OLDIES SONGS

[Jeff W9GY]

Hi Ken,

I grew up about 5 miles away from the old KYW Cleveland transmitter.  It's signal was all-pervasive, and would come in anytime you had a bad connection on audio equipment!  In those days, during the 50's my buddy and I were into building crystal sets of various designs.  They all, unfortunately, picked up KYW very well.  However,  we wanted to hear WHK which was the prominent rock and roll station at the time. I finally hit on a design that was selective enough to do the job (95% WHK, 5% KYW) using a tapped oatmeal box coil and variable capacitor scrounged from a radio 'liberated' from someones trash.  My Mom agreed to buy me oatmeal under the condition that I would eat the stuff.  I was to get the box once the oatmeal was finished.  But, after about half the box was emptied, she relented and gave me the box and put the unused oatmeal into another container.

I remember the vertical wire you wrote of, and being told that it was used to reduce signal going north. I hear the AM site (now WTAM, again)has been moved from Broadview Rd.

Jeff W9GY Kokomo, In

[KB1OKL]

Leslie Gore...I've even got the vinyl LP, Bud!

Her other hit, "You Don't Own Me" is a perfect example of the early use of "multi-ing", where she would sing along with herself on a previously-recorded vocal track, and the vocal tracks would be mixed together. Made for a nice fat vocal sound in the final product.

Many girl singers of that era used a lot of studio production.

Quincy Jones was her producer, her stuff still sounds unbelievable on a good system, sounds like it was recorded last week, I have her greatest hits on CD, I like LP's even better.

[KB1OKL]

One hasn't lived the life of a true AMer until he (she?) has stood next to a good old plate modulated 50kw AM broadcast transmitter listening to the "iron" buzz to songs like "Big Girls Don't Cry"...or hundreds of other golden oldies.  In my case, my first was a Westinghouse 50HG2 50kw rig.  You stood next to the mod transformer and mod reactor, hearing the "buzz" of the vocals, and feeling the bass notes vibrating the floor the iron was set on.  You'd see the 12,000 volts at 6 amps bouncing to the hits.  Any of you guys who have worked with the old 5671 triodes know.....  Then, beyond any religious experience, looking out the back door to the 905' tower radiating those oldies to the world.  THAT was great old high power AM, no other life experience was quite like that.  (Well almost....)  I eventually became chief engineer and an air personality at that station.  What a time!!!

Listen for me soon with my "almost ready" Valiant, and later in 2008, a DX-100B. 

Happy 2008! 
73
Ted K8VPL

What station were you on Ted? I love that old stuff still, The Four Seasons were the greatest.

[KB1OKL]

Semi-Famous AMer Tom, W2KBW, got to do just that in recent years.

He and Tom Donohue, who is heard first in the clip below, were hosting a live oldies program on the Big KB, the namesake for Tom's call sign.

What a rush to hear him all the way down the coast to Annapolis, as well as it must have been to spin the records at 50,000 watts.

When was this? I listen to WWKB a lot. I was bummed out when they turned the oldies off last year although I still listen to it. I remember when it was WKBW.

[W8IXY]

To: KB1OKL & W9GY,

What station were you on Ted? I love that old stuff still, The Four Seasons were the greatest.


FYI:
The first high powered Cleveland station I was on was WGAR/1220AM in 1969.  They ran 50kw into a 5 tower directional.  Several years later, in the mid 70's, and again in the late 80's, I was with WWWE/1100, which had morphed from KYW to WKYC, then WWWE, and now WTAM (again).  I did air-shifts as well as was the chief engineer.  From the late 80's into the mid 90's, I did middays on WDOK/102.1FM, not much DX there.  When the owner sold the 1100 frequency in 1990, he got cash and the 850 frequency here in Cleveland.  I told him we could take the 850 up to 50kw days, and we did it.  the 850 is now WKNR, running 50kw days and 5 kw nights, into 4 towers for each separate pattern.   I'd love to have the room for a "personal" 4 square for 75 and 160, after working on those big broadcast arrays.  But a city lot doesn't have the room.

So W9GY remembers that "drop wire" on the old KYW tower.  Over the 9 or so years that site was on the air with the 1100AM, they tried feeding that drop wire, as well as running it as a parasitic radiator into combinations of L/C and resistive circuits to try and make the system more stable.  The problem with the big tower was that the coax's that carried the FM and TV RF up to their antennas acted as the center conductor of a transmission line,with the tower as the "outer conductor".  Whenever the weather changed, humidity, temperature, etc., the characteristics of that "transmission line" changed, and the parameters varied somewhat.  Since the FCC required an AM directional be kept within a 5% current tolerance among the elements of the antennas, the thing required frequent readjustments.  But it did radiate a huge signal at a low angle.

I still love those oldies, and miss the TOP 40 radio years of the 60's.  Over the years, my two "expensive" hobbies have been amateur radio and collecting oldies along with high end audio.  I have about 75,000 "oldies" in the collection, and am working on a DX100B and a Viking Valiant to get back on 40, 75, and 160 AM.  I have several broadcast processors I intend to use with the Valiant and DX100B.

My main job these days is working with Telos/Omnia/Axia, where we make the Omnia audio processors, ISDN and Ethernet based broadcast transceivers, and audio consoles.

Thats enough "long windedness" here.  Thanks, guys, for asking.

73

Ted
K8VPL
AMFMTV@AOL.com

[WD8BIL]

Hi Ted (K8VPL),

I thought that call lookeded familiar. ( I know..... oh oh..... who found me this time.)

There's a pretty active group of AMers here in Northern Ohio. If your QRZ address is still good I'll ask Ron to put you on the Lake Erie Boatanchors list. We gather a few times a year. It's quite informal and best of all, NO COMMITMENTS to a "club".

Check it out here:  http://leboatanchor.com/

MEETING NOTICE !

Saturday, February 16, 2008
10:00 AM
Clague Park - Westlake Ohio


Hope to hear ya soon. Get that DX100 up n' running. Ifn ya need parts or anything give a hollar !!

Bud (yes, that Bud)

http://www.wd8bil.com

[W2XR]

One hasn't lived the life of a true AMer until he (she?) has stood next to a good old plate modulated 50kw AM broadcast transmitter listening to the "iron" buzz to songs like "Big Girls Don't Cry"...or hundreds of other golden oldies.  In my case, my first was a Westinghouse 50HG2 50kw rig.  You stood next to the mod transformer and mod reactor, hearing the "buzz" of the vocals, and feeling the bass notes vibrating the floor the iron was set on.  You'd see the 12,000 volts at 6 amps bouncing to the hits.  Any of you guys who have worked with the old 5671 triodes know.....  Then, beyond any religious experience, looking out the back door to the 905' tower radiating those oldies to the world.  THAT was great old high power AM, no other life experience was quite like that.  (Well almost....)  I eventually became chief engineer and an air personality at that station.  What a time!!!

Listen for me soon with my "almost ready" Valiant, and later in 2008, a DX-100B. 

Happy 2008! 
73
Ted K8VPL

Ted,

That is so true.

I had been to WKBW back in the early 70s when I was in college in Rochester, NY. They ran a 50 KW plate modulated Westinghouse and open wire feeders to the directional array out back that was a sight to behold; one of the most beautiful and impressive rigs I have ever had the fortune to see, complete with mercury vapor rectifiers. And to hear Jackson Armstrong on-air at the transmitter site.

I also visited 77 WABC in the early 70s, when they were running a much modified GE 50 KW plate modulated rig. Very cool to hear Dan Ingram on the on-air monitor at the transmitter site in Lodi, NJ. I also met Dan shortly thereafter at the WABC studios in downtown, NYC; a very, very nice guy, not at all in love with himself.

Glad I was able to enjoy those experiences as a young ham.

73,

Bruce

[Jeff W9GY]

Ted, I always thought the KYW drop wire was strictly a parasitic...interesting that they tried to feed it, too.  How was it tied into the ground system?  My guess is that it didn't have it's own set of radials.  Jeff