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Translators before there were translators

V

vchimpanzee

My father and I visited some people in Asheville NC in the late 1980s on the way to our usual destination nearby and the one thing I remember is seeing a list of their cable channels. All of the major FM stations in the area were on that list, plus one AM station which was listed as having a 92.1 frequency. I don't know what that means because I'm not aware of AM stations having translators at that time.

I listened to that AM station in the car because it had a billboard with a radio like this on it


And it said, "We're different."

The format was Stardust, back when that was really standards.
 
ente said:
Many cable TV systems used to send FM radio signals on the cable line, usually received by their antennas. This way, if you don't have a very good signal at home, you can connect your stereo system to the cable line and have strong FM signals. The AM station was probably put on an empty frequency in the cable system.

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This was the case in Bishop, California. It's a town of 3,000 people 270 miles north of Los Angeles, but there was a cable system that carried every L.A. TV station with a stick on Mt. Wilson. And---although it didn't advertise it, it carried every FM station with a stick on Mt. Wilson, too, which I accidentally discovered in the summer of 1969 when I set my new portable AM/FM radio on top of the TV and started tuning around.
 
I would love to know more about how that system got its feed... some sort of broadband microwave?
 
ente said:
Many cable TV systems used to send FM radio signals on the cable line, usually received by their antennas. This way, if you don't have a very good signal at home, you can connect your stereo system to the cable line and have strong FM signals. The AM station was probably put on an empty frequency in the cable system.

Click to expand...
michael hagerty said:
This was the case in Bishop, California. It's a town of 3,000 people 270 miles north of Los Angeles, but there was a cable system that carried every L.A. TV station with a stick on Mt. Wilson. And---although it didn't advertise it, it carried every FM station with a stick on Mt. Wilson, too, which I accidentally discovered in the summer of 1969 when I set my new portable AM/FM radio on top of the TV and started tuning around.
Click to expand...
I remember going to a garage in a relatively small town in the midwest in the earlier 1990s and I noticed they had a 1980s vintage tabletop "stereo" (with the record player under the smoked glass hood - remember them?) and they had various radio stations marked along the dial which were different than their usual OTA frequencies. I asked about it and was told that their garage was solid concrete block with a brick facade and their radio could only receive a few OTA stations, so they connected it to their TV cable system (I think they had TCI back then, a predecessor to Comcast) and they got a slew of stations on their stereo's FM receiver, but at least some that they pulled in via cable were on different frequencies than they'd normally be received OTA. As michael hagerty states, TCI offered this as part of their standard cable package, but didn't actively advertise it.
 
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Mikey Radio said:
I remember going to a garage in a relatively small town in the midwest in the earlier 1990s and I noticed they had a 1980s vintage tabletop "stereo" (with the record player under the smoked glass hood) and they had various radio stations marked along the dial which were different than their usual OTA frequencies. I asked about it and was told that their garage was solid concrete block with a brick facade and their radio could only receive a few OTA stations, so they connected it to their TV cable system (I think they had TCI back then, a predecessor to Comcast) and they got a slew of stations on their stereo's FM receiver, but at least some that they pulled in via cable were on different frequencies than they'd normally be received on OTA.
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Yes, the cable system would process them and put them on different frequencies.
When I lived in Quincy, IL, a microwave link brought the St. Louis TV and FM stations in.
 
fybush said:
Yup. How were they backhauling the signals up there?
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I’m not completely clear on that and wish I had asked directly involved people before they died.

My dad was hired immediately after World War II as part of the Pacific Bell crew that ran a cable up the length of the Owens Valley from Mt. Wilson to Bishop. It was for TV—-one of the earliest CATV projects—-but it wasn’t until 1964-‘65 that someone actually started a cable company in Bishop and began hooking up homes. Did they use that same line 20 years later? Not sure.
 
The cable company is Bishop used a CARS microwave system. They have various licensee names.
WGV-973 16 Mi E of Lone Pine (Cerro Gordo Peak) to One Mi NNE of Lone Pine
WGV-972 One Mi NNE of Lone Pine to 8 Mi SSE of Big Pine (Fish Springs)
WGZ-480 8 miles SSE of Big Pine to Southside of Payne Street (Independence) & 3 Blocks E. of Hyw. 395 (Big Pine) & Airport Rd 1/4 Mi N of East Line St (Bishop)
WLY-867 Airport Road, 1/4 mile N. of Line St. (Bishop) to 140 ft. SE of Virginia St. & Pine Creek Road, Bishop
WHZ-386 Airport Rd., 1/4 Mi N. of Line St. (Bishop) to 140' SE of Va. St. & Pine Creek Rd. (Rovana).
WLY-496 5 1/4 mi. E SE of Bishop to Airport Rd. 1/4 Mile NO. & 3 Blocks East of Hwy 395
WLY-531 13 Mi No. of Keller (Cerro Gordo Peak) to 125 Lakeview St. (Lone Pine)
WLY-841 East of Keeler (Cerro Gordo Peak) to 125 Lakeview St. (Lone Pine) & 585 Alabama Drive (Alabama Hills)
WLY-384 1280 N. Main Street (Bishop) to Silver Peak East of Bishop.
These were all 13 GHZ CARS AML systems most likely using Hughes AML microwave.
 
michael hagerty said:
It was for TV—-one of the earliest CATV projects—-but it wasn’t until 1964-‘65 that someone actually started a cable company in Bishop and began hooking up homes. Did they use that same line 20 years later? Not sure.
Click to expand...
Was it a CATV project, or was it part of the AT&T Long Lines cross-country microwave network built after the war?
Admittedly, Bishop seems a little out-of-the-way for such a thing... given that they would definitely have served the SF Bay area and the LA area, and Bishop is on the wrong side of the Sierra for either.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Was it a CATV project, or was it part of the AT&T Long Lines cross-country microwave network built after the war?
Admittedly, Bishop seems a little out-of-the-way for such a thing... given that they would definitely have served the SF Bay area and the LA area, and Bishop is on the wrong side of the Sierra for either.
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Again, I wish I had asked questions while people were still alive.

Everything I can find on Long Lines suggests construction began in 1948, with the first activation in 1951. The project dad was on started in the last months of 1945, and had him in Bishop (where he met my mom) by early 1947.
 
Frequency1 said:
The cable company is Bishop used a CARS microwave system. They have various licensee names.
WGV-973 16 Mi E of Lone Pine (Cerro Gordo Peak) to One Mi NNE of Lone Pine
WGV-972 One Mi NNE of Lone Pine to 8 Mi SSE of Big Pine (Fish Springs)
WGZ-480 8 miles SSE of Big Pine to Southside of Payne Street (Independence) & 3 Blocks E. of Hyw. 395 (Big Pine) & Airport Rd 1/4 Mi N of East Line St (Bishop)
WLY-867 Airport Road, 1/4 mile N. of Line St. (Bishop) to 140 ft. SE of Virginia St. & Pine Creek Road, Bishop
WHZ-386 Airport Rd., 1/4 Mi N. of Line St. (Bishop) to 140' SE of Va. St. & Pine Creek Rd. (Rovana).
WLY-496 5 1/4 mi. E SE of Bishop to Airport Rd. 1/4 Mile NO. & 3 Blocks East of Hwy 395
WLY-531 13 Mi No. of Keller (Cerro Gordo Peak) to 125 Lakeview St. (Lone Pine)
WLY-841 East of Keeler (Cerro Gordo Peak) to 125 Lakeview St. (Lone Pine) & 585 Alabama Drive (Alabama Hills)
WLY-384 1280 N. Main Street (Bishop) to Silver Peak East of Bishop.
These were all 13 GHZ CARS AML systems most likely using Hughes AML microwave.
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These all appear to show construction dates in the early 80s or later. Most are from a company in Reno I’ve never heard of. Warner Cable had the system by then. The first cable system in Bishop launched in 1964-65 and was locally owned by two guys who were well-off by local standards, but by no means big timers.
 
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Here is a site showing several large CATV receive sites from the 50's and 60's. The bottom one on this page is the GE Cablevision site in Merced, CA, which among other things, shows an antenna with a 360 foot long reflector bringing in TV signals from San Francisco at 110 miles:

The Old CATV Equipment Museum
 
Another type of "cable radio" was what they did in Myrtle Beach SC in the early 70s. By the late 70s they had a channel with announcements on a pretty background with different colors and plain text, and beautiful music from "Ecstasy". But before that there was no video on three of the channels, and the little card said FM music. Hard to believe there weren't even 13 TV channels back then.
 
channel99 said:
Here is a site showing several large CATV receive sites from the 50's and 60's. The bottom one on this page is the GE Cablevision site in Merced, CA, which among other things, shows an antenna with a 360 foot long reflector bringing in TV signals from San Francisco at 110 miles:

The Old CATV Equipment Museum
Click to expand...
Visually, I was most impressed by the photo from Hillsdale, MI. Good Lord that's a lot of antennas on that tower, to pick up signals from several directions!
 
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