Not sure how to spell his name, Dilahy or similar passed away last night. Heard it was a short illness and unexpected. Met him once, sure did seem he was a stellar engineer and a nice person....
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Renda's CE in JAX is no longer with us...
- Thread starter Dock Trash
- Start date
Yes, he was.
Bob Dillehay...posted on format change back in March.
Bob Dillehay, a friend of this board, was, up until last evening, the Chief Engineer of Renda Jacksonville, and before that he was the CE at 96.9 (most likely pre-Cox) and was, to the best of my knowledge, the CE when Metroplex put Rock 105 on the air in the early '80's in Jax. Any additions, corrections are welcome. I remember, a few years ago, he once played an aircheck for me when he was a young DJ at AM 600 WPDQ! From the smile on his face, I could tell how fond he was to share some of that vintage Top 40 audio. He was an excellent and very knowledgeable engineer, and an even better human being - always upbeat. He will be missed. My thoughts and prayers are with his family and friends, and his Renda family. This was not good news - another radio pro - gone way too soon.
I don't remember if it's text--or links--that we aren't allowed to post here, so I'll hedge things by saying you can read a message in the Eternity Funeral Home guest book (and their site is their name). Service is next Saturday, August 13, 11am at the Grace Church of Avondale.
Bob and I ran into each other a few times at SBE meetings, and once when I joined Ron G. to check out the future Beach 92.7 transmitter, sitting in the future WSOS tx building. Really nice guy, from what I could tell. I hope to have an attitude like his after working in broadcasting that many years!
Bob and I ran into each other a few times at SBE meetings, and once when I joined Ron G. to check out the future Beach 92.7 transmitter, sitting in the future WSOS tx building. Really nice guy, from what I could tell. I hope to have an attitude like his after working in broadcasting that many years!
nfladxer said:
I worked for Rock105 for three years as its original Production Director. Bob had a lot of fun putting together that station, which was then owned by BENI of Atlantic Beach (BENI was Reagan Henry's group out of Philadelphia).
What a great guy, and a conscientious and knowledgeable engineer! He always had a smile on his face, and offered a pleasant greeting.
Bob loved simplicity and, to use his phrase, "doing it right." This meant that we had a long wait while he worked to get adequate funding from management to build the new control room to his satisfaction.
Rock105's on-air studio location had originally been in an old house trailer at the long-time Atlantic Beach transmitter site on the Intercoastal Waterway, IIRC. At that point, the station had a Class A license with 3KW, and the frequency was still 104.9. When owner BENI was authorized to upgrade the signal to a Class C, raising the ERP to 100KW and changing the frequency to 104.5, Bob built the new 700-ft. tower/transmitter shack a couple of hundred feet into the woods at 9090 Hogan Road. But completion of the office/studio building took much longer, and the final control room longer still (some rooms still had bare walls several years into the project!)
While the building was being erected, station manager Vid Aderhold managed to get us a small camper trailer for Bob to install a temporary studio. This was parked at the base of the tower, in the woods. Over the next seemingly endless months, as I continued to do production out of a room in the temporary "main" office in a strip mall in Atlantic Beach, the hardy jocks (including myself on weekends) continued to use, and abuse that camper! (No one liked to use the porta-potty...more than 30 years later, there is probably STILL a spot there where the grass won't grow, LOL!) It is to Bob's credit that most listeners never knew how simple the 'studio' was. (Christened the "Broadcast Complex" by, I believe, John Brownlee, the night guy and former employee of mine when I was PD at WGVL). It consisted of a Quantum PA mixer, two SP10 turntables, a mic and an ITC 3-D cart machine. A remote control (Moseley?), a pair of JBLs for monitoring and an Optimod 8100 rounded out the "Complex". Simple, yes, but to this day, I wouldn't find a single fault in Bob's choices of then-available equipment to do basic yet high-quality broadcasting.
You can just imagine what was it like when, in the middle of the night, some fan would show up and bang on the camper's window to make a request at our unpublished location in the woods. But show up they would, in droves. Rock 105 really hit a nerve with North Florida rock audience, and they totally embraced it...and tracked down where it was! Luckily they often brought 'gifts,' if you know what I mean.
Anyway, the 9090 building was eventually ready to be occupied, which meant that Bob could move the temporary on-air studio from the camper into what would become the News Room, which was next to what would, also eventually, become the main on-air studio. Once again, thanks to Bob and his assistant Henry Mastrangelo, the transition happened without the listeners being the wiser. But still we operated in the construction dust with the basic, 'temporary' equipment, IIRC, well into the station's second year.
I wouldn't call the brand-new studio a palace, but Bob did wonders with the tools and finances he had to work with. The room was cozy yet not cluttered, outfitted with a new Collins console, and faced the lobby with a big window on one wall. One of Bob's many engineering strengths was that he could build really practical, workable, efficient studios out of basic components, and make everything work.
Once the studio was finished, Bob was faced with moving BENI's AM, WPDQ, from their old downtown building into the opposite side of the new "Broadcast Complex", which was a huge project in and of itself. I didn't stay much longer. Three years into Rock105, and there still was no budget to build a real production studio for me. I went to Ocean City, MD, to become the CE of the Resorts Broadcasting stations there. As my career moved on, I lost track of Bob over the years, only keeping up with his work via internet postings.
Yes, Bob was great guy and a great engineer, no doubt about it. I never expected to hear of his passing at such a young age. I hope and pray for solace among his friends and family.
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