The Order of the Exhausted Spare Part

Back in 1958 these were distributed at a conference held for the Chicago Air Procurement District. It was a provider of electronics parts in Chicago, located at 555 South Archer Avenue, Chicago 38 IL. Note that odd address.. yes that predates the common use of zipcodes.

At some point I'll have to write about Air Procurement Districts... since everyone seems to have forgotten.

A Vacuum Tube on a Chip

A Nutube is a special kind of vacuum Tube. the marketing buzz-phrase has been "a vacuum tube on a chip," The idea has a lot of appeal and a lot of potential applications. The Nutube 6P1 is a full triode or half of a 12ax7, which is the most common type you'll find in a tube amp. Their goal is clear...but I'll try to stow my cynicism for the time being. More here and here.

Like the classic analog component, the Nutube is structured with an anode, grid, and filament.It's purported to generating the same rich harmonics as conventional vacuum tubes. But there are three substantial advantages to Nutube.

• Low power Consumption – less than 2% of the power used  by conventional vacuum tube
• Size - It's under 30% of the size of a conventional vacuum tube
• Reliability – This model offer up to 30,000 hours of continuous operating life

I don't like quoting marketing literature but those are some bold claims.We have had sub-miniature tubes since the 40s, but those models were not designed for audio applications. they were almost exclusively for military applications. DARPA actually introduced micro-machined vacuum tubes for amplifying sub-millimeter waves in 2013. [SOURCE] So that work continues with tiny tubes. Most modern amps use MOSFET transistors . This has some upsides and downsides. Transistors still produce more distortion than tubes.  (If you define distortion as any component of the output that is not a component of the input) In a good solid-state amp this can be compensated for but not eliminated. For example a JFET (junction gate field-effect transistor) can be used to emulate some tube sound.

The project is a product of a partnership between Korg and Noritake.  But It was Noritake's background in vacuum fluorescent displays on which this design is based.  The Nutube appears to be (basically) a two-segment VFD (Vacuum Fluorescent Display .)That old tube comprised of anode, grid, and filament is very similar to a VFD composed of a monofilament cathode, grid, and anode. But because of that base design I have doubts that it provides much amplification. So it may be more for color, so to speak.

WJNT Vs. Cuba!

This is the tale of how AM radio interference from Cuba helped propel the allocation of FM translators to AM stations in the U.S. Let start with this little tidbit on a document posted on the State Department website. It's referred to in other documents as the Federal Communications Commission's Observation of TV Marti.

Cuba withdrew from NARBA (North American Radio Broadcasting Agreement) decades ago, and the US has separate agreements with Canada and Mexico rendering the document only binding for a few island nations. It's effectively moot. But still we manage to fight with Cuba. In 1982 we began bombarding Cuba with Radio Marti on 1180 and it's VOA programming. This was actually a replacement of a prior propaganda station operating on 535 kHz and 1605 kHz. [SOURCE] Cuba was understandably irritated by this and began jamming 1180 with a loud humming noise. The problem was so foreseeable that the Broadcasting Board of Governors, under the Regan administration, set out in the following paragraph that they were allowed to lease time on other stations should Radio Marti be successfully jammed. More here.

But Radio Marti was not successfully jammed. But at least three other U.S. stations were: 1180 WJNT-AM in Jacksonville, MS; 1180 KGOL-AM in Humble, TX; and strangely 1160 WCRT-AM in Nashville, TN. Today you wont' find an AM station on 1180 AM within 700 miles of Miami. And the nearest one is WLTT-AM, a daytimer near Wilmington, NC. Radio Marti is why. It's not just the Cuban jamming, the two stations in tandem effect all reception near that frequency.  More here.

The stations caught in the cross fire all won themselves consolation prizes. WJNT now operates at night on WJNT-FM1 at 103.3, a 500 watt Nighttime-only FM booster. It's been operating under an STA since1999. WCRT-AM got WCRT-FM1 operating on 98.7 at 75 watts. But KGOL didn't fare so well. The station was not allocated an FM translator. Back in 1982 NAB threw a fit and claimed that Cuba was jamming signals on 570, 670, 1040, 1160, 1380 and had the ability to "cripple more than 200 stations in 34 states." A pretty dubious claims since they couldn't even successfully jam Radio Marti. Even in 1987 the New York times wrote "The noise is annoying, but it does not block the programs." However, the events did broach the engineering topic of FM translators for AM stations a coverage tactic which continues today. Thank you Mr. Regan.

Transcription Mystery Disc #251

This is a 6.5-Inch 78 rpm metal-core transcription disc. This week I have an actual radio recording. It's a short 5 minute recording from an episode of the Roy Rogers Show. The program was a 30 minutes long so we're missing some 25 odd minutes.  The show first aired in 1944 and ran into 1955— a nine year stretch that produced 348 episodes most of which have been lost. This could be one of them... but it could be difficult to prove.

The clip opens with men singing in harmony, probably the The Riders of the Purple Sage. It's the very end of a song. There is part of a skit, and more music. At the end Roy Rogers keys up his mic and signs off  "That's all for now folks. This is Roy Rogers saying to all of you from all of us, goodbye, good luck and may the good lord take a liking to you."  Then after a nod to Quaker Oats they cut to the song  "Save a Smile for a Rainy Day."

Roy Rogers Lost Episode


But some key details. The Quaker Oats spot lists off Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Gabby Hayes and the Riders of the Purple Sage. Not all of those members appeared on every season. Dale and Rogers were only married in 1947, and met perhaps as early as 1946 and she is not assumed to be on episodes before 1948.
It's also notable that Quaker Oats cereal was the sponsor only for the 1948 season of which only ONE episode has ever been found out of 138.  So odds are this is a "lost" episode. More here.

DJ Ben Fong-Torres

Last year I wrote about how under-represented Asian programming is on American media outlets. [Link] About 5% of Americans are of Asian origin. While that is a smaller group than African-Americans (12.6%) or Hispanics (16.4%) that's still 14 million people. So in light of that demographic data. Ben Fong-Torres is one of those names in radio that you don't know, but you really should.

Before we start the story let me tell you that Ben Fong-Torres is alive and well today. His own website is here. I first encountered his his name when he was managing editor at GAVIN. He was there from 1993 to 1997. He left that position to write the book The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio, which is a must-own among radio men. He wrote four more books since then, including Becoming Almost Famous, which brought his tally to 9 books I believe.  Note about that last title... his character does appear in the film Almost Famous, he's portrayed by actor Terry Chen. Did I mention he was also a DJ?

Let's back up.  In 1966 Ben graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in radio-TV-film. While enrolled there he was DJ on KRTG-AM, the universities closed-circuit AM station. What got Ben into the music industry, and therefore radio, was Rolling Stone magazine. He was one of their original writers in 1967. He wrote for the magazine until 1981. In the mid 1960s he was a night announcer on KFOG-AM. But in 1970, while still writing for Rolling Stone he became a DJ for KSAN-FM.

Ben remained at KSAN from from 1970-1980 arguably the station's peak years. After Rolling stone he joined the San Francisco Chronicle, where he was  radio columnist until 1992. He came back in 2005 to write the bi-weekly column "Radio Waves." In 1994 he began hosting the program Fog City Radio, on KQED-FM. If that's not enough Reel Radio lists that he has guest DJ's on KUSF, KIOI, KPOI, KTIM, KVYN, KFRC, and KRQR.