump off the front of the stage. The cops tackle him, cuff him, hogtie him, and cart him off.
The crowd went nuts. I can’t tell you if it was because they were upset, amused, thought it was part of the show, or just thought it was bad ass in general. It was probably a combination of all those. My brain had gone into some fugue state from shock and horror, so I wasn’t really trying to gauge crowd reaction.
I told the other air talent to get on the stage and get this thing back on track. She just stood there like her feet were planted in cement. I yelled “GO! NOW!” This is the only time in my entire career as a PD I ever yelled at an air talent.
The GM and I went after the parade of police as fast as two fat men could go. He wanted to find out why the cops hadn’t waited for the overnight guy to get off the stage. I wanted to know why they were arresting my air talent. Don’t get me wrong. I was pissed they had done that on the stage in front of all those listeners and clients too, but that came later. I was worried about my guy.
After they told me what he had done, I wasn’t worried about him anymore. I was glad they had arrested his crazy ass. I just wished they had done it away from the crowd despite their orders and procedures.
It turns out this insane bastard had yet another major argument with his common law wife just before he came to the fairgrounds to work the show. She was going to leave him (so she said). He couldn’t stay there and argue and get her to stay because he couldn’t be late for work. He duct taped her to a kitchen chair and tried to rig up a shotgun to fire at her if she tried to get up from the chair. He used speaker wire for this task. I wish I was making this up.
A mail carrier saw her through a window and called the police. The cops told me later that the shotgun thing would not have worked, but the woman didn’t know that.
He ended up going to prison for a year. He probably would have gotten a longer sentence, but he plea bargained and (this part will be no surprise) the woman actually defended him and tried everything she could to get the charges dropped.