Transmitters are like computers

There will  always be debate over whether you should leave a computer on all the time, or turn it off when you''re not using it. My experience has been that it's best to leave them on, because sometimes certain parts don't like the jolt of being turned off and then on - one part in particular would be the hard drive. They seem to last much longer when they run 24/7 as opposed to being cycled off and on. But that's not the "green" way to run a computer.

Transmitters are like that, too. When I first started working at the station, the AM and FM both signed on at 5 AM and off at midnight. All too frequently, one or the other transmitter would not come on at 5 AM, and the chief engineer would get an early wake up call. There was one summer, when we were short on staff, and both stations signed off at 6 PM on Sundays. "Normal" Sunday sign off was 10 PM.  I can't imagine a station doing that now. The summer we signed off at 6 PM, we caught some flack from area pilots who were used to using KXEO as a homing beacon to find Mexico.

One important part of sign on and sign off was station identification, station ownership and power in a pre-recorded announcement. At sign on that was followed by the Star Spangled Banner. At sign off, the pre-recorded announcement was also followed by the Star Spangled Banner. There was a morning man at the time who would stand up from his chair and put his hand over his heart when the Star Spangled Banner played at sign on. There was also a flag pole out in front of the station, and on the station program log near sunrise time it would say "Raise Flag" and then near sundown time "Lower Flag".

The station actually had a full time engineer in 1978 - responsible for keeping all of the electronics working. From cart machines (cartridge magnetic tape) to audio consoles to automation systems to transmitters  - there was usually something for the engineer to be working on.

The last full time engineer employed by the station supposedly was caught by the station owners making out with one of the phone sales gals in the basement. I don't know if that's true or not, but he was fired shortly after that. And that was the last full time engineer the station employed.

The engineer was already in trouble with the GM. It was 1979 and an FM station down the road in Fulton had gotten knocked off the air. They had a similar transmitter and our engineer offered to help get them back on and went to Fulton to work on the transmitter.  There was nothing major wrong at the station here, but the GM was furious when he couldn't find the engineer.

The GM in 1978-1979 ate nails for breakfast and breathed fire. His management style was supervision by intimidation. If you rubbed him the wrong way, you'd likely end up with a new arse hole. He was downright mean to  people. He once told me, "it's not a democracy around here, it's a fracking dictatorship, and I'm the dictator!"

His wife soon started working for the station, too. That's when it got interesting. She would zero in on somebody and all of a sudden that person wasn't worthy of further employment. I saw numerous employees fired by the wife/husband machine. And then she zeroed in on me and I confronted the GM about it.

I told him it appeared that "his wife would zero in on somebody, and before long that somebody wouldn't be working here anymore and I was concerned, because the current somebody is me." He said he thought I was mistaken but would "take it under advisement." She left me alone after that. The pair of them got caught by the owners trading advertising (90 second ads for a local home improvement store) for personal stuff - like new carpet for their house - and the wife/husband duo was soon gone.

A couple of years later, the new GM discovered I had a knack for fixing things (and had minored in electronics) - and suddenly I was the assistant engineer. The GM at that time knew electronics, so he was the chief engineer and I was his assistant. It wasn't very long until I was the one being called first when something was broken or wouldn't turn on - and soon had the title Chief Engineer along with Operations Manager. That was the start of being available to any of the staff 24/7/365 for any reason. Was there more money with that added responsibility? Not much. And looking back, not nearly enough for  being tethered to the station 24/7/365.

Frequently I could take care of technical problems by myself, but occasionally I would have to call the GM at 2 in the morning to get a transmitter back on the air.

McMartin step/start and overload circuit. Each relay
had a pair of transistors and a diode that could be blown,
keeping the transmitter OFF.

The station upgraded to a McMartin BF-25K transmitter in 1980, giving the FM an effective radiated power of 100,000 watts. The McMartin had a tendency to fry its step/start circuit - the circuit that cycles everything on at the proper time and in the proper sequence. It would do that when it was turned on at 5 AM. It also did that sometimes during thunderstorms. We became pretty adept at replacing some transistors and diodes associated with relays in the step/start circuit.

Transmitters have long had what's known as a "Jesus stick". (Not using the stick you'd soon be "talking to Jesus.")  It's a grounding stick to make sure all the big capacitors are discharged before you go sticking your head into a transmitter to work on it. There are lethal voltages or current in many transmitters - and they're designed to drain that voltage off when they're shut down.  But in the broadcasting industry there have been many stories about a GM or engineer being electrocuted and killed by a transmitter if they weren't careful. I probably came close to touching the wrong place at the wrong time on numerous occasions, but I never got fried.

The McMartin used 3 tubes to produce 20,000 watts of FM power, a small IPA tube (intermediate power amplifier), the driver (medium sized power tube) and the final PA (power amplifier) tube.The final power tube in the McMartin BF-25K operated with 10,000 volts and 3.5 amps of current. If a capacitor held on to that voltage or current and you touched the wrong place in the transmitter you'd be toast pretty quick.

Apparently the BF-25K was a new design, because at some point, a larger power resistor was added to the circuit to drain off the residual voltage when the transmitter was shut down. This made the step/start circuit fry much less frequently, but it still happened.

We maintained the audio chain, sometimes
running tones of different frequencies on the air.
(ya, I know that's a TV test pattern)

Sometime in 1980-1 the station went 24 hours a day. The transmitters then ran all the time, except when shut down by me late Sunday night for maintenance on a regular basis. Frying the step/start circuit became infrequent - usually only during a thunderstorm. The AM and FM transmitters ran much longer between failures when they were running 24 hours a day instead of being shut down at midnight and back on at 5 AM. And I breathed a sigh of relief.

So it goes.