How the antenna works

So you know there's an antenna on that mast. and you know that somehow magically a radio wave comes out of it, do you have any idea how that happens?

An antenna is a little more than just a length of wire. If not cut to the right length, it will still radiate the carrier wave, just not in an efficient manner. Take for example the basic half-wave dipoles antenna: depending on frequency it's length will vary.

Antennas carry alternating current. This means that the antenna will have inductive reactance and resistance. In that dipole, the impedance is maximized at each end and minimized at the center gradually diminishing between the two ends reaching 73.2 Ohms in the center REGARDLESS OF FREQUENCY.

The feeder line connects to this point. This makes the two sides of the dipole behave as two separate quarter wave antennas. Here's where the A.C. ties in: for one half of the alternation, electrons flow to one side, for the other half of the alternation they flow to the other side of the antenna.Voltage will be greatest where impedance is highest (the ends) like any other circuit. The flow of electrons will be highest where the impedance is the least (the center.) No radiation will occurs at the ends.

This is where proper size matters. The electrons don't fly off into space. They rebound and return to the center. This occurs with the proper timing to reinforce the movement of the other electrons moving in that direction.

This produced both an electromagnetic field and an electrostatic field. Of course physicals tells us you cant have one without the other, I just like to point out the obvious. The electrostatic field is 90° out of phase with the electromagnetic field. Together these form a standing wave! Mission accomplished.

LPFM Rules!

I rarely cover current events but this is all too important to skip over.

Late last night after everyone sober or sane went to bed and there was no chance of seeing the handshakes or the duffel bags of cash but Kevin gave in. Maybe it was a token, maybe it was pure bribery, maybe it was an admission of his total loss of juice inside the beltway.

The room was mostly empty when the FCC voted for Proposed Rulemaking (FCC 07-204). The result was that LP radio would be allowed to survive and perhaps even to prosper. Commissioner Michael Copps said it "put low-power FM on a firmer foundation." I'm pleased, but I'm also suspicious. After half a century of aiding and abetting consolidation, in the same month that Martin spoke of permitting a satellite radio monopoly.. why this? I suspect that this is a token. We get LP but lose ownership limits. From the outside it's unclear.

Remember these are recommendations. Congress still hs to approve it. But here's the basics for all they are worth.

· Allows the transfer of LFPM licenses subject to significant
limitations.

· Reinstates the Commission’s rule that all LPFM authorization
holders be local to the
community and limits ownership to one station per licensee.

· Clarifies that repetitious, automated programming does not meet the
local origination
requirement.

· Encourages voluntary time-sharing agreements between applicants.

· Imposes an application cap on 2003 FM translator window filers.

· Limits the responsibility of LPFM stations to resolve interference
caused to subsequently authorized full-service stations.

· Establishes a procedural framework for considering short-spacing
waivers and a going- forward displacement policy for LPFM stations.
In the Second Notice of Proposed Rule-Making, the Commission:

· Seeks comment on technical rules that could potentially expand LPFM
licensing opportunities.

· Tentatively concludes that full service stations must provide
technical and financial assistance to LPFM stations when implementation of a full service station facility proposal would cause interference to an LPFM station.

. Tentatively concludes that the Commission should adopt a
contour-based protection methodology to expand LPFM licensing opportunities.

· Intends to address the issues in the FNPRM within 6 months, and
that the next filing window for a non-tabled aural licensed service will be for LPFM.

· Recommends to Congress that it remove the requirement that LPFM
stations protect full-power stations operating on third adjacent channels.

The application cap on 2003 FM translator window is really big. The religious sat casters have been flooding the FCC with literally tens of thousands of apps essentially overwhelming any attempt to monitor them. That may be over. If that actually happened, that could be the biggest filing change in decades.

Oscar Brand's Folksong festival

Oscar Brand started as a show host at WNYC-AM on December 9th 1945. It's been 62 years and looking back at the career of the 80 year old Brand, I realize that it wasn't even his first radio gig. He was already 25 years old.

This long-time radioman is Canadian-born but served for the U.S. in the Korean War. It was there in the Air Force that he began performing and then collecting songs. It was a batch of these songs that he took to Elektra Records producer Jack Holzman. Jack decided to have Oscar perform a selection of them with the Roger Wilco Four, naughty ditties and all. That album came out in 1959.

Of course Oscar was discharged in 1945 so theres a bit of discontinuity in the official biography but let's roll with it. Suppose he sat on the songs for over a decade and that he made the connection to Holtzman at Elektra thru WNYC. Seems plausible. The record did well enough to garner a follow up. And then another 97 albums. More here.

Anyway before WNYC Brand did a little time at WNEW-AM and WNBC-AM. At the time he was selling his writing, mostly plays and satirical comedy. In radio that's high art. They didn't' keep him. Their loss. WNYC held onto him as a host, then produced a few of his plays. Hermann Neumann the Station Manager gave Oscar the Folk Program. He never left it.

Don't forget, WNYC is a public radio station. Oscar is a volunteer. He's never been on the payroll. The whole six decades he's had to work on the side to make ends meet. His albums have made a pretty penny but he's also taught at NYU, given guitar lessons, written books, done voice over, and penned songs for dozens of artists from Ella Fitzgerald, to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

His list of accolades is too long to read in it's entirety. He's the curator of the Songwriters' Hall of Fame, In 1995 he Won a Peabody award. ...And more importantly the Guinness Book of World Records certified Brands as the longest running show on the air today.

WLIS Fire

This is actually recent news. Less than a month ago, on September 25, the 1420 WLIS -AM transmitter caught fire. thankfully the fire damage was limited to the transmitter-room, but the station was knocked off air for days. Their Harris SX5 transmitter was totally destroyed.

Ignition was attributed to a simple electric arc. WLIS-AM simulcasts on WMRD-AM 1150, which continued to carry their programming uninterrupted.

hooray for turducken

Off Thursday and Friday; too fat to type. I'll be back Monday.

Two more for Tuesday

Coheed and Cambria – No World for Tomorrow
Golden Boots – Burning Brains

More travel

As any regular reader knows, when I travel I post irregularly. I'm on the road this week, expect things to go awry.

First Space Transmission

Oh there were plenty of radio signals in space before this, but none that were man made emanating from space. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, into orbit. It was the first man-made satellite. The sphere was about twice the diameter of a basketball and weighed only 183 lbs. Sputnik is the English translation of "Спутник" It just means satellite. it didnt' have much inside other than a thermometer and a battery.
Sergei P. Korolëv was the man in charge of Sputnik. He was very proud of his shining sphere once saying "“This ball will be exhibited in museums!” He was right. A model of it was hing at the Worlds fair. Of course a certain grumpy U.S. intelligent agency made them take it down.
Sputnik had two transmitters. One relayed scientific data on 40.002 Mhz. The other emitted a beep to prove that it existed. Ham radio operators across the world could hear it's beacon beeping out radio signals at 20.005 Mhz. Radio Moscow announced the frequency to encourage shortwave users to tune in. The beeps got louder and then faded with the Doppler Shift. It is often theorized that the 20.005 Mhz frequency was selected because at that point in the solar cycle, that frequency range experienced significant skip. That would ensure that more hams would easily hear the signal. The batteries lasted about 23 days at which point the beep faded and then ceased. I've made a short mix of different recordings.

President Dwight Eisenhower had already been pushing for us to get an American satillite into space. He was not very interested in the scientific data. What he wanted was the legal precedent that space was not owned by we earthlings. Previous to this property ownership was assumed to extend vertically, there was no precedent as to how far. America had also been a proponent of "continental shelf ownership" a sketchy territorial concept that squeezed shipping lanes and helped the oil industry.Anyway Dwight had already seen the photos of Russian launch facilities our U2 flights had produced. He knew it was coming. So he immediately applied pressure on the rocket programs to launch what they had. So the U.S. Army Ballistic Missile Agency duct-taped a bunch of test hardware to a wobbly Vanguard rocket. It exploded on the launch pad. The press mocked it with the nickname "Kaputnik." Only a month later Russia sent up Sputnik 2, which carried the sacrificial dog Laika into orbit. Sputink-1 burned up in orbit about 6 months later.
On Jan. 31, 1958, we did finally sent up a satellite. But it was still just the rmy Ballistic Missile Agency, not NASA that did it. Explorer 1 detected cosmic rays. It was a tad more interesting than Sputniks thermometer. NASA wasnt' formed until July 28th 1958. More here. In 1997 Russian cosmonauts launched a replica of Sputnik 1. This time from from the space station Mir, instead of terra firma. It was smaller than the original Sputnik-1, it recreated the familiar radio beacon. More here.

Six Pack of Reviews

While you've been reading about writing, I've been reading and writing about new records. Now we trade places, and homonyms.

Two Lone Swordsmen - Wrong Places
Clipd Beaks - Hoarse Lords
Clockcleaner - Babylon Rules
The Octopus Project - Hello, Avalanche
Various Artists - I'm Not There OST

...and one for the SIS MP3 Blog:
KK Rampage - The Final Friend

BOOK WEEK Pt. 5 Cynthia Wall

If I impress on anyone after a week of this topic,l it's that this subgenre really peaked in popularity in the 1920s. Walker A. Tompkins is dead, as are Gerald Breckenridge, John W. Duffield, W. Bert Foster, Elizabeth Dutton Ward and Leslie McFarlane. Each of the notable writers has made their contribution to the cannon and then passed on. If it were not for the ARRL revisiting the genre in the 1990s, I might not have known it existed at all.

I wanted to cover a living writer of juvenile fiction that focused on radio. I was lucky enough to find one, not just still alive, but a contemporary author. I found very little information onlie but caught a lucky break. A single review noted that her brother, Steve Jensen, W6RHM, has been the technical advisor on all the books. The Steve in question is the same Steve Jensen that owns Steve Jensen Consultants. He was easy to find. Steve was kind enough to put me in touch with Cynthia. And she was willing to fill me in on some otherwise unattainable biographical details. Were it not for that, I'd have very litle to tell you today.

There is more than one Cynthia Wall in modern literature. One is an author, consultant and therapist. She writes very dull touchy-feely new age books about "life-enhancement." The other Cynthia Wall, the one we care about writes books about radio for young teenagers and clearly is the superior word smith.

She wrote six books of radio-centric juvenile fiction. The characters Marc Lawrence and Kim Stafford are the focus of each of the books, but are more realistic than many other hams of the older texts. Their lives include amateur radio, but do not necessarily center around it. It makes her story lines much more contemporary than the other writers I've covered this week. She said "I wanted to convey the excitement that young people felt in communicating by radio; no, in that I tried to make them faster-paced, less sexist, and less corny. "

Wall, is not actually an engineer. She has a degree in English from UCLA. She moved to Oregon in 1974 and became a freelancer for local newspapers and writing for magazines. She was a regular contributor for The Community Press in Salem until Gannett sent it to the gallows. (That actually is it's own saga worth reading about here.

In the 1980s ARRL had been re-releasing the Walker Tompkins books. Lenore Jensen, her stepmother, saw an obvious partnership. Cynthia submitted a book proposal for Night Signals, and ARRL responded with a request for a series of four books in the same vein. The series was born. She went on to publish two others with a local publisher Dimi Press. Local artist Sheila Dianne Somerville provided illustrations on most of the series. It's titles are as follows:

Firewatch! - 1993
Night Signals - 1990
Easy Target - 1994
Hostage in the Woods - 1992
Disappearing Act - 1996
A Spark to the Past - 1998

Cynthia Wall is a ham (of course) uses the call sign KA7ITT. An Oregon group that provides Recording for the Blind services helped her convert her books to tape. She and Robert Zeida provide voice duties. These are still available from from Handhams.org.

Her cult following is such that her novel "Night Signals" were even translated into Thai courtesy of a request from Ministry of Education in Thailand. It is also notable that her stepmother, Lenore Jensen was a ham radio amateur (W6NAZ) and helped to start her early interest. during the Vietnam war Lenore ran phone patches from South East Asia to enable soldiers to speak to their families. Cynthia arranged for Worldradio to publish Lenore's autobiography. It's available here.

BOOK WEEK pt. 4 Tommy Rockford

Walker A. Tompkins may be better known in literary circles for his coverage of the California hills, western history and radio lore and a pretty respectable biography of Roy Rogers. He also wrote some for a few TV series including the Lone Ranger. He's also credited as a screenwriter for the TV series "Death Valley Days." Though I have not confirmed it's the same Tompkins.

He began writing early. At the age of 14 still living in in Turlock, CA, he became a reporter for the Daily Journal. At the age of 21, he sold his first western novel. He traveled broadly in his twenties and eventually settled down in Portland, OR with a day job at the Oregonian Newspaper. he was drafted in WWII where he served as a war correspondent. Upon his return he relocated to Santa Barbara. It was there that he settled in and began cranking out pulp westerns. More here.

In the 1950s he wrote dozens popular juvenile fiction books. But one series in particular was radio-centric. He was the author of the Tommy Rockford series. This series was more hardware savvy then the books of the 1920s. Tommy used a HWA-5400 and had a ham radio in his car. That's pretty flash compared to the spark gap set up the Radio boys had.

I'll quote you a passage of geek-speak to my point:
"From the box he took out his ICOM two-meter rig. Even with only a watt and a half of output power and a "rubber ducky" antenna, K6ATX) believed he might pick up a signal inside a twenty-mile radius of Lee's Ferry. There was nothing more enjoyable then a random ham contact to pass the time. And if he could break a repeater that had 10-meter output capability, it might even be possible to make an overseas DX phone contact."

These books are about a teen age high school student (Tommy Rockford - K6ATX) with a General Class ham license. The series was originally publuished by The Macrae Smith Company. Though some of them were re-released by Sagamore books in 1971. He rewrote the original three with more up to date hardware and re-published them in the mid-1980s through the American Radio Relay League (ARRL).

1. SOS at Midnight - 1957
2. CQ Ghost Ship - 1960
3. DX Brings Danger - 1962
4. Death Valley QTH -?
5. Murder by QRM -?
6. Grand Canyon QSO -?

Interestingly enough the same character name was also used in the 1930s by Wild West Weekly. As far as I can tell these are utterly unrelated. Like most radio geeks, he couldn't resist the pull of the studio mic. On a station in Santa Barbara he produced a on going series on local history called "Santa Barbara Yesterdays. " (Anybody know which station?) Walker Tompkins died in Santa Barbara, California on November 24, 1988.

BOOK WEEK Pt. 3: The Radio Girls

The Radio Girls by Margaret Penrose (Stratemeyer Syndicate)
1: The Radio Girls At Roselawn
2: The Radio Girls on the Program
3: The Radio Girls on Station Island
4: The Radio Girls at Forest Lodge

After the mild-to-moderate success of the Radio Boys, the Stratemeyer Syndicate decided that girls shouldn't be left out of the radio-themed fun.

The two primary authors of the Radio Boys series were Gerald Breckenridge and Allen Chapman. The Radio Girls series was all under the single pen name of Margaret Penrose. Of courses there were only four books.

Margaret Penrose was yet another pen name used by the The Stratemeyer Syndicate. They used it for two other series, The Motor Girls, and Dorothy Dale. In reality almost all of them were written by Lilian Garis. But not the radio girls. the first three of those were written by W. Bert Foster, the fourth by lizabeth M. Duffield Ward.

The Radio girls are unique in juvenile fiction as the first radio-centric series to be marketed specifically toward girls. As noted yesterday, books for boys were a decade old by then. It was an interesting angle, very few women worked in radio. In 1920 most people didn't' know what radio was. The typical radio listener had built their own radio.

M But only two years later the advent of prefabricated sets had wildly increased listenership.. Magazines and newspapers were hiring "radio editors" to write about radio personalities and entertainers. It was about then that women began to penetrate that job market. Radio historian Donna Halper wrote a great book on the role of women in this era titled "Invisible Stars."

Ultimately the radio girls were much softer on the technical hands-on than The Radio Boys. The Radio Girls were radio performersas often as they were operators. But it was only 1922 long before the Susan B. Anthony dollar coin.
I'll quote a passage where they actually use the device.

"She opened the receiving switch and fastened on the head harness. Amy came over and sat down, likewise affixing one of the phones. Jessie turned the machine with a practiced hand. At first the chattering noises in the air meant nothing intelligible. "but it's awfully loud, " murmured the puzzled Amy. "Why jess!" I never heard your set so loud." "Goodness! that isn't' radio, " Jessie declared suddenly. "Wha-a-a-at?" drawled the puzzled Amy. "that's an airplane!" cried Jessie. "It must be coming right this way!"

The Radio Girls books were reissued by Goldsmith Publishing in 1930 rebranded as the Campfire Girls. Goldsmith kept the Margaret Penrose pseudonym though. They were marketed more specifically toward Brownies and girl scouts. My personal copy of the "on the program" is the original Cupples and Leon Co. printing from 1922. It is however a tad beaten up as it was a discard from the Junior Department of Ambler Presbyterian Church Library.

BOOK WEEK Pt. 2 The Radio Boys

Stratemeyer decided that a radio-themed juvenile series could stand on it's own. The first "radio boys" book was not the first juvenile literature book to feature radio at all. That honor belongs to a book that came out in 1911 titled Tom Swift and his wireless message. It was written by Howard Roger Garis under the Victor Appleton pseudonym. It did well and Stratemeyer launched a themed series in 1912 named "the Boys of Wireless." Other competing companies launched similar lines: The Ocean Wireless Boys, Bert Wilson wireless Operator, The Radio-Phone Boys, The Bill Brown books... etc.

There were at least three different series's that used the "Radio Boys" brand. The first series of The Radio Boys was written by Allen Chapman. He pounded out 14 books between 1922 and 1930. The "Allen Chapman" pseudonym was used by the Stratemeyer Syndicate, as early as 1962. "Allen Chapman" books are typically written by John W. Duffield.

A second series ran concurrently written by Gerald Breckenridge producing a total of 10 novels. Another set of books also written concurrently was written by 4 other authors: Frank Honeywell; J.W. Duffield; Wayne Whipple & S.F. Aaron. It produced 8 books only 6 of which were published. making sense of the catalog is a tad difficult. More here.

The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border is the first volume in the Radio Boys series written by Gerald Breckenridge and published by the A.L. Burt Company. In radio's early, experimental days of the 1920s there were two major series of juvenile fiction titled "The Radio Boys." One series was published by Grosset & Dunlap and written under the name Allen Chapman, and this series published by A.L. Burt.

The Radio Boys were unlike other ardio-focused books of that era. They contained a Forward that explained the abilities of radioin the context of modern technology. It somwhat demystified the medium probably to the benefit of the reader in 1922. I'll quote in whole:

"The development of radio telephony is still in its infancy at this time of writing in 1922. And yet it has made strides that were undreamed of in 1918. Experiments made in that year in Germany, and by the Italian Government in the Adriatic, enabled the human voice to be projected by radio some hundreds of miles. Today the broadcasting stations, from which nightly concerts are sent far and wide across the land, have tremendous range.

Estimates compiled by the various American companies making and selling radiophone equipment showed that in March of 1922 there were more than 700,000 receiving sets installed throughout the country and that installations were increasing so rapidly it was impossible to compute the percentage with any degree of accuracy, as the gains even from week to week were great.

When you boys read this the problems of control of the air will have been simplified to some extent. Yet at the beginning of 1922 they were simply chaotic. Then the United States Government of necessity took a hand. The result will be, eventually, that certain wave lengths will be set aside for the exclusive use of amateurs, others for commercial purposes, still others for governmental use, and so on."

In this connection, you will note that in the story Jack Hampton's father builds sending stations on Long Island and in New Mexico. This is unusual and requires explanation.

The tremendous growth of amateur receiving stations is due in part to the fact that such stations require no governmental license. A sending station, on the other hand, does require a license, and such license is not granted except upon good reasons being shown. It would be natural for the government, however, to give Mr. Hampton license to use a special wave length—such as 1,800 metres—for transoceanic radio experiments. Extension of the license to the New Mexico plant would follow."

There are several Radio Boys books at Project Gutenberg that you can download and read for free. http://www.gutenberg.org/

BOOK WEEK Pt. 1: The Hardy Boys

...Yes, a whole week dedicated to the use of radio in juvenile literature. It's a new peak in the obscurity of Arcane Radio Trivia.

The Hardy Boys Mysteries first appeared in 1927 at the veritable dawn of the golden age of radio. They like many other forms of print media eagerly incorporated themselves into the ephemera of radio. The plot outline is the same every time. The perpetual teenagers, Hardy brothers Frank and Joe discover and solve a mystery that even the police cant solve. Today new stories are still being produced almost a century later.

While Frank Dixon is credited on almost all Hardy Boys books, he too is a fictional character. It's a pseudonym. There is no Frank W. Dixon, and several people wrote under the name. In the case of this particular radio-centric book Leslie McFarlane was the author.

Mr. McFarlane a native Canadian was probably the best-known of the Dixon ghost writers and is attributed with authorship for the bulk of the Hardy Boys catalog. He wrote a total of 21 of the Hardy Boys books. But he also wrote over a dozen more manuscripts for the Stratemeyer Syndicate's Hardy Boys-clones including Dave Fearless and Dana girls. Later in life he became a respected screen writer.

In this Hardy Boys The Shortwave Radio Mystery brothers Frank and Joe and their friend Chet have Amateur Radio calls VN16J and VY84Y. The story involves the theft of radio parts and how they are craftily hidden inside taxidermied animals.

I was surprised to find that another radio man, Richard McVicar already reviewed the book for us. He had also noticed that their description a radio wave is painfully wrong.
"Think of lightning. You know how jagged that is sometimes." "You mean it's not a straight line? It goes up and down and has lots of points to it?" asked Jimmy.
"That's right. Well, radio waves are like that, only you can't see them," said Frank.
"The more points they have and the narrower the line is, the farther the waves can travel."

Richard McVicar also points out something I'd never have known otherwise. Later revisions of the book rewrite that and other passages. They replace the completely inaccurate lightning analogy with a more technically accurate piano analogy. They also update the call letters to match contemporary nomenclature. VN16J and VY84Y are replaced by N2XEJ and N2XOB.

Apparently this was all changed in a 1966 edition. Interestingly enough the modern calls are are available according to this. But here an issue of the Radio Hill Gazette informs me that other versions of the book also use the WB2XEJ call sign.

Upon further examination I notice other significant changes. Chapter names are changed, passages excised and others added. The books modern pressing opens with the dots and dashes of Morse code. The theft of radio parts is changed to the theft of stuffed animals, and the radio element in reincorporated as the embedding of "bugs" hidden inside the animals.

The 1945 version opens on chapter I with the following text:
"Try him again, Frank! He ought to answer any minute." "It's eleven o'clock. he's probably in bed asleep." "Try him once more." "All right, but I'll bet we don't get him. Chet Morton wouldn't stay up this late. You know how he likes to sleep." Frank hardy re-tuned the short-wave transmitter. His brother Joe crouched beside the receiver, listening. Weird hums, squeals and screeches echoed through the attic. For more than half an hour the boys had been trying to contact their chum, Chet Morton. It had been Chet's idea that the Hardys fix up their old shortwave sets, and he assured them that his own would be in operation that night.
"VN16J calling VY84Y. . . calling VY84Y . . . VN16J calling VY84Y," droned Frank.

The 1945 version opens on chapter I with the following text:
DIDAHDIT . . . dahdahditdit . . . didididahdah . . . daidahdit. . . Frank Hardy's fingers deftly pounded out the CW-key sign- off: "R" 73 C U AGN AR WB2EKA DE WB2EKA SK." Then the dark-haired eighteen-year old ham operator jotted an entry into a black logbook. "Coming in clear tonight Joe." "Sure is, let's see what else we can pick up." Joe hardy, blond and a year younger, flicked the phone switch and played the transceiver dial along the 2-meter band. The Hardy brothers, both licensed radio amateurs, were enjoying an hour of short-wave hamming in their newly equipped attic "shack". Static and bits of conversation crackled over the speaker. Suddenly a weird garble of nonsensical voice-like sounds broke in.

To the credit of the revision, the jargon is much improved. But to it's detriment the books barely resemble each other. the net effect being that it's hard to consider it a revision.

How to win over The Radioman

Eponymous album art. Well damn. You can pick up the record as a digital download at www.parkthevan.com, I'll review it after I get caught up

KTBC and Lady Bird

I read this fluffy article in Newsweek about Lady Bird the wife of President Lyndon Johnson. It briefly mentioned her ownership of KTBC-AM. I immediately knew there was more to it. The first family can't own a media outlet without at least a little sheisty behavior. The Johnson's purchased Austin radio station KTBC with Lady Bird's inheritance, added a TV station, and were soon quite wealthy. More here.In 1943, the FCC was on the verge of banning broadcast license transfers. Senator Lyndon Johnson flexed his political power to prevent that. It wasnt' the only thing that Washington did to ensure that Lady Bird Johnson could purchased KTBC. That friend is a long list. As a senator Lyndon shook down the FCC to make things happen for the missus.

The station was a daytimer that was boxed in on the dial with poor reception outside Austin. Lady Bird beat out the other bidders and suddenly was granted permission to broadcast 24 hours a day and move to the spacious new frequency of 590 AM. It's coverage wildly improved. Two years later in 1945, the FCC granted permission to quintuple its power. More here.

Johnson pressured advertisers to buy spots and the Johnson's earned thousands of dollars in revenue. Today Emmis own that stick and commemorates the auspicious graft and political clout of the past with the call letters KLBJ-AM as it has since July 15th of 1973. They run a talk format with a number of decent local hosts. http://www.590klbj.com/ The local fox affiliate carries the old KBTC calls and the local classic rocker has an attachment to the good old days as KLBJ-FM to commemorate when Texans knew they were actually liberals.

Disc Jockey Etymology

Everybody says that the term “disc jockey” was coined in the 1940s, but nobody wants to own up to coining the term. The guilty party turns out to be Walter Winchell, a writer for the New York Daily Mirror and radio host. Winchell's column appeared in almost 2,000 newspapers And on the air he dished gossip at a purported average of 197 words per minute.

He started out writing jokes free-lance for Billboard. He must have been funny because he ended up as a columnist for the The Vaudeville News. By the 1920s he was a professional Journalist writing a gossip column 'Your Broadway and Mine'' dedicated to harassing vaudeville entertainers. He himself had been a vaudeville entertainer with the Gus Edwards Newsboys Sextet as was his wife. Apparently he left the stage somewhat bitter. I'm not sure where in there he Americanized his real name from Walter Weinschel.

Walt made his radio debut in 1930 on WCBS-AM. His big move came two years later on the NBC’s Blue Network when he was shuffled onto The Jergens Journal, a popular news program. That program mixed in entertainment news with hard news giving him the opening to start talking trash. While his column was at the peak of it's popularity in 1937. (some sources cite 1934) He was used it to refer to fellow radioman Martin Block as a "Disc Jockey". Block spun records on the program "the Make Believe Ballroom" on WNEW. Block played up the the illusion that the program was broadcast from a ballroom. Martin Block went on to become a wildly popular DJ. The Make-Believe Ballroom idea was actually stolen from another DJ named Al Jarvis.


By the 1960s Winchell's career was in the tank. He's mistakenly supported McCarthy and it stained him for life. His radio show was canceled, and the daily Mirror went under. Ed Sullivan and Jack Paar were openly mocking him and his son committed suicide. He died a recluse of cancer in 1972. Id' also like to note that he exchanged correspondence for decades with America's most famous republican cross-dresser, J. Edgar Hoover. More here. Winchell was inducted into the radio hall of fame in November, 2004.

Radiobeam guides the Blind

This was a surprise by me. This was in an issue of Popular Mechanics in 1934. Early in the golden years of radio, the fascination reached nearly hysterical heights where we thought radio was going to fix everything, do everything and be everywhere. In reality, we only ever really go to that last part.
Five coeds donned blindfolds and then competed in a pseudo-scientific race. The gauge was not really speed as it was difficult to navigate at all. Each participant was guided only by a radio beacon. Each girl carried a small radio receiving and wore earphones to hear the signal. They navigated by moving the set to turn the nulls toward and away from the beacon to navigate their path.

The signals were the same kind used in aviation in that era. Apparently carrying the receiver and it battery was more difficult than following the beaco.

Of course today the University of Cincinnati doesn't even own a College radio station. they have a little webcaster called Bearcast. It's here. they do host an NPR outlet WGUC. That one is here.

But they had an Amateur Radio Club all the way back to the 1921. More here. Professor Carl Osterbrock, Jr. was the trustee for a 1ooo watt Collins transmitter and matching receiver. It's calls were W8YX.

Electronic Music & Kool Gent Kent

Chicago radio DJ Herb “Kool Gent” Kent urged Simtec Simmons, the singer, guitarist and leader of aspiring Chicago R&B group the Tea Boxes to record a song with electronic drums. The drum effects came from a device called .The Maestro Rhythm King.



I'll quote Office Naps here:
"Tea Pot" features Simtec Simmons on guitar and two members of the Tea Boxes - his brother Ronald Simmons on bass and Bobby Pointer on the drum machine. Released on Maurice Jackson’s tiny Chicago soul label Maurci in 1967, “Tea Pot” was, strangely enough, a good-sized regional hit, its anomalous and quirky appeal sending robots all over the upper Midwest to their local record shops for something they could finally dance to." if you don't already, you definitely should visit Office Naps every week. www.officenaps.com

Mr. Kent had taken a strong interest in this early drum machine. But it wasn't Herbs first foray in to A&R. When he was at WGES, he so inspired Dee Clark that Clark rename his R&B vocal group called the "Kool Gents." Kent gave them his blessing to use the name, then scored them an audition for Vee-Jay records. Two other bands actually named songs after some of Kent's on-mic giberish. On Chess records J.C. Davis recorded an instrumental number named “Feznecky” in 1964 and just a year later the Dukays' cut a tune called “Mellow Fezneckey,” on Jerry-O Records. More here.

Herb started DJing in high school at WBEZ Chicago. By the late 1940s, he was spinnign records at WGRY Gary and lending his voice talents to radio dramas on WMAQ. He went on to do time on WBEE, WJOB, WHFC, WVON and WVAZ where he curently hosts the Saturday Morning Wake-Up Club. In the 1960s he was a vocal civil rights supporter. Herb Kent was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995.

One more for the road

Prinzhorn Dance School (self-titled) DFA / Astralwerks

ATM to MSN

I had to leave town before the big show, major bummer. Who wouldn't want to see the Electric Arc Radio writers perform an original hard-boiled mystery! Of course it's sponsored in part by the artsy radio nerds at KCMP. More here. They're not quite ready for A Prairie Home Companion but good noir none-the-less.

I'm sitting here drinking a Sprecher Cream Soda which is spectacular, it tastes like honey and vanilla and smoke. I've finally tried fresh cheese curds which do actually squeak on your teeth and I've got 88.9 WORT playing on the hotel room radio. My Sybil reign as long as the sun rises on Wisconsin.

On the way out of Appleton I got lost and had to pay a homeless man for directions. He didn't know where the highway was but he did direct me to the Goodwill. they did know where the highway was and they also had a couple classic Margaret Atwood books on sale. That close to Oshkosh 1280 WNAM-AM came in clear rocking some Gladys Knight. ON the way south I stopped at a couple more Cheese emporiums: Shultz's Cheese Haus, Lynn Dairy and the Delwood Country Store. I'm going to have to smuggle 10 lbs of cheese through airport security. In wapun I caught the big band sounds of 1170 WFDL-AM just as 970 WTCH-AM was fading out the Red Foley version of Goodnight Irene.Madison is a great city. The hip part of downtown has no traffic on it except transit buses and is open to pedestrians otherwise. They have lots of bikes, and motor scooters. it's what cities are supposed to be like. There are independent shops everywhere and every other storefront is a restaurant. I hit Paul's Book Store, Ear Wax, and B-Side Records & Tapes which were all good. but it was The Exclusive Company with their quarter acre-sized used bin and Big N' Loud Music with their gigantic cymbal selection that really made the big impression. I really wanted to hit the Bethesda House of Thrift. But at their door I was greeted by a crude handwritten note informing me that they moved... damn.

I also want to state for the record that Ear Wax is a local chain of punk & metal record stores so kudos to them for that. From the three of them I got the new Saul Williams CD, an old Primal Scream CD, the Plot to Blow up the Eiffel tower LP and then a little reading for the trip back: Annie Dillard's "For the Time Being" and Debra Marquarts's "The Hunger Bone" a Collection of Rock n Roll stories. At least WSUM 91.7 is on all night. Right now is the Destructo show a bad-ass Psychedelic fest, then at night They runs a "best of"dipping into their archive of old playlists to play singles from college radio's yesteryear. Yes, you should listen online. http://www.wsum.org/

MSP to ATW

On the road for a few days but thankfully in some good radio country. I had two days in Minneapolis, and only made it out to The Electric Fetus once What a record store, it's like Mecca for music geeks. I bought a Duane Eddy Double Disc, EEVIAC by Man or Astro-Man and that album by Cast King, all out of the used bin. They gave me a MVY comp and a Bloodshot records comp. fair trade. I've been to Minneapolis before but so briefly I couldn't hit Mecca. I did revisit KFAI which now seems kind of pale beside KCMP. And I still cant get close enough to WMCN to hear it'd meager 5 watt signal. KUOM-AM still hold's it's own against "the Current" foregoing the softer Triple-A ish cuts for a far more indie playlist.

I blew town and crossed the border into the land of the Cheeseheads. Wisconsin has a simple, easily understood culture. Everything centers around cheese, beer and football. I had hoped to cut through Wasau and catch a little WRIG-AM but I took a wrong turn near Eau Claire after being very distracted by an incredible sandwitch at Moe's Diner called "the Dagwood" in Osseo. I ended up on Route 10 a couple hundred miles early. Eau Claire is riddled with LPs which was a plus.
96.3 WHYS-LP http://www.whysradio.org/
96.9 WJLM-LP http://www.wjls.com/
97.3 WHRC-LP http://www.whrcradio.com/
101.9 WRFP-LP
102.7 WIEC-LP http://www.wiecradio.org/
107.9 WLFK-LP

WJLM and WHRC are just religious talk, and WLFK closed in 2003 (story here) after less than a year of tunage. WHYS is pretty eclectic, running world beat that morning. But WIEC was MORE eclectic, "fat-free radio" mixing jump-blues and tabla jazz, the playlist is totally absurd. Piedmont College's WRFP is a college station but that one morning an inept sportscaster was fumbling his words. All this is in addition to WHWC, and WUEC, pumping NPR all night and day.I stopped in Steven's Point to catch 88.9 WWSP which was excellent. In Neillsville I stopped to see both Bessie the worlds largest talking Cow and WCCN. Bessie told me to visit the gift shop, not exactly sage advice. The building above was stolen from the world's fair in 1965 and dragged out here. Awesome, more here. Then in Auburndale on an impulse I stopped at Cutlers antiques. They had a dozen Edison Cylinders in good shape and a great collection of 78s. I picked up one cylinder and a 78 of the Light Crust Dough Boys. I couldn't resist. they had some, large print typewriters, and a working phonograph but in the back was the real beauty. Only $195 I almost bought it. I don't know idea what this is for sure. It looked like a turntable but it's not. On the bottom edge of the picture is my Size 10 boot for scale. This turntable is about two-feet in diameter. Next to it was a crate of discs sized for it. They were blanks manufactured by "audiodiscs" That shiny spot onthe disc is a penny for scale. Those discs weren't shellac or PVC, they were heavy as hell, probably copper.. I realized they were acetates. Beside it were some more normal 10 inch blank discs some by Duodisc, Microlet and more by Selmer. Yes, the same Selmer that makes Saxophones. The hint was that taped to the side of the phonograph was a small packet of "record-cutting needles" I think this was some kind of massive record lathe. It had no brand name on it and damn I couldn't think of a way to get it home.

I'm pretty familiar with Selmer as an manufacturer of high-end brass instruments, but not for making acetate blanks. Microlet is a bigger mystery and my picture didn't come out so I got nada. The exact type of lathe this is remains a mystery, but this"> site filled me in on acetates. It looks kind of like a Presto.. But that might be to much to hope for...

Vincent Price Radio

Leonard Maltin called his voice "one of the most famous in all of radio." But most people have forgotten that he evan did radio. Today Vincent price is best remembered for his voice over in Michael Jackson's famous song, "Thriller." Previous to that his voice over in Alice Cooper's "Black Widow." He's the perfect radio man to profile on Halloween...

Vincent Leonard Price was actually Vincent Leonard Price Jr. his father was also Vincent Leonard Price. his grandfather was also Vincent Price, but his middle name was Clarence. Grandpa was the inventor of "Dr. Price's Baking Powder", the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family's fortune. That fortune paid the way for Jr. to attend Yale and the Courtauld Institute in London.

He became active in radio, and became a voice actor on Suspense, a CBS series. He did his first episode for them in 1943 "The Strange Death of Charles Umberstien." And continued to do parts until 1959. In 1947 on another CBS series he picked up a much more central role as Simon Templar, the main character of The Saint. The Saint made its debut on radio in 1940, with Price taking over for Terence De Marney. Price left the series in 1950 after almost a hundred episodes. Mutual pulled the plug, as radio dramas were all moving to TV and the golden age was over. Little sample below: