The New Radio Station, pt. 3

After what seemed a very long time, a box came from Allied Radio Co.  It seemed strangely small for all the plans I had made.  I opened the box and looked at the contents.  It consisted of a small square metal chassis, three tubes, and an assortment of resistors, capacitors, and assorted components.

I spent several hours in the following days soldering parts together until it was finished.  Now it was time to plug in the microphone and turntable to see if worked.  The first good sign was the fact that the tubes lit.  I searched for a record to test with. The antenna was only a ten foot piece of insulated wire, but it would do for testing.  When I turned my radio receiver on, I kept tuning across the dial until I finally found the sound of my record playing.  Wow, I was on the air!

The next few days I worked after school and in my spare time to check the microphone and rig a better antenna.  The instructions warned that it was against the law to use an antenna longer than the ten foot wire connected to the transmitter, so I reasoned that a longer antenna would work better.

Before long there was a 50 to 75 ft. antenna wire going from the house to a large Catalpa tree in the yard. This wire was connected to a ten foot piece of pipe tied to the tree trunk as high as I could place it. The coverage in the areas around the house was good, but it was time to see if the signal could reach the nearest neighbor at least a half to three quarters a mile away.

When it became available, I used the family car to test the signal.  Since it was difficult to get volunteer deejays, I would choose the longest playing thirty three and a third album I could find and start it on the turntable before I left the house.  The discovery that I made about the signal was that it seemed to piggyback on the electric power wires in the area.  That made the signal carry to the nearest community.

The information that the signal was getting to the nearest houses was the first step in market research. I needed a representative for the door to door information gathering.  My pool of qualified researchers was very limited.  Which one of my two brothers would be both qualified and willing to do the job?      ***to be continued.

The New Radio Station, part 2

While I was waiting for the AM transmitter to arrive, I began to assemble the other parts for the station.  In my reading I discovered the pre-amp on the broadcast kit had a low impedance and a high impedance input.  The pickup cartridge on a typical phonograph player was high impedance, so it would plug in on one side and leave an input for a low impedance microphone.  It so happens that a speaker with a permanent magnet can serve as a low impedance microphone.

The plan was coming together.  Now, I needed the kit to arrive so I could start soldering parts together.  The old house next to our main house would serve as the studio.  I was wondering what kind of range I could get on the signal.  There were trees to place an antenna in and plenty of wire and other parts to build an antenna with.

Next, I had to assemble all the records I could find.  We had a fairly good sized collection of various genres. The selections ran from Elvis records to "Around the World in 80 Days" to Judy Canova to Bruce Chanel. This list was very eclectic even by my standards.

At this point, it wasn't pertinent to me whether or not anyone would ever listen to the station or not. My main focus was getting on the air.

Since I had the necessary items assembled, the main agenda was to continue waiting for the transmitter to arrive.

***to be continued.

A New Radio Station

In the fifties and sixties radio was a powerful influence on me. Everything about broadcasting was interesting.  I built crystal radio sets and listened to shortwave radio.  My challenge was to build an antenna that would bring in those distant stations.

At night the AM broadcast band would bring in those exotic stations like XERB in Mexico where the rock music was non-stop.  Celebrity DJs like Wolfman Jack would come in like he was next door. There were other stations playing shows like Wayne Rainey who would try to convince you that you could play the harmonica in no time if you would order one with his instruction booklet.

If you liked jazz and big band music, there was WWL 870 am in New Orleans and just up the dial was WNOE 1040 in New Orleans playing any hit rock song you could imagine. If rock-a-billy was your music, then you could go to 1570 WLAC in Nashville.

With all these influences, it seemed like the natural thing to do was to get into broadcasting.  After listening to some of my voice recordings, my hope of being another great rock DJ began to fade.  I sounded more like Gomer Pyle than Dick Clark.  Of course there was another way to be a DJ.  If you owned the station, you could be the station manager, the advertising representative, the newsman, or the DJ.

I didn't have adequate knowledge to design and build a complete station, but I had lots of electronic catalogs,  There happened to be a kit for an AM transmitter in one of the Allied catalogs.  In the days before Fedex and UPS it seemed that an order took forever to get to your mailbox. The other problem with ordering was sending a type of payment that would be acceptable.  The instructions for payment usually narrowed your choice to cash or money order.  There was always a warning not to send cash, but a money order wasn't an option for me. I sent the fifteen dollars cash and hoped for it to make it through the system.

Now that my order was on it's way, all I could do was plan and wait for the U.S. Mail and the Allied Co. to do their part.

To be continued....

Horse Sense

Horses were a part of my early life because my Dad seemed to really like them.  Our house was on a lot that was too small for livestock, so Dad rented about five acres near us to grow some vegetables and board a horse.

Minniepearl was an old horse that was prone to ignore many of the distractions that would scare a younger horse.  She was also patient.  She would allow a seven year old to put a bridle on her in return for feed in a bucket and then stand still while the same kid parked her by something to climb on to reach her back.

Most of the time, the horseback ride was just a couple of laps around the pasture.  After the ride Minniepearl could go back to eating grass and doing the things that a horse does. This is the story if everything goes as usual.

Life seems to have those times when things refuse to be normal.  It is as if nature decides to present a test to see how a person will react to slightly different circumstances.  That morning the test number came up.

All was going well as I bridled Minniepearl and climbed on a feed bucket to ride her.  There were several trails in the pasture, so I chose one and rode off at a walk.  After a few minutes I noticed the trail I was riding went between a pine tree and a barbed wire fence.  Just to the right of the trail was an opening between two pine trees. As I was riding along I was estimating the width of the horse and my legs and wondering if I would fit between the fence and the tree or the two trees.  For some reason the calculation took longer than the trip to the problematic junction.

Minniepearl did not have the same problem making the decision of which route to choose.  She chose the path between the two trees,and in hindsight she made a good choice.  At the time it wasn't so obvious.  As she made her way between the trees my legs were caught on each side on the tree trunks. The fall was not unpleasant, but the contact with the ground caused a "thud" sound and a gasp for air as I attempted to draw another breath.

As I lay on my back, Minniepearl's head appeared above me.  It was if she came to see what had happened to me. My first reaction was to look around to see if anyone had seen me fall.This is the first time I have told this story, and I'm sure Minniepearl hasn't said a thing.