Radio Memories Vol. 17

When I was just a tyke, I had an interest in everything electronic. If I came across some abandoned electronic device, I’d take it apart to see the components. This was before the days of circuit boards and underneath the metal plates upon which the tubes were mounted, I discovered a jungle of wires, resistors, and capacitors. I traced those connectors from tube to capacitor to coil to the resistor to the transformer, wondering what all those colorful bands and arcane markings meant. The guy who ran the TV repair shop in my neighborhood gave me a copy of the same resistor color code chart that is in use today. He also gave me a chart for determining the values of capacitors and warned me that capacitors can hold a charge and “bite” you if you aren’t careful. 

I built my first radio when I was about ten. It was made of a coil of wire, a pair of headphones, an antenna, and, believe it or not, a pencil lead and a razor blade. No batteries are required! Don’t believe me? Google “Razor Blade Radio or Foxhole Radio!” Later in life, Mom confided in me that she was often hesitant to go into the bedroom that I shared with my brother for fear of some electronic contraption that I had strung across the floor. My crowning glory was wiring a pair of headphones into the speaker circuit of our old Muntz console TV so that my hard of hearing Great Aunt could hear without having to have the volume up so high that it drove the rest of the family out of the room.

At WUSC, I often helped Graber Jordan and Milton Holladay our engineering folks work on the equipment in the studios. Most of the time, the repairs were simple, replacing a “burned-out” tube. During the late 1960s, Ray Smith, the engineer at WCOS left and Milton was hired to be the new Engineer. “Engineer” was the term commonly used by broadcasters to designate their broadcast technicians, who at the time were required to hold an FCC First Class Radiotelephone License. Today they are rarely called engineers unless they hold a Registered Professional Engineers certification. Milton regularly engaged me as his assistant when he needed an extra set of hands. 

A good example of that was when he performed the required audio proof of performance measurements on the AM and FM stations. During those measurements, I’d wire an oscillator into the microphone input to the audio board and using a distortion analyzer out at the transmitter Milton would measure the frequency response and distortion of the station’s audio chain. All this rekindled my interest in electronics and audio engineering. In the fall of 1969, I sat for and passed my FCC First Class License exam. There was another reason I wanted that First Class Ticket, it was required for anyone operating a higher-powered transmitter or one that had a directional antenna. I still had a goal of going on the air at one of my hometown radio stations which had both a high-powered transmitter and a directional antenna at night. 

My immediate plan was to trade in part of my job that was not on the air, the distribution of the paper Top 40 charts, for hours working with Milton to keep the stations in tip-top shape. However, the management at WCOS had a different plan. They wanted me to switch mainly to engineering which would have been ok, but they also wanted me to take over the weekend shifts on Saturday midday and Sunday mornings and evenings. I was already working 6 days a week, with Sundays off and this would have meant that I would no longer have a weekend day off and could easily be working 7 days a week with no set schedule for Mondays through Fridays. I was married for about a year at that time so I submitted my two weeks’ notice without having another job lined up. As it turned out, I had pretty good foresight, one of the other DJs got sick and I worked every day those last two weeks. 

Because of that, I couldn’t earnestly start a search for a new job until I had left WCOS. By this time I had completed my flight training at Miller Aviation for my Private Pilots License and they needed a lineman who was familiar with the Piper airplanes and the facility at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport.  It was two weeks before Christmas and they were shorthanded so I was a natural fit. 

The first week of January 1970 I heard that WIS Television was looking for an audio-projectionist in their production department. There were two job requirements; run the audio board during live shows and splice and load commercial reels on their projectors.  I applied and was accepted in the second week of January. Sometime during my first 4 months there, one of the engineering supervisors in the studio, Emil Sellers pulled me aside because he heard that I held my First Class License. He asked if I would like to switch to the engineering department, run video, operate video tape machines and repair equipment as necessary. I immediately agreed and made the transition the following week. 

So I moved from on the air to a behind-the-scenes role for the next ten years at WIS-TV until 1976 and then “Chief Engineer” at WIS-Radio. Those were interesting years full of technological changes in both Radio and TV.

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Photo Credits: 
WIS-TV Courtesy of John Howard