(Got a story? – please share it with us!)

Sometimes you get out there troubleshooting and run into something that really is almost hard to believe. Yes, sometimes even the engineer can be the problem (There have always been some silly/cranky/brain dead engineers out there, too). So, engineers tell some stories on ourselves.

In fact, how some stations stayed on the air can be a mystery!

---

Exhibit 9:
Waaaayyy back in 1956 as I began my broadcasting career at KWGS-FM Tulsa University, we had a Saturday football game to broadcast. The Western Electric xmttr crashed about 2 hours before game time.

I got there before Claude Hill, the CE arrived. I had my ham license for several years and knew a few things about troubleshooting. When the CE arrived, I notified him that we were blowing fuses. He started checking for shorts.

While Claude was on the floor in back of the rig looking around, a perplexed announcer came running into the xmttr room all flustered and excited that he might not get on the air for the game. He asked about 6 rapid fire questions to which I answered, “the grid leak drip pan overflowed and Claude and I were in the process of cleaning it up” I told him to go to the stadium, set up the gear, and we should be back up by game time. He split.

That’s when I heard the strangest noises coming from the rear of the xmttr. Claude was convulsing in total gut busting laughter. Moments later I found where a HV DC wire had shorted to the chassis. A little black tape and waxed lacing cord fixed it and we were back on well before game time. Not bragging, but that was one of my best ever responses.

Contributed by: Bob Gorgance

---

Exhibit 8:

To this day, I still remember a little adventure during my first solo board-op shift in college radio, even though it was 32 years ago.

I was an hour into the shift, and it was time to take meter readings. I switched the old analog Gates remote control metering unit from displaying power to displaying plate voltage, and immediately heard the rush of white noise on our off air monitor. I couldn’t restart the transmitter, which appeared to be totally dead, and I couldn’t understand how I had killed the transmitter simply by switching the remote meter from power to plate voltage. As I contemplated my future in broadcasting with thoughts of being forever remembered as the guy who had destroyed our transmitter, we got the GM to go over to the transmitter site to figure out what had happened.

Our transmitter was on the top floor of a dorm building which was vacant at the moment because it was the break between the fall and spring terms, and some genius in the university’s physical plant department decided that they could save the university a little money but shutting down the electrical feed to the vacant dorm building (You’d think the large antenna on the roof might have been a clue that something up there just might need power).

And of course, when they shut down the electricity, they could not have timed it more perfectly to the exact moment that I switched the meter if we had rehearsed it for weeks to get it in perfect sync.

From a post by: Mike Kluger

---

Exhibit 7:

Years ago in Ketchikan an FCC inspector showed up and flashed his badge at the only person in the station, a young part time employee. The inspector asked for the key to the transmitter room which was locked.

“O sir, the manager said to never let anybody into that room.” Well, the inspector did get the key after explaining the facts of life to the young man. The inspector was immediately made suspicious when year after year of transmitter logs showed the exact same numbers. He deftly turned off the plates and the meters stayed the same! Using the official FCC tweaker he popped off the meter covers and found out that the needles had been glued in place at their pivots! He then noticed that only the lamps were illuminated on the transmitter, no blower noise etc.

Further investigation led to the next room where the illegal five kW transmitter resided.

The station was sold shortly thereafter.

Submitted by: Chuck Lakaytis

LinkUp

---

Exhibit 6:

When I was CE at WCHA, Chambersburg, PA., we had a homemade remote control unit that had three meters, each with separate calibration pots. Each morning I would dutifully record the readings at the transmitter site and set the calibration pots at the studio.

Eventually, however, one of the pots was up all the way and could not adjust its respective meter anymore. It was then that I removed the panel to find out what needed to be fixed. What I found was that the meters all connected to a single 9-volt battery through a calibration pot. The battery was turned on and off using a DPST switch on the front panel. The other pole of the switch went to the remote-control phone line.

At the transmitter, the remote-control phone line was connected in series with the plate-relay coil, which used 220 volts!

There was 220 volts on the telephone line and no actual metering! When I brought this to the attention of the owner/manager, he said; “Just change the battery!”

Eventually we did get a remote-control unit, but only after the last blood was drained out of all the rocks in Pennsylvania.

Submitted by: Richard B. Johnson

---

Exhibit 5:

I got a call from a client station indicating that they were off the air, and went on to explain that “the lines are down”.

That phrase is common from non-technical folks who have seen one too many Westerns where the frontier town was isolated by the telegraph lines becoming inoperative. So those folks tend to apply that phrase to any technical problem.

So, I figured they meant the network satellite. I said “well, put in a CD and play some music.”

An awkward silence followed; the lady was clearly baffled by my response. She repeated “but, the lines are down!”

I said really calmly: “never mind; I’m not that far from the site; I’ll go check it out.” She said “okay,” but with a tone that was clear she was questioning my sanity.

Imagine my surprise as I rounded the corner and saw that indeed the “lines” were “down” – the guy wires … and the 400′ tower crumpled in a mess among them.

Fortunately, not a soul was injured; the tower had fallen like a tree in a windstorm due to an error a week or two earlier by a tower crew during a reguying process. A neighbor stood and watched it fall, and it landed ten feet from her while she was frozen in fear, unable to run.

Submitted by: Ken Hoehn

---

Exhibit 4:

In my early career as the “electronic janitor,” for a station in Pennsylvania, I noted that the meter readings could no longer be calibrated on the home-brew remote control panel. I could calibrate the plate current and the plate voltage. However, the antenna current, that normally read near full-scale could no longer be calibrated. I started to investigate.

It turns out that the “remote control” unit consisted of a DPDT toggle switch, three meters, three potentiometers, and a nine-volt “transistor radio” battery.

The battery was getting low.

Even better (!), the transmitter ON/OFF was provided by connecting the physical-pair phone line in series with the 120-volt coil of the plate relay.

Submitted by: Richard B. Johnson

---

Exhibit 3:

That reminds me of a story told by an FCC field engineer in Alaska.

He was inspecting a 5 kilowatt station and noticed that all the meter readings were the same for months and months. Suspecting wrongdoing he pushed the “plate off” switch on the transmitter. The meters did not move.

It developed that whiole the five kW transmitter had the panel lights on and the blower running, the high voltage had been disconnected. He popped the meter covers off and discovered that the movements had been scotch-taped in place.

He then became even more suspicious and noticed a lock door with a transmission line coming out of the wall and running through another wall to the ATC. He asked for the key to the door. The afternoon
high school DJ told him that the boss told him to never never let anybody into that room – a matter of electrical safety according to the boss.

Well, the inspector got the key and discovered a 10 KW transmitter in operation, a lot more then the license.

The station was sold within 60 days. I understand the FCC made that arrangement.

Submitted by: Chuck Lakaytis

---

Exhibit 2:

This reminds me of the first TV station I worked for. The transmitter site and master control were co-located which had its good and bad points. This is a bad point.

We were on a remote when we were to called by the master control operator that we kept going off the air. So I secured whatever I was taking care of and let my supervisor/general manager know that I was leaving. Just before I pulled out the master control operator said everything was ok and not to bother coming up to the TX site.

After a few questions I found out that the MCO had reset all of the limits on the analog meters to their maximum so the transmitter would not go off. He would not turn off the transmitter, he would just reset the meter limits. So up I went anyway to see what all was messed up.

I do not remember anymore exactly what was wrong but it was related to a tube overload of some sort, and a fairly simple repair took care of things. My supervisor wanted to reprimand the MCO for changing the meters. Instead we got in trouble with the owner who was the guy’s grandfather because we “did not train him well enough – and keeping the transmitter on the air was the right thing to do.” His grandmother also thought we were a little too rough on him.

Yes we were in constant trouble when it came to this guy.

Submitted by: David Arendt

---

Exhibit 1:

Y’all are reminding me of things I thought were long forgotten. Way back in history I got a part time gig at a station in Hammond, Indiana.

Back in the day when we had to calibrate the remote metering the engineer stopped by the transmitter and called the on air jock to “get-r-done.” The jock informed the engineer that he was doing his show, and didn’t have time for the check.

The engineer reached over, hit plate OFF, and said: “yes, you are off and now have the time.”

Submitted by: Gary Glaenzer

Continue reading

Exhibit 3 – Restarting the Automation
Years ago, I received a call from the Sunday Morning Gospel DJ saying that the Maestro automation had locked.

I proceeded to tell him to put a CD on and reboot the computer. Of course, I was then asked how to do that. I told him to click on start at the bottom of the monitor and was met with silence. I waited about 30 seconds and asked if that had brought the menu up, but got no response. I called the DJ’s name several times before he answered me. I asked him what was wrong and he told me that he could not find “start” on the monitor.

We went back and forth for a few minutes with me trying to get him to move the mouse to the bottom left corner of the monitor and click on “start”, but he just could not locate it. I finally asked him to look at the bottom left hand corner of the monitor and tell me what he said. His reply was “JBL.”

While trying to hold back the laughter, I merely stated that I would be there in a few minutes and hung up the phone.When I finally go to the studio, I first had to show him the difference between the computer monitor and the control room monitors, the JBL speakers.

Contributed by Robert Combs

---

Exhibit 2

I’d been hired to be the Chief Engineer for the KRKE, what would arise from the old KGGM(AM), 610, Albuquerque. We designed and built new studios, and were determined to be the #1 rocker in town. A popular jock from KOMA in Oklahoma City was brought in to be afternoon drive and PD. This guy had an ego bigger than our entire state. He provided us with no end of experiences fit for this column.

#1 – during the news he’d always go to the jock lounge and primp. Unbeknown to him the Control Room door still had a functioning lock on it. On April 1st years ago I told the news department to have lots of news available for the 1:00 hour newscast, and don’t ask why, just take some extra copy into the news booth. While the jock was primping, we locked the Control Room door. Seeing him trying to break down the locked door was a dance well worth watching! Before he could actually destroy anything I magically arrived with a key and let him in.

#2 On another occasion we decided that we’d try to fill the Control Room with enough helium that his voice would change, beginning to sound like those Jacque Cousteau deep diving folks who begin to sound like chipmunks. We opened the valves on several large bottles of helium. Long before the helium could have any effect he came running out of the Control Room and wouldn’t re-enter. You see, we hadn’t known he had a deadly fear of snakes, and the hissing sound make him feel certain that there were “Snakes In The Room.”

#3 One July afternoon he came running out of the Control Room. “There’s static in my headphones!” We explained to him that yes, there would be static, since a lightning storm is in progress, and, of course everyone in the audience was hearing the static, too. “You mean – they’re hearing static on MY show?” he loudly exclaimed.”You’ve got to do something. Make it stop!” I paused, reflected, and said “Y’know, I’ll talk to God for you and ask him to stop the storm, how’s that?” Suddenly realizing how foolish his demand was, he “stormed” back into the Control Room never to broach the subject again.

#4 just one of many of his programming requirements. He told our morning jock that before coming into work the next morning the morning jock would have to have his hair styled. “Why is that,” the morning jock asked, “this is radio, not TV.” “Because,” he said, “when your hair is styled you’ll sound better.” The morning jock’s hair got styled, and the PD swore that the morning jock did now indeed sound better.

Contributed by Mike Langner

---

Exhibit 1

I had a co-worker who was always more important than others. She would page people, to have them call her. She would never ever dial their extension.

One day she paged me. So, I paged back, “Tom is at extension 136. Always has been.”

The rest of the staff picked up on that, and used it every time. Our Problem person was trained pretty quickly.

Contributed by Tom Bosscher

Continue reading

Exhibit 5:
Kate, our morning drive Co-host, also does voice-tracking for an evening music-oriented couple of hours.

Kate was talking with a listener, one day. During the conversation, the listener stopped to ask again, who was she speaking with & what was her position? Kate said she was the Morning Co-host, which is her official job title.

“Oh,” the listener replied, “I like that OTHER woman, who is on at night, better. You should listen to HER and try to be more like HER.”

It has been an on-going joke around here ever since.

Contributed by John Stortz

---

Exhibit 4:

I was working at the only local (Class A FM) station during an ice storm and – on a stack of Bibles! – this little old lady (sweet as pie, normally – a regular contributor to the swap shop) calls up complaining that we are off the air.

When I explained that we didn’t have power, just like everyone else in the area, she said, and I quote: “You should make an announcement that you’re off the air, then!”

Contributed by Tom Spencer

---

Exhibit 3:

When I was in Hartford, we came across some unusual listeners who were dedicated to their shows. One such gentleman was a disabled person whose name is Henry.

Henry, despite the fact that he relied on public transportation, was very adept at making it to various morning show remote broadcasts locally. When these remotes were situated at locations miles across state, Henry was the last person we’d expect to see show up – but he did.

How he navigated his way alone became a mystery, and we likened him (in a good natured way) to some sort of supernatural being with powers of teleportation. Some remotes were so far away, the show crew needed a hotel room because of the distance and time of the day involved, but Henry would somehow show up shortly after the broadcast began.

I have been away from that station for several years now, but it would not surprise me if Henry is still gracing the remotes – angel of the morning show that he is.

Contributed by Chuck Dube’

Henry Engineering

---

Exhibit 2:

Dealing with problems caused by RF getting into residences near a transmitter site can be daunting. Sometimes they will insist the station is the problem – while the reality is quite different.

Contributed by Burt Weiner

---

Exhibit 1:

Ever hear the about the woman who heard a station, not on her phone, her television, or her toaster, but in her teeth?

Now what do you do?

Continue reading

Exhibit 11: GM: Don’t Hang Up On Me!

I once had a station go off the air while I was in the studios, so I hightailed it to the transmitter to see what was up.  When I got there the phone was ringing with the station’s G.M. on the line.  I asked him if I could call him back and he went ballistic – how dare I try to dismiss him in the middle of a crisis – and demanded to know exactly what was going on and what I was doing to rectify the situation.

So I proceeded to tell him, going into excruciating detail about what could take the station off the air and how I would handle each scenario.  After listening for several minutes he interrupted and asked me to get to the bottom line – when we could we expect to be back on the air?

I told him about 30 seconds after he released me from the call – the phone cord wouldn’t reach over to the piece of equipment I needed to reset.

Contributed by Lou Schneider

---

Exhibit 10: Do Me a Favor
I’d just “hired on” to build the KRKE facilities that I talked about in the earlier email. The station, formerly KGGM(AM) had been owned by a family that ran the then KGGM-TV, now KRQE(TV).

I was stringing cable from the telephone and cross-connect room when I got a call from the general manager of the TV station across the parking lot.

As I sat down in his office he explained to me that the TV translator that sits high atop a tall mountain in southern New Mexico and which feeds a number of other translators was off the air, and that his contractor “down south” hadn’t been able to fix it. “Could I fix it,” he asked.

“Great,” he said, “I’ve already called in our helicopter pilot — can you pack up whatever you’ll need and leave here in about 20 minutes when he arrives?”

Smiling, I said “Well, I can, but perhaps you’d better check with Dell Wood first to see if it’s OK for me to go.”

“Why is that”, he replied, “and who is Dell Wood?”

Still smiling I answered “Dell Wood is the general manager of the radio station. Don’t you remember? You sold the radio station. I don’t work for your company.”

“Oh”, he responded, “I forgot. Maybe I better send somebody who still works for me.”

Contributed by Mike Langner

---

Exhibit 9: You Can’t Get There From Here

So there was a station ownership transfer. To say that it was unpleasant would be a compliment. On the last day the former engineer left a pile of keys on his desk and walked out.

The next day we were all listening to the station’s RPU channel. The new engineer was calling the station to say “I can see the transmitter but can’t find the road up there”.

We all thought it was hilarious.

Contributed by Bill Ruck

---

Exhibit 8: Seeking the Transmitter

There are more-and-more station “managers” who just sell time and tend the computer that spews programming “somewhere” and this was back in the days of electro-mechanical automation equipment!

One station for which I worked in the distant past went off-the-air. The station manager called the owner, asking where the transmitter site was located.

The owner, who had been at the NAB convention a few months back and had spoken with Paul Gregg and me about getting a new transmitter for a site in a different state remembered that I had once worked for the station as a “young kid.” He found my work telephone number an gave it to the manager of the station that was off-the-air.

So the station manager called me and asked where the transmitter site was. I told him it was on Margin Street in Westerly, Rhode Island.

About 1/2 hour later he asked if I knew where there might be a hidden key. I told him that when I worked there 35 years ago (at the time), we kept a key at a certain place. He thanked me.

After another 1/2 hour he called and stated that he was able to get in, but did not know what the transmitter looked like. I told him to just find the electrical box on the south wall and check the circuit breakers. He found one that tripped, reset it …

… and then drove back to the studio to use the remote-control to put the station back-on-the-air!

Contributed by Richard B. Johnson

---

Exhibit 7: The Right Level for Reverb

I had a happy PD, but the GM was concerned about the reverb level (back in the days of on-air reverb).

I found a sloped front really small mini box with a pot and a 10 turn “calibrated” knob on it. It had five-way binding posts on the top. I connected it to a 10 foot piece of West Penn purple wire and ran it into the ceiling in the GM’s office. I told him to carefully adjust the reverb level up and down until he was happy, then I would remove
the device.

It was in his office for a couple of weeks. Since the knob had a “counter” from zero to 100, I could see what he did from day to day.

Finally, he was happy the reverb was set correctly, at his direction, and he wanted me to remove the box fro his office. I hopped up on his desk, pushed up the suspended ceiling tile, the wire fell out, and I picked up the tiny box and walked out. He had an amazed look on his face, which turned to laughter. He understood he was taken and that he didn’t have a clue about audio. He never got between me and any PD (and we had many) again.

Contributed by Chip Fetrow

---

Exhibit 6: Getting It on the Air Right Now!

Sometimes people complicate things way too much!

One day I was called into the GM’s office. The Program Director was already there. They said: “We’d like to run a network program on the AM. It comes down the line at 5 PM and must run as close to that time as possible. We’d like you to rig up a recording cart machine in the AM studio that will automatically record every day at 5 PM. That way the show will be ready to air as soon as the cart re-cues.”

I looked at them and asked: Why can’t you just take the show live?

The two of them looked at me and then the GM began laughing. “We can” he said.

And they did.

Contributed by Dana Puopolo

---

Exhibit 5: Les Nessman Had a Brother

We were off-the-air due to a Klystron failure in the (early 70’s), and I got a call at the transmitter site from the GM while changing the thing out wanting to know why I had not put up a slate telling folks that we would be back when repairs were finished! I swear that is the truth!!

Contributed by: Tommy Gray

Futuri POST

---

Exhibit 4: How it Looks is More Important Than How it Works

When I worked for PAX TV, corporate engineering pre-built all the Master Control rooms at their facility in Florida, and sent them off to the stations. It was up to the stations to find space to make them fit-not the reverse.

It was not a big deal for me, because my space was empty. So we literally studded and sheet rocked a room in one corner of the empty building.

During construction, I noticed that the remote control for the Beta SP decks was on the left side of the table. I’m a lefty and this was perfect for me – but difficult for the right handed operators that were in the majority. I watched them crossing their arms trying to switch and start a deck at the same time. The cure was obvious – we moved the control to the right side of the table. Problem solved.

That is until Corporate Engineering showed up one day. They went ballistic when they saw what I had done. How dare I change their design!

Then they went even more ballistic when they saw that I had put the Profile video server in another air-conditioned room instead of in the MCR rack and was remoting the keyboard, mouse and monitor into the MCR. Of course, the reason I had done so was to minimize heat build up in the room (I believe that heat is one of the things that causes equipment failures).

A few days later a registered letter came from corporate engineering notifying me that I was officially on probation for six months. What corporate engineering did not realize was that by then I was also the General Manager of the station and a simple phone call to Dean Goodman (the President of TV) took care of things. Of course, that so POed them at C.E. that I am now blackballed at Paxson.

One more thing: they seemed to have a lot of trouble at Paxson with their Profile servers overheating and shutting down – except in Boston, of course. That changed when I left and the idiot that replaced me put it in the rack in MCR (and also moved the remote control back to the left side). Then they also started to have overheating problems.

Some people just can’t learn anything.

Contributed by Dana Puopolo

---

Exhibit 3: A Big Fish in a Small Pond is Still Fishy

At WCHA in Chambersburg, PA, the owner John Booth had a great self-image and an enormous ego. His office was marble and mahogany with his desk set on a two-step high pedestal with a window behind. This required one to look up, as though to a judge, with the bright outside light in ones eyes.

One of the Chief Engineer’s jobs was to set up, test, stand by for emergencies, then tear down when finished, a remote studio for “record hops,” (remember them?) and other sponsored events.

When Chambersburg lost its electrical power for about a day because a farmer mowed down the high-voltage transmission lines serving all of central Pennsylvania, Booth insisted that I set up the remote studio at the transmitter site, notwithstanding the fact that we did not have an emergency generator at the site.

I was required to do this (in the dark) – just in case, someone would “loan” the station a generator (and it would get magically wired in)! Mr. Booth thought his station was so important that he could certainly get a generator from the Civil Defense.

Yawn.

That prepared me for a union job at WJZ-TV in Baltimore – no more ego trips.

Contributed by Richard B. Johnson

---

Exhibit 2: Do Not Yell “Fire” in the Radio Studio

I began to get an inkling that I was headed for shipwreck early in my stint at the commercial stations here in Cincinnati.

I was called on the carpet for calling the fire department before telling the boss of a fire in the facility. I was ‘written up’ for insubordination!

Contributed by Jeff Johnson

---

Exhibit 1: An Inventive Way to Get Paid

More than a few years ago, my business partner shared an office suite with the owner of a tower company. The tower company had been shafted on an AM they re-guyed.

John Reiser (WQ4L) was still at the FCC. I asked John if it was legal to go recover the guy wires. He said it was, as long as the intent was not to drop the towers, but only to recover the property.

So, a tower crew showed up at the site, with co-located studios and offices to recover the guy wires, and informed the owner what they were going to do, and what would, unfortunately happen as a result. The check book came out, but no, cash only. The owner said it would take an hour to get to his bank and back. He was told he had 30 minutes before they start work.

He returned with the cash, early.

I wondered why someone with the ability to pay, just would not.

Contributed by Chip Fetrow

Continue reading

Exhibit 10:
The Poor Man’s Arbitron

Some people got high school summer jobs in the local McDonalds. My high school job was on the air, spinning records at the local AM daytimer during the long summer days.

The station’s antenna just happened to be in a tidal swamp.

One day I started my shift at high tide and noticed the antenna current was also on the high side, due to the high water table under the antenna. The DJ I relieved remarked that the current was lower when he started his shift and had steadily climbed while he was on the air. In fact, it had been doing that for the past couple of weeks.

On the spur of the moment, I congratulated him for expanding the station’s audience. He asked me what I meant, so I explained that when a radio tunes in a station, it draws a little bit of the radio wave out of the air, and this has to be replaced by power coming out of the antenna. Therefore, higher antenna current must mean more radios are tuning in.

He grabbed the transmitter log out of my hands and rushed to share the good news with management – along with a demand for more money to go along with the larger numbers.

I don’t know what happened about the raise, but he was very grouchy when the tidal cycle reversed itself a few weeks later…

Contributed by Lou Schneider

Exhibit 9:

Twice a year, stations have to deal with sun outages on their satellite systems. This is caused by the receiving satellite dish, the satellite in question and the sun being in perfect alignment for a (reasonably) short period of time.

The satellite providers have developed web applications that allow a station to determine the beginning and ending of the sun outage. Satellite providers usually send out, in advance of the event, a reminder to users so that alternate arrangements can be made.

After getting the annual message from our satellite provider, I sent it on to the programming department. An hour or so later I was caught in the hall by the PD of a station that would be affected by the sun outage. He asked why this was happening at this date/time.

I explained to the PD what caused this event and that there was nothing we could do about it.

He looked me in the eye, and with a straight face said: “Maybe it will be cloudy on the dates involved?”

I had to summon all my intestinal fortitude to quickly walk back to my office, close the door, and then break down laughing.

Contributed by Michael Golchert

Exhibit 8:

I once worked for a TV group and got called by our transmitter tech in Houston that we were off-the-air there.

I asked him to read the meters on the transmitter and he said “okay – as soon as I can could find a flashlight.”

I then asked him why he needed a flashlight and he told me “all the lights were off because of the power failure.”

This has to be a true story – you could not make this up!

Contributed by Dana Puopolo

Exhibit 7:

A long time ago at a station cluster, far, far, away I received a call, from the operations manager/morning “personality” around 7:30 AM, informing me that one of the FM’s was off the air.

Right before I arrived at the very remote site I saw the power poles laying on the ground for about half a mile due to a storm that had gone through earlier that morning.

With no genset on site, I went back to the studios, called the power company and reported the outage. They told me it had been reported right before 5AM and they were working that way. They expected to have power back that afternoon.

With nothing else that could be done, I went on with my day. For some reason I decided to check the logs.

Sure enough, I had normal readings for that transmitter at 6A and 8A that morning, log signed by … wait for it … The Operations Manager / Morning “Personality”!

Contributed by Rod Zeigler

Exhibit 6:

We had a morning man (he was about 80 at the time) on the oldies station I where I worked who was a legend in the market for almost 40 years, and was at the time one of the highest rated morning shows in town.

The transmitter went off the air one morning. The first thing out of his mouth is of course “what happened.”

The board op explained to him that they were off the air and the engineers had been called about it via the remote control system. Danny grilled the board op asking why he had not put a CD in – and to do something.

A couple of minutes later, he proceeded to get on the microphone and announce in his normal 1960s broadcast voice, “Friends, we are having some technical problems. We have called the engineers and they are working on it. Please stay with us and we will have things fixed soon!”

Needless to say that little story was the laugh of the building for at
least a week. Ahh, for the real days of radio again….

Contributed by Patrick Roberts

Myat, Inc.
Exhibit 5:

A DJ at one station thought he was the greatest but really
was not; I constantly had problems with him not following proper
procedures – and every reading on the log was always exactly the same hour after hour.

One evening, a friend of mine that was the Ops Mgr at another station called me at home and said that on his way home he noticed that our tower lights were out.

I called the station and our production director answered instead of the DJ. He verified that the tower lights were indeed out and the transmitter log indicated that they had been checked and were on at a time after my friend called. I called my PD, we met at
the station and the DJ was shown out the door.

The best part of the story: the DJ was interviewing for a job with my friend the Ops Mgr and asked why he left his last job he stated that some “@%%hole” had called the CE and reported that the lights were out and got him fired.

He didn’t get the job.

I think he became an insurance salesman.

Contributed by Wayne Fick

Exhibit 4:

When I first started in this business, Jim Wagner @ WPFB told me never to trust DJs’ logging.

To prove his point, he added a log entry out to four decimal places. The transmitter was an old RCA – beautiful, but the metering might yield three digits at best – certainly nothing with four places after the decimal point.

Guess what the log showed for the rest of the week?

Contributed by Jeff Johnson

Exhibit 3:

One very snowy morning when I was CE up in Massachusetts, I turned on the radio around 9:30AM, and while there was a signal, it was “stuttering.” I called the DJ and asked if anything unusual was going on.

She replied that “the transmitter went off the air, but the only way I can keep it on the air is by holding the ‘raise’ button down on the
remote control!” I asked her if she “normally” had to do that…and told her to take her finger off the button.

Turns out the Collins 20V3 had vibrated its back door open far enough to break the interlock.

Art Reed

Exhibit 2:

I’ve turned in a number of logs to the CE with a note asking “when did he print the pre-filled logs with the AM readings already filled in?”

Every reading every day same time, same figures. As the CE was not at that station, and I was PD, I was asked to investigate.

I about when I discovered the guy really did take the doggone readings at the same time every hour, every day – and with the meter switch in the wrong position every dang time!

This guy is still there over 20 years later and I will wager every reading he may take will be exactly the same.

Contributed by George Brand

Exhibit 1

It was a typical small market station in 1976, and I had just left full time employment there to work at a nearby TV station. I remained with the radio station as their contract engineer so it was not a big surprise when I got a call from the evening announcer. “I think we might be off the air… but I’m not sure.”

I asked him what the meters read, and he told me they all read zero. “Then you’re off the air” I assured him. The response nearly put me on the floor: “Well, uh,… Are you sure?” It was well known that this guy had killed a copious quantity of brain cells in his college days (and beyond), so the chief engineer’s assertion and a panel of dead meters did not register as conclusive.

The transmitter had a finicky rectifier so I talked him through replacing it. Once his meters again read well above zero he finally explained he had gone out to his car earlier and heard the station (obviously leakage from the exciter) which created the uncertainty. The next week I redesigned that rectifier unit.

Contributed by John Collinson

Continue reading