A visit to WLUV

[W9RAN]

I saw something today that I thought no longer existed...

A real, operating, honest-to-gosh Ma and Pa AM Radio Station....circa the 1960s.   WLUV, "Classic Country", licensed to Loves Park IL, a suburb of Rockford, 500 watts on 1520.   It turns out that one of my cycling buddies who is an amateur hillbilly musician has known these folks since they went on the air in 1965, and still does a once-a-month Sunday pick-and-grin program live on the air.

I didn't realize we were going to stop at a radio station on our ride to Rockford today, so was surprised to see a building with call letters on the outside at the end of the dirt lane he led us down.  I grabbed my phone to take a few pics but forgot to take one of the building itself.  The control room and transmitter section was built in 1965, which I'd say is about 16 by 24 feet in size.  No indoor plumbing - there was an outhouse out back toward the tower!   Then, 2 years later, an office area was added (with restrooms!) that probably amount to twice that much area, but the overall appearance is that of an old cottage in the woods that hasn't had a whole lot done to it since it was built.

Unlike any other radio station I've seen, this one looks like you stepped into a time machine and rolled back to about 1970.  Not only is it disorganized, with everything from mail to tapes and CDs piled high on desks that presumably were once occupied by actual employees,  but everything looked OLD (not to mention dingy, dirty, and run-down).  I would bet the same records are still in the same dusty shelves they were on when Richard Nixon was President, and although I didn't get into the Control Room, my bet is there are still turntables ready to play them, probably with Gray tonearms and GE VR-II cartridges.   The transmitter is a Gates BC-1T, with that nice cherry red glow visible in the center of the 833 plates.   The audio rack appears to have some modern equipment (programming mostly comes from satellite and while I didn't get into the CR or owners office,  I didn't see even one computer.  The station doesn't have a website.

The side-door was open, just a few feet from the Gates, and two cars in the dirt parking lot.   There was a guy on the board (who looked like he'd been there for a decade or two) and an elderly woman in the office area, who I'd guess to be the owners wife.   I assume Joe Salvi,  the owner,  put the station on the air 45 years ago, and he and his wife have run it ever since, just like so many Mom and Pop stations did, but who would have guessed any had survived?   They also started WLUV-FM,  a 3KW FM station, which was sold to Cumulus and is now the classic rock station in Rockford.  No sign of anything related to it, as it's transmitter is at a different location.    That sale was probably a pretty good payday for them.

I listened for a while after I got home, and the station sounds pretty darn good, they even have some classic PAMS ID jingles and the old boy who read some live copy between satellite programming segments has some decent pipes.   It's authorized to operate 24 hours, but must reduce power to 12.5 watts after sunset.  I'll be fun to check to see just how well 12.5 watts into a good antenna radiates!

Here are the pictures - sorry for the lousy quality but you'll get the gist of the place.   A peek into a bygone era for sure:

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v652/ranickel/WLUV/

73 Bob W9RAN

PS:  Don't get me wrong,  I admire these folks for hanging in there all these years!  I'd like to get back sometime and talk to the owner(s) and get a better look.

[K5UJ]

Bob, thanks for the writeup.  Actually to me ur photos of WLUV don't look so bad (I have low standards of neatness as anyone who has visited my residential transmitter site will attest).  I notice a pretty nice Optimod in one of the photos, a 9200 I think.  Not bad at all although it might be a bit much for the old Gates rig; guess not if the station sounds good.   I figured they had to do something at night on 1520 because of WLAC.  One area these little AMs run the risk of going down on, if they are financially stressed, is antenna maintenance.   If you spot a bit of rust on the guys, bushes and brush growing up around the tower pier, tower could use a paint job, dog house isn't wx proof anymore...stuff like that tell you that they may need a new ground system, feedline...sure hope they're okay because these little AMs that are independently owned are treasures.
Hope to CU at the Hamboree this Saturday.  Still have not done anything yet with the HT-20.

Rob

[k4kyv]

Here is another one. A real radio station.  I'm not sure they even have a satellite feed.

I talked to the owners on the phone several times.  These are the people I bought the tube type homebrew dual line amplifier from. They stream their programs over the net.  Just click on the drawing of the little red radio at the upper left of the page, and you are in for a treat. Right now listening to the "Twilight Zone". Some of their commercials are a hoot!

Click on the "antenna" button for some interesting stuff.

KRSN Los Alamos NM 1490 AM

[WA3VJB]

Bob, thanks for posting this snapshot in time, really.

I've had the good fortune to both work at and visit several homespun radio stations like this, and each time I'm left with warm and melancholy feelings.

Two stories along those lines, both having to do with transmitter rescues --

WHVR Hanover Penna. went on the air soon after WW2, and the same family still owns it.  The matriarch, in her 90s, lives upstairs in an apartment built over the studio-transmitter complex, and her daughter is now the primary administrative figure.  They built it right, back then, with RCA gear start to finish.  I've got one of their original 1948 RCA consoles on the air from home now, and I now also have their 1956 RCA transmitter that they bought new, that I'll get on the air eventually to keep the family (of gear) together.  The station, now extensively remodeled, remains on the air from its original building and location.

WFOY St. Augustine, Fla went on the air in 1936. A few years ago, the son of the founder of the station visited the place for the first time in 40 years when I took a trip down there, and we sat for an hour with me rolling tape on his stories about the station. That really made the place memorable.

The call letters are homage to the "Fountain of Youth" attraction next door, that the founder also started up, and there was a nod to Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon in the radio station's house. Their original studio transmitter building was built with a facade of coquina shells, a style from the Spanish and very popular in the 1930s. The material is stronger than wood and less susceptible to rotting out along the waterfront.

The station's tower was thought to be the first to have been situated in wetlands as a deliberate effort to enhance signal.  Their 1951 Collins 300-G, that they bought brand new, was rescued by Jim, W8MAQ, myself, and Tom, W2ILA a few years ago and put on display at a radio museum near Washington, DC.  Sad ending to this one -- The original building was torn town and sold to developers, the tower was demolished, and the studio-transmitter facility was moved inland and co-located with another station and its tower.

So when and if you get to see such stations, enjoy them while you can and get all the stories and pictures that you can.

Here's the little place where I started out.
Kilowatt daytime-only AMer. Went on the air in 1965, was owned by an entrepreneur who later sold out to a syndicate that needed a lossy business for tax purposes. Yeah, it was that.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0gT7mr3Gzk

OH and Bob -- among the other videos in this batch, see if the dirt path we drove on isn't a lot like the one you were on ...

[W9RAN]

Paul, yep looks really similar (only no beavers!).    Good point about the antenna maintenance too Rob.  I know a lot of small AM stations have gone dark when the value of the real estate the stick is on exceeded that of the rest of the station. 

Locally owned and operated AM stations are still fairly common here in rural IL, often combined with a couple of Class A FMs to cover markets the big guys aren't interested in, but where there's still demand for local sports and news/information coverage.

But of course, "nobody listens to AM radio anymore" ;-)

73, Bob W9RAN

[k4kyv]

A lot of small AMs met that fate during the real estate and housing boom, with the resulting inflated land values for development purposes, just about the same time AM listenership dropped off and advertising revenue dried up.

Maybe now, following the rupture of the "bubble", with the housing surplus, foreclosures and tanking property values, the owners of the remaining ones will be more prone to hang on to what they've got.  Even if the station isn't making a lot of money, if they manage to pay utilities, taxes and make payroll for their one or two employees, it's better than letting the station go dark and the land grow up with weeds and bushes and eventually sold for delinquent taxes.

The greatest threat to those little stations is corporate buy-out.  The big companies that buy them tend not to give a crap about historical significance of the station or the needs of the community.  It just becomes another hum-drum satellite repeater. Often, they trash the original equipment, but wouldn't sell or give it away come hell or high water, because that would be "improperly" disposing of company property and the local management is too scroteless to take it through corporate protocol. I have even heard of cases of padlocking the dumpster so no-one could rescue what was tossed out.