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....