First Dial Up Remote Control

[ChiefEngineer]

I did something new and unique years ago and wanted to confirm the first dial up remote control.

In 1986 (April) I spoke with the FCC about remote control of an FM station (Now WGBF-FM) in Henderson, Ky. The station had been using an STL and moving the studio made this impossible. New Rules allowed for the use of a dial up remote control except nobody made one.

A company called Advanced Computer Controls made ham radio repeater controllers that allowed a voice read out on the repeater and also on the phone line hooked up to the unit. We ordered one and after a great deal of programming had what was believed to be the first dial up remote for any radio station.

I didn't see or hear of anyone using such a system until the early 90's. Just wondering if anyone has any notes on their first dial up remote control.

 

[Bengalsfan]

Is Advanced Computer the forerunner to Burk?

 

[Kmagrill]

Is Advanced Computer the forerunner to Burk?

No. They made a talking repeater controller that was very popular among ham radio operators called the RC850. There was also a stripped version called the RC85. Burk was origonally called Advanced Microdynamics. They made an 8 channel remote control called the TC-8 that was eventually replaced by the ARC-16 when they became Burk. The TC-8 could be connected to a pair of modems so it was possible to use them over dial-up lines. Several stations that I know of used them that way in the late '80s, but they were not true dial-up talking controls.


I installed a number of Gentner VRC-1000s starting in either '87 or early '88. They were pretty sophisticated for the era. I don't recall, but Burk may have also had the ARC-16 out by then.

 

[ChiefEngineer]

I know when the rules changed there was no supplied. Yes the RC850 was the only one at the time, the 85 came later. as a ham I knew they existed. The mother of invention is the need. A dial up line was 5 k a month to make this work. The 850 was not enar as user friendly as anything today.

The other question might be was when did yous tart using internet as a remote function?

 

[radiorob2.0]

WEKU Richmond, KY had one of the first Gentner VRC1000 circa late eighties. A few months later sister station WEKH Hazard utilized the same set up. At the end of the evening shift around 10pm we'd transfer control of both stations to EKU Public Safety and left the place on auto pilot. Public Safety had an EBS monitor and given basic instructions along with emergency numbers. The station even purchased a cheap cart machine on a remote control that could override programming and air the "This is an actual emergency" message.

 

[Tom Wells]

Got to be older than any of these examples. In 1980 at Valpo Tech, DE Wiggins related how back in the 50's,
A station engineer set up a local motel with a telephone line to their billboard sign out on the highway,
where they could dial up the sign and turn the NO light on or off in front of VACANCY.

I have once seen a sign old enough to be that sign, in Breezewood, Pennsylvania.
If it's not that sign, I believe the story anyway.

Then, too, once connected, in those days you had DC continuity, and could send more pulses with a rotary dial.
I have seen one stepper relay system that could pick up any one of ten functions as selected by the remote
operators. It looked professionally built but had no labels of any kind.


Getting back to DE Wiggin's story, at that time it was already becoming trouble to get a true DC circuit
completed as newer telephone switches were installed, and more and more installations
had to "come up with something else" when DC pulse signalling stopped working.
Seems in 1980 the choice was either you could pay to have a dry pair installed for your DC siganlling if you could afford
it and if it was still available from the telco, or you could figure out some DTMF solution.

 

[OlderRadioGuy]

I can't top the billboard story, but it must have been in the late 70s that I used an off-the-shelf Radio Shack device that would pick up a ringing phone line and respond to dtmf to switch a relay, to reset a QEI Automatic Transmission System at a remote transmitter site.

 

[dtube1]

Although the other units mentioned here predate it, the company I was working for in the late-80's was installing Moseley MRC-1600's starting in late '87, I believe. Our station had one in-use by September '88. Although we used them with SCA's on the main and STL, that unit had a built-in modem and voice - pretty advanced for its age.
-D

 

[Chuck]

As a kid growing up in the 1950's and 60's, I used to love to visit radio stations. I recall seeing several that had a rotary dial control that could be used to take meter readings, lower power and probably change patterns as well. They used a DC loop from the telco, and ran a box of stepper relays at the transmiter end. I'm not sure who made them, but they appeared to be factory built.

 

[TomT]

Several versions of remote controls using a stepper relay. RCA made one, there was another popular brand whose name escapes me at the moment.

Of course, merely brought up a sample voltage, and allowed up/down control of relays on each "step"
The stepper relay was common telephone exchange item, usually 10 positions and a "home" position to synchronize each end.

 

[level42]

Check out the Gates box at about 20 seconds in to this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuCve1iP_0k&feature=youtube_gdata

I'm not 100% sure what this box is, but it appeared to be some sort of remote control. It had a label on it that listed: filament on, filament off, plate on, plate off, etc...and Plate Voltage, Current, and Forward Power meters.

I would guess it to be some sort of remote control panel...probably from the transmitter room out back into the studio.

 

[fybush]

Several versions of remote controls using a stepper relay. RCA made one, there was another popular brand whose name escapes me at the moment.

I believe Bill Rust (best known in my area for his ownership of WHAM/WHFM for many years) was a pioneer in that field...

 

[local oscillator]

A stepper relay / telco loop unit that was in common use back then was the Gates RDC-10. I used one with few problems for many years until replaced with a Moseley TRC-15 about 1980.

 

[TomT]

Rust--that was name I couldn't remember. A live remote for the morning show doesn't help ones cognitive abilities..

 

[ChiefEngineer]

When I started at WCSI in 1976 or 1977 we had one of those old Gates Remote controls; Many stations had them. The click click click click of the rotary dial going to each channel was incredibly intimidating.
When stations started using dial up it was like you removed their life line. The old systems displayed the readings all the time. The dial up was only when you called it. The mechanical voice of the RC 850 and then the Gentner or Sine units was a big change and bringing the new understanding of how it worked was also intimidating.
Even now when I have a sheet for operators they stare. Some stations call any time they go off the air because they can't or won't understand or try to understand how this works. Many of these are former broadcasters.

 

[BobOnTheJob]

When I started at WCSI in 1976 or 1977 we had one of those old Gates Remote controls; Many stations had them. The click click click click of the rotary dial going to each channel was incredibly intimidating.
When stations started using dial up it was like you removed their life line. The old systems displayed the readings all the time. The dial up was only when you called it. The mechanical voice of the RC 850 and then the Gentner or Sine units was a big change and bringing the new understanding of how it worked was also intimidating.
Even now when I have a sheet for operators they stare. Some stations call any time they go off the air because they can't or won't understand or try to understand how this works. Many of these are former broadcasters.

WAVG 970/Louisville had a full time VRC-1000 in place 20 years ago....you'd be minding your own business & out of the blue "metering alarm on channel 601" would come out of a speaker. I didn't know you started at WCSI before I did in July 1977.

 

[OlderRadioGuy]

Several versions of remote controls using a stepper relay. RCA made one, there was another popular brand whose name escapes me at the moment.

I believe Bill Rust (best known in my area for his ownership of WHAM/WHFM for many years) was a pioneer in that field...

Was told many years ago (source since lost) that Rust obtain Commission permission for the first FM station remote control for what's now WHDQ, Claremont, NH. Prior to then, the station operated only a few hours a day when an engineer could get to the transmitter site. Anyone who has ventured up Green Mtn. can understand.

 

[jboyd]

At my first radio job, they had a Schaffer remote control that required 2 phone circuits. It was a relay and stepper switch affair and it Worked! I started there in 1958, but discovered it was installed shortly after remote control was permitted! (WNLA, Indianola, Ms.). As an aside, their construction engineer (1953) was Welton Jetton, of later fame as the founder of Auditronics in Memphis...how about that as trivia? JBI

 

[Lee Rust]

In the late 1940's, anticipating FCC rule changes that would eventually allow unattended operation of most radio broadcast transmitters, Bill Rust designed and patented a transmitter control and metering system he named the Rust Remote Control. It was based on electro-mechanical telephone switching technology, and did not use any failure-prone vacuum tubes. He dreamed it up while in the Navy working for the department of Special Devices and then refined the details after the war while constructing his first New Hampshire radio broadcast stations. The prototype remote controls were built in the basement of our home in Goffstown NH, then field-tested at Claremont's WTSV-FM.

In nearby Manchester, he established a company called Rust Industrial to build and market the remote control systems, later expanding the product line to include the Rustrak inkless strip chart recorder. This dual career of manufacturing and broadcasting continued throughout the 1950's until the acquisition of WHAM & WHFM precipitated the sale of Rust Industrial and the spin-off of the New Hampshire radio stations around 1962. Meanwhile the remote control technology had been licensed to RCA and eventually the patent rights were sold to them outright.

Ironically, WHAM & WHFM were still operating with fully manned transmitters in 1962. Shortly after we moved to Rochester, I remember my dad taking me out to the Brook Road tower site in Chili and introducing me to a kindly old gentleman named Walter Malone, the resident duty engineer. He lived in a spartan apartment on the second floor of the transmitter building, right across from WHAM's huge Westinghouse 50HG and the elegant Western Electric 506-B that served WHFM. It wasn't too long before Mr. Malone was retired, the apartment was vacant and a brand new Rust Remote Control system chattered its stepper switch every half-hour as the transmitter meter readings were dialed-up from the East Avenue studios. In later years I always remembered Walter Malone whenever I visited the transmitter building and looked into his empty bedroom.

That particular Rust Remote Control system installed at WHAM and WHFM stayed in service until 1985, when the stations were transferred to separate new ownership. A few years later, one of the WHAM engineers working for the Lincoln Group called me and asked if I would like to take some old equipment off his hands before it got thrown out. So, among other things, I ended up with both the studio and the transmitter remote control units. The studio control panel was smudged and nicotine-stained from decades of continuous use, marked here and there with pencilled meter readings. The celluloid-covered pocket for the calibration card still enclosed a cartoon caricature of former chief engineer Al Davis seated patiently behind a microphone, and a yellowed newspaper clipping of a very weary Mickey Mouse still trudged behind the little round window in the middle of the well-worn telephone dial.

 

[TomZ]

Lee, that was a nice story.