The 34 Billion Dollar Radio

Last week companies bid more than a total of $34 billion dollars for six blocks of radio frequency allocations a total of 65 megahertz. The original estimates assumed that bidding would top 11billion, the total ended up being c loser to three times that amount. This sets a new record worthy of the Guinness book. That prior record by the way was the 2008 signal auction that raised $18.9 billion dollars. More here.

To me this begs a question... who is going to pay for this? While there are officially more mobile devices than people in the world [SOURCE.] In the US the case is even more so. In a population of about 316 million we have some 327 million mobile devices. That works out to about $103 or $108 each depending on if you'd like to count that per person or per device. Auction 97 will be a huge windfall for the federal government. Verizon Wireless and AT&T are generally believed to be the biggest buyers. The 65 MHz include

• Block A1: 1695-1700 MHz (5 MHz)
• Block B1: 1700-1710 MHz (10 MHz)
• Block G: 1755-1760/2155-2160 MHz (10 MHz)
• Block H: 1760-1765/2160-2165 MHz (10 MHz)
• Block I: 1765-1770/2165-2170 MHz (10 MHz)
• Block J: 1770-1780/2170-2180 MHz (20MHz)

Now we all know there is no more "new" spectrum out there. Spectrum assignments have to be "reallocated" in order for them to be unoccupied for a sale. These frequencies are currently occupied by government agencies, including the military.  Not all of these groups were eager to pull up stakes. Many believe the AWS-3 bands (Advanced Wireless Services) as they are called may still be occupied post-sale. Auction 97 will be a huge windfall for the federal government so I expect the FCC to evict the current occupants with haste. More here.


About $7 billion or about 20% of the total will be dedicated to the implementation of FirstNet. FirstNet is reputed to be a nationwide public-safety communications network. I'm sure I'll have something to say about that as well.

Turkey Day

Eat Drink and be bloated. 

See you all Friday

WHYF Placemat Ad

Under a plate of home fries, eggs and bacon I found this. Between ads for Sport Fishing, rental tools, and certified wood fence installers was this ad for 720 WHYF-AM. It's a is a Catholic religious station serving Harrisburg, PA. It's a daytimer, which only signed on in 1985, with that glut of AM Class D licenses scraping the bottom of the barrel.  it's owned by the sat-fed religious network Holy Family Radio, Inc.

Radio print ads continue to mystify me. This ad was on a paper placemat in a diner well outside the station's city-grade signal contour.  The use of print advertisement is dubious for radio in general. While billboards arguably target drivers at peak listening times, newspapers, magazines, fliers and other print venues sweep up the dregs. their virtue is in being cheap. But placemats... words fail me. I hope it was really cheap.

Transcription Mystery Disc #241

This is a 6.5-Inch, paper-core Voice-O-Graph acetate home recording. I've already worked out a good labelography for this type of recording blank. I classified this as Red-On-White and have seen dates around 1964.It was the end of the line for Voice-O-Graph discs.

Kerry Hills by Barry Murray & E. Mahoney

The recording is of a man and a woman, singing in harmony (sort of). He is quite flat.  They find their pace toward the end of the recording and I can start to make out the words clearly. As titled, they are singing a traditional Irish tune, The Kerry Hills a tune more recently recorded by Brendan Begley in 1987. It's a more obscure traditional, something that indicates they were very serious Irish music fans, or otherwise. they also sing a slightly different version then the Begley recording [source] again indicating a much older song with a wider array of lyrical variants. Ex.

Of the days so merry
When we plucked the berry
On the verdant slopes
Of the Kerry hills

I've seen the Atlantic
Both wild and frantic
I have traveled far
From my native home

The Antenna of Radio Freedom

I was watching the documentary, Searching for Sugar Man, the story of guitarist Sixto Rodriguez. Part way into the film, this South African music journalist, Craig Bartholomew-Strydom was listing off the greatest mysteries.  They were as follows:

1. Look for the lost South African Elvis Record
2. Find the antenna of Radio Freedom.
3. Look for Shawn Phillips
4. Find out how Rodriguez died
5. Find out how Sun City really works

You can guess which one grabbed my attention. While the movie thoroughly explored question four, the rest were never mentioned again. In the years since the movie was filmed, most of those mysteries have been answered. Sun City even gets a write up on Wikipedia, and you can buy that Elvis record on eBay. But what about Radio Freedom?  Information is scant.

Radio Freedom was a pirate radio station that grew into a shortwave radio program. It was the voice of the African National Congress (ANC) in the apartheid years. Try to remember that in South Africa racial segregation and repression was the law until 1994. So when you look up the history on this topic, it's not on a parallel timeline with the U.S. civil rights movement. South Africa was three decades behind. The program was carried on a number of radio stations across the African continent. Because the ANC could never operate legally within apartheid South Africa they tried to penetrate the radio dial from outside their borders. More here. Affiliates included the below:

• Voice of Revolutionary Ethiopia - 9.595 MHz. 
• Radio National de Angola - 9.720 MHz
• Radio Luanda - ???
• Radio Zambia - ???
• Radio Madagascar - ???
• Radio Tanzania - 5.05MHz
• Radio Cairo - ???
• Radio Ghana - 410 MHz

Some stations were more active than others. Radio Tanzania devoted over 10 hours a week to programs by freedom fighting groups. The program was 30 minutes long in the early 1980s, and aired at various different shortwave outlets. The mailing address of record was in the UK: 49 Rathbone Street, London, W1A 4NL England. The address was for both the ANC and the South African Congress of Trade Unions (SACTU) aka  Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Part of the strength of the ANC was it's alliance with the SACTU and the South African Communist Party (SACP). This was called the Tripartite Alliance. Much hay was made by the ruling apartheid government over those commie. Every freedom demanded, every document released was dismissed as "communist" regardless of it's author or contents. Though Nelson Mandela was a communist that really over simplified all the things they all were. More here, here and here. 

Radio Freedom debuted in Johannesburg in 1963 shortly after the ANC was banned. Walter Sisulu made the inaugural address starting with the words

"I speak to you from somewhere in South Africa. I have not left the country. I do not plan to leave. Many of our leaders of the African National Congress have gone underground. This is to keep the organization in action, to preserve the leadership, to keep the fight going. Never had the country and our people, needed leadership as they do now, in this hour of crisis. Our house is on fire."

It reads like an urgent metaphor, but the house was literally on fire. Smoke attracted the police who seized the transmitter. Radio Freedom didn't broadcast again for six years and only then via the facilities of Radio Tanzania. They didn't broadcast inside south Africa with any regularity again until the party was legalized in the 1990s. This is probably the antenna that  Craig Bartholomew-Strydom was referring to. One that has been lost for over 50 years.  But the story here is that while Radio Freedom initially had only one antenna, it grew to have many. So while the search may be fruitless it's eventual victory was far more important.

DJ DeFord Bailey

DeFord Bailey was the first first African-American performer on the Grand Ole Opry radio program on WSM-AM in Nashville, TN. His first documented appearance on the station was  June 19th, 1926. He was an ace harmonica player. He was also only 4'10" having had polio as a child and weighted all of 90 lbs. You should probably listen to one of his tunes before we move on.

But WSM wasn't the first radio station that found DeFord. It was WDAD-AM. More here. It was run out of a Dad's Auto Accessories, a shop that sole auto parts, bike parts and radio supplies on 8th Avenue owned by L. N. Smith. It's transmitter was used and had been bought on the cheap from WOAN-AM in Lawrenceburg, TN.  The store manager Fred Exum started the station to promote the shop.  But in those days a 150 watt station could be heard for hundreds of miles. DeFord was goaded into participating in a harmonica contest on the station. As you'd expect the

A month later the National Life and Accident Insurance Company founded WSM... a well-funded and far larger station. It' signed on with 1,000 watts. One of the WDAD regulars, Dr. Humphrey Bate eventually dragged DeFord across the street to play on WSM. That's not much exaggeration, DeFord was very concerned about upsetting the bigoted white people of that era. But George Hay, a former WLS alum, was Director at WSM, and Hay liked DeFord's style. DeFord became known as the "Harmonica Wizard."

In 1928, W.C. Taylor of WNOX-AM in Knoxville poached DeFord by doubling his salary. DeFord had been underpaid and was easily wooed. But DeFordtired of Knoxville and WNOX, which then was a small station. He got the urge to leave and discovered that Taylor had promised to return him to WSM should he leave. Technically DeFord was a free man, but.. it was the South. DeFord returned to WSM in February of 1929. He remained there until he was fired in 1941 under somewhat complex circumstances.

The summer of 1941 was the climax of the ASCAP and BMI royalty spat. Radio stations and networks were boycotting ASCAP owned music to avoid a threatened doubling of the royalty rate. BMI had been created hastily to gather some more fiscally amenable content... but artists like DeForest who were playing old-time music had their hits ripped out from under them. DeForest didn't have a second set of favorites in his back pocket and was cut from the roster. He still toured some, and guested on radio programs around the country but his big days were over. He politely rejected a large number of interview and appearance invitations. He did attended some old-timer nights at WSM in the 1970s but died in 1982 before mounting his long-awaited comeback.

The Face of Unemployment at WGWG

This is something that doesn't normally get video-taped. 

If it is recorded it's on a security camera and most certainly not while the DJ is still on air.  But apparently 87.7 WGWG-LP in Chicago screwed up.  The program's staff Ben Finfer, Alex Quigley and Julie Dicaro discovered their situation via Chicago Tribune columnist Robert Feder's Twitter post.

*thanks to Thom for the link

Avant Garde Broadcasting

Much has been written about Clarence Avant. Much like Barry Gordy (another Motown alum) there's more than a little dirt on his shoes. The documentary Searching For Sugar Man all but accuses him of stealing all the royalties from a Sixto Rodrigez's gold record. More here. But that's the record biz. It has a certain reputation, and it has had that reputation for a long time. If you expect a sausage factory to make something other than sausage that my friend is an error in judgement.

I bring up Mr. Avant because he also dabbled in radio. In 1971, (shortly after Rodrigez's flopped in the US) Avant founded Avant Garde Broadcasting. Two years later, his company bought 103.9 KTYM-FM in Inglewood, CA from Trans America Broadcasting. The license cost $321k which in today's dollars is more like1.6 million.  Avant renamed that station KAGB. It was the first African-American owned FM radio station in the Los Angeles metro.  But Avant Garde never turned a profit...

But the money situation looked dubious from the start. Avant started with a 200k promissory note from the Urban National Corporation of Boston.  Even though it too was founded in 1971 that company seems to have been on the up and up. It was capitalized to 10 million dollars via investments from Yale and Harvard Universities, insurance giants like John Hancock, Aetna and Prudential Insurance Co., J.P. Morgan & Co., and both Mobil and Gulf Oil. Even Bill Cosby invested in Avant. Avant hired Del Shields to run his company.

None of the press on Avent's move mentioned that KYFM was already the first black music station in LA. It had been playing black music programming since 1961. The OM Charles (Chuck) Johnson and the PD  Lonnie Cook were also black so they had the first black programming staff as well. Chuck and Lonnie were form KPRS in Kansas City. The station had one lone white DJ: Ron Johnson.

But in 1975 the curtain came down. Urban National pushed Avant into bankruptcy proceedings.  Avant owned Urban around 400k, and another 600k to Clarence Avant. His own independent record label Sussex lost  another $13k in private loans to Avant Garde. Bill Cosby was burned for 200k. Ouch. Football player Willie Davis bought the station and renamed it KACE. The urban format remained as did those calls for another 30 years. Willie flipped the station to Urban Oldies in 1993 and the calls to KAEV. Shortly afterward he sold out to Cox.

The KTYM calls today still live on 1460 AM which with some irony I note is still owned by  Trans America Broadcasting. Johnson and Cook remained a team after the sale to Avant and moved on to KAPP-FM and had more success with an early Top 40 format.

Transcription Mystery Disc #240

This is a 10-Inch, metal-core, Silvertone acetate recording disc. Like most discs it has some reference to being "slow burning," though being made of acetate lacquer must make that hard... the paper core discs especially.  It's labeled in pencil "Alfred Erb 1/25/46 4th in Lent."  The opposite side merely has a date 4/21/48. So this disc was used a couple years apart by the Erbs.

Alfred Erb - Lent March 25th, 1946


Lent covers a period of approximately six weeks before Easter starting on Ash Wednesday. But Easter is a moving target.  Easter is just an approximation of the March equinox, so Ash Wednesday can be as early as February 4th and Easter as late as the end of April. Normally in the United States we round off holidays to make for more 3-day weekends, but these have yet to be tamed.  Nonetheless, it's certainly out of season for me to post this today... Lent 2015 won't be until April 5th.

Dinner Date at 2XAF

Back in the 1920s WGY-AM in Schenectady, NY also operated a shortwave station with the call sign
2XAF. The WGY broadcast facilities were nestled right at the big General Electric plant in town. But they were also doing interesting experiential short wave work was being done at a 52 acre "laboratory" in South Schenectady, NY. at that location multiple shortwave stations broadcast to the word... I'll list just a few.

2XAF - General Electric
2XAD - Ship Owners Radio Service
2XAW - Ship Owners Radio Service
2XAC - Ship Owners Radio Service
2XK   - L.M. Cockaday

While today shortwave is the kooky medium of elderly radio geeks, in the 1920s shortwave events could make the print news....and in that era short wave radio really made a go at it. They held numerous press events exploiting each for the maximum coverage possible. They were trying to find a foothold with some popular audience for the medium. Looking back we now know that in the U.S. this was an abject failure.

Notable among these was the first dinner party broadcast on the radio. As dinner parties go it sounds a bit choreographed and uptight.It was held on April 20th, 1927 at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel in New York, NY. It was broadcast by WEAF, and picked up by 2XAF for re-broadcast around the world.  The toast master George Edgar Vincent President of the Rockefeller Foundation, and guest Dr. James Rowland Angell the president of Yale University spent much of the time trying to raise money for yale. Their goal was 20 million dollars. No contemporary references indicate if they reached that goal but it's doubtful. While WEAF had a big coverage area, the  program was heard from London to Tokyo to Honolulu courtesy of 2XAF.

 Only a month later 2XAF appeared in the news again. In April they broadcast congratulations to Admiral Byrd on his first visit to the North Pole. In September the Dempsy v. Tunney boxing match was broadcast and heard around the globe. In 1928 they also attempted a number of image broadcasts testing early TV standards. They appeared repeatedly in magazines like Boy's Life into at least 1930.

DRT BOX

Here is something new to be concerned about. It wasn't that long ago that tapping phone conversations required a warrant. Starting in 2001 the George W. Bush administration used new powers courtesy of the Patriot act FISA court restrictions to permit the NSA to spy directly on pretty much everyone. It's all been downhill from there.

When you're feeling dystopian, you may imagine men in suits connecting to phone lines are they route through data centers across America. To some degree you would be correct. But apparently it's also the US Department of Justice conducting mass surveillance with DRT boxes to grab your cell phone signals out of the air. It seems hard to justify, but that is what they are doing. More here. They were purchased by Boeing in December of 2008.

DRT stands for Digital Receiver Technology. That very non-specific name adorns a a wholly owned subsidiary of  Boeing. The industry jargon for this type of device is "Stingray." Simply put, a DRT BOX is software defined radio (SDR) used for wireless surveillance systems. In 1980, DRT was founded in Frederick, MD focusing on the development of  devices for communications surveillance. If you go to their website here, you'll find a couple consumer grade wireless scanners. They also have make more specialized Stingray hardware for the feds. To my amusement I found they tacitly admit this on their site "Due to the sensitive nature of our work, we are unable to publicly advertise many of our products." More here.

The Justice Department installs these DRT Boxes on board fix-wing Cessnas so they can monitor a metropolitan area. The DRT BOX is then used to emulate a cellular base station. Because cellphones are designed to connect to the strongest cell tower available, they can just overpower the weak or distant terrestrial towers. The cell phone then transmits it's registration information to the DRT BOX. More here.

The program, used by the U.S. Marshals Service, has been in use since 2007 and deployed around at least five major metropolitan areas, with a flying range that can cover most of the US population. By flying a circuit over a city they can gather information on thousands of phones in just a couple hours of flight. This cannot be used to target individuals. Because the device must emulate a carrier it gathers information on all customers of that carrier in range. Similar Stingray-like devices have existed for decades, but flying them over American cities seems to be a new development.  More here.

Transcription Mystery Disc #239

I've posted some of Frank L. Eulau's recordings before. It's quality stuff, low noise bed, good levels. He clearly knew his way around a lathe and around his recording gear. His daughter was kind enough to tell me a bit of his history. Frank was born July 4th, 1921 in Germany. He was a German Jew and in 1939 shortly after Kristallnacht his family left Germany on one of the last boats allowed to leave and they went to the Philippines.

There he worked at a hi fi store and built and worked on short wave radios. In 1952, he went to New York  and his parents returned to Germany. Frank worked for Audio Exchange and Harvey Radio for many years, managing the stores until he opened his own high end hi fi store, Audio Experts in White Plains, NY. He was a collector of 78s and had a sizable personal collection. He died in 2005, he was 84 years old. His family still has the record cutter he used to make the records that I've been digitizing here.

Frank Eulau - 02-17-1955
 
This recording is of a man and a fiddle and it's more of the same mysterious sounding Greek-klezmer something-or-other. It's on the dazzling side of amazing... these are the kinds of acetates collectors dream of finding.

WUOG Advert

I continue to be interested in the use of print advertising by radio stations. This 90.5 WUOG ad came from a small weekly in the Georgia area that I picked up some years ago. The scene looks familiar to me.. something from a film I saw long ago that I can't place. The objects in the black and white scan are no easier to discern than in the original image. One man holds a drum and mallet, another holds a handset to his ear and another what looks like a microphone.

CHOMO Radio

Chomo is a slang term for Child molester. I use the term because it really makes them sound like defective degenerates. I've written about felonious DJs before here. But there were so many it could have been a series. There is a subset of those that are the worst of the worst: DJs that have been arrested as pedophiles. The lowest of the low. As public figures they really bring down the industry. I've researched just the last 10 years or so of US arrests from the headlines to comprise the below quick list.

 91.3 WCSG - Grand Rapids, MI
John Balyo, a Christian radio host was arrested for child porn. Baylo was an an eight-year employee of Cornerstone University's WCSG-FM.  He was sentenced to 25 to 50 years in state prison. More here.

93.3 KMXV - Kansas City, MO
Gregory D. Sage was arrested in 2007 on 5 counts of child pornography. He did afternoons DJ'ing at KMXV starting in 2002 and was promoted to promotions manager in 2006. Sage also worked at KCKC doing a little traffic and promotions. More here.

810 KGO-AM - San Francisco, CA
This one was so big it made the international news. Bernie Ward was a radio talk show host at KGO. His career began there doing fill-in slots starting in 1985. He remained on staff until his firing in 2007 following the indictment. He is now serving a seven-year prison sentence for the online distribution of child pornography.

1230 KTNC-AM - Falls City, NE
Matthew Leaf was a radio news and high school sports broadcaster in an unrated market area. He was arrested at the radio station on suspicion of possessing child pornography.  MThe radio station has removed his image from their webpage. More here.

13420 WJAS-AM - Pittsburgh, PA
Michael H. McGann was formerly program director of WJAS-AM in Pittsburgh. He retired in 2008. Previosly he had been a DJ at WTAE-AM, WPRR-AM, WISR-AM, WRKZ-AM,and WIXZ-AM among others. Sherrifs caught him admitting to various felonies in an online chat room in February 2012. He was arraigned last June. More here and here.

102.9 WYFM-FM - Youngstown, OH
Caught in 2009 after chatting up federal agents online, Y103 Radio host Scott Kennedy was sentenced by a federal judge for possession of child pornography. He will spend 51 months in prison and pay a $25,000 fine. More here and here.

104.3/950 KKFN-AM - Denver, CO
Dean Edward Letschka was a traffic reporter on KKFN in Denver under the name Sam Hammer. But in 2004 he was arrested and charged with attempting to produce child pornography. In a sting operation instead of receiving a box of Polaroids he received a visit from federal agents. He was has sentenced to federal prison for 8 years. More here.

93.7 WOGK-FM - Ocala, FL
Terrell Bellows, the former co-host of the "Mr. Bob Morning Show" on WOGK was caught after he chatted online with an undercover FBI agent about trading child porn.  In 2006 he was sentenced to five years in federal prison Thursday for possession of child pornography. More here.

98.1 WBUL-FM - Lexington, KY
Roy D. Baldridge, known on air as "Dusty Dan" on WBUL was charged in 2009 with four counts of possession of child porn. The tale of his capture was kind of amazing. Originally charged only with burglary, he was arrested and charged with receiving stolen property and possession of a defaced firearm. But then police seized and searched his computer... leading to more serious charges. More here.

102.7 WNEW-FM - New York City, NY
Dave Herman was 78 years old and died in 2014 waiting to go to trial. He started out at WHTG but distinguished himself as at WMMR in the late 1960s. He later joined WABC and moved to WNEW in 1972 where he stayed for 20 years. Later on he worked at WXRK and rejoined WNEW in 1997 retiring in 1998. He was arrested in 2013 at an airport in the Virgin Islands on a charge of attempting to transport a minor with intent to engage in criminal sexual activity. More here.

The X-Star Radio Network

In August of 2005 the  X-Star Radio Network went dark. The Xavier University Newswire had announced the sale the previous April. It was the end of the most promising non-commercial radio network in decades. It carried a mix of eclectic and local programming and NPR standards like Morning Edition and Fresh Air. The Story on the Cincinnati Public radio web page was "Sale of WVXU to WGUC will strengthen Xavier's educational commitment and preserve Cincinnati's public broadcast heritage." This is as dishonest as saying that degaussing and re-using VHS tapes is a way to preserve them. More here.

WVXU was founded in 1971 with a mere 10 watts broadcasting from the Xavier campus. Over three decades it grew into a 26,00 watt behemoth, But Xavier just was a 15 million dollar windfall. The X-Star network was built out in the 1990s. Xavier only took over WVXA in Rogers City in 1998. At it's peak the X-Star Network included:

91.7 WVXU Cincinnati, OH
96.7 WVXA Rogers City, MI
89.3 WVXC Chillicothe, OH
92.1 WVXH Harrison, MI
97.7 WVXM Maysville, KY
106.3 WVXI Crawfordsville, IN
95.1 WVXG Mount Gilead, OH
89.5 WVXW West Union, MI
89.3 WVXR New Paris, OH
95.3 W237CF Mackinaw City, MI

*Note on WVXM in Maysville, Kentucky. Later, WVXM was assigned to the Manistee, Michigan, translator and the Maysville translator was given the WVXW call letters.

It was a pivotal year. PD James King admitted at the time that his Indiana and Michigan stations, were operating at about a 30 percent loss. His goal was to get solvent by 2001. he decided to cancel the network's long-running evening jazz programs in favor of national and local talk programs. Some of these programs had been on air over 18 years. Only two weekend jazz programs survived the culling: Charlie Carey's Story of Jazz and Bob Nave's Bop Connection. More here. 

King ultimately failed to keep it all together. Shortly after CPRI bought WVXU, it sold off most of the network. The Ohio frequencies were acquired by an evangelical broadcaster, Christian Voice of Central Ohio.  Those four Michigan stations were sold individually while WGUC focused on Ohio and tried to pay off the interest on those finance bonds.

TRAVEL

Traveling.. more on that shortly.

Transcription Mystery Disc #238

This is a 5-inch, paper-core, home recording acetate. The blank is an obscure brand called phonocord.It's the second side of a disc I digitized a few weeks back. I want to say for the record I really dislike center-start records and I can see why it was less popular then outer-edge start. center start records contrary to the name do not start at the center. they start at some random point away from the center. Dropping the needle on, at or near this point is really hit-or-miss.

 "These darn little records..."
 
The  recording is another letter from that young man to some unknown young blonde woman. He says he's going to take her shopping. But there is one great sample on the record "These darn little records are swell." But he runs out of things to say and mumbles a bit until the groove runs out. Like the others there are no dates or names so the mystery remains.

Settle's Stratosphere Balloon Broadcasts

I rarely get to describe anyone as an "experienced balloonist."  But Colonel Thomas G.W. Settle was certainly a experienced balloonist, and in 1933 he set a world record for altitude.  This was back in an era when that kind of accomplishment won you trophies. He won the won the Litchfield Trophy, the International Gordon Bennett Race, the Harmon Aeronaut Trophy, and the FAI Henri de la Vaulx medal to name a few.  Balloon races are few these days. But Settle can also claim a radio first that is easily ignored among his intrepid ballooning. More here.

In 1933 NBC relayed broadcasts direct from then Lieutenant Settle's stratosphere balloon during its ascent. This was the first radio broadcast from the stratosphere. The story began in 1932. The board of the Century of Progress International Exposition invited a renowned balloonist, Auguste Piccard to perform a high-altitude flight. He declined and tried to get his brother Jean to substitute. But Jean didn't have a license. They invited Settle to pilot the balloon to get around the problem. Third choice is the charm. It was only after the maiden flight failed that a second man was added to the crew. More here.

Dangling 60 feet below the gondola was the re­ceiver antenna. Suspended above the gondola in the rigging below the zeppelin (aka gas bag) was the aerial for the 3-watt radio transmitter. It's call letters were W9XZ. All the hardware was comped: Dow Chemical donated the gondola, the Zeppelin from Goodyear, and  the hydrogen was donated by Union Carbide. They made a first attempt and failed. The Marine Corps recommended Major Chester Fordney, to join Settle as instrument operator. Professor Arthur Holly Compton,  the scientific director of the flight, was to remain on the ground.the book The Eagle Aloft by Tom Crouch covers this in detail.

On November 20th they took off. The lift-off only had a few hundred spectators but the network radio coverage provided a lot more publicity. They remained in the stratosphere for about 2 hours then started their descent. Initially they lost altitude too quickly and dumped ballast... including the radio batteries. That was a bit of a problem when they needed to call for help. They landed in a swamp in Bridgeton, NJ.  Fordney and Settle landed in the dark and spent the night in the gondola cold and damp. In the morning Fordney waded five miles to dry land. The NJ State Police had to rescue them; a minor indignity for an accomplished balloonist.