what signal

[Don Niles]

Just out of curiosity...Did WDAS-AM have something similar so as not to interfere with WHOM in New York? Then there is also Levittown.

 

[DG02816]

WDAS-AM(now WUBA)has a very tight DA-2 to protect 1480 NYC and WBCB 1490.

 

[qtpieislit]

As a kid, I grew up at WDAS. Hy launched WDAS FM as a Hyski’s underground in late, 1968. One of the owners of WDAS Robert Klein went on to marry my mother, and thus became my stepfather, in the ‘70’s. My stepbrother, and I were into everything at WDAS as kids, but the AM was always the fascinating facility. 1480/WDAS AM, was a ¼ wave, 5Kw DA 3 tower array by day, and for that, it was a pretty liberal, with the main lobe to the south. At night it was 1Kw 4 tower array, also to the south at that time, (6 towers total, with one common to the day and night array) so you could actually hear it in Baltimore and DC. In fact, many of the Jocks at 1450/WOL Washington actually graduated to WDAS, after achieving some measure of success. And in many cases, became legendary in Philadelphia. As a Kid, I had always felt, as if I was looking at true radio Gods, mingling in the AM studio. Now, I am sure of it. Names like, Georgia Woods, Larry daily, Lord Fauntleroy (John Bandy), Jimmy bishop, Louis Williams, Bob Perkins (news) and of coarse Butterball, (Joe Tamburro), who Hy brought with him to WDAS, the first time he was there in 1961 when Hy briefly left WIBBAGE During the payola scandal). Incidentally, Hy and Butterball were the only white DJ’s to ever work on the Air at WDAS AM, besides the news departments’ Joe Rainy, Steve Shore, and my stepsister Wynn Alexander. Gerry Wilkinson, now the president of the Broadcast pioneers of Philadelphia, moved from engineering to Operation manager at WDAS for a decade in the 70’s.
Anyhow, back to the technical. The studios were situated around the transmitter/engineer room, with big wide original style broadcast studio windows so the engineer, could look in to all studios including the news booths at all times from a birds eye view. Therefore, no DJ’s or broadcasts were ever out of the view of the engineers. The engineer had a common RCA control board for the levels, for all the studios and was kind of a board op to the AM, as engineering was required to record the hourly network spot feeds, and then insert them into the appropriate stop sets, or news breaks, with hand signals from the DJ’s. The AM DJ’s had no volume controls in the studio, just Mic control, and turn tables, which the DJ cued and activated. (Incidentally, Mic control was rare in those day’s as Hy could never activate his Mic at WIBG, an engineer had to turn it on and off for each intro, and spot break, as the preeminent board op, from the adjoining engineering room.) Engineering also kept log on all commercials and programming content played, while maintaining the DA arrays and the FM transmitters. The original FM antenna was on one of those little ¼ wave towers closest to the transmitter room, pumping the entire 50 Kw practically into the ground, until they moved to the Roxboro antenna farm in 1973.

 

[Don Niles]

Speaking of WOL,I recall many times picking up it up overnights as a teen in the Mid 60's from my home in Western New York..Truly one of the Graveyard Delights..I also recall hearing WMID..Hearing WIBG seemed to be a much greater feat..Most often it was before Sunset when WNOX or CBW took over..Now that there is a 990 in Rochester,it would even be a greater feat.

 

[8638]

As a kid, I grew up at WDAS. Hy launched WDAS FM as a Hyski’s underground in late, 1968. One of the owners of WDAS Robert Klein went on to marry my mother, and thus became my stepfather, in the ‘70’s. My stepbrother, and I were into everything at WDAS as kids, but the AM was always the fascinating facility. 1480/WDAS AM, was a ¼ wave, 5Kw DA 3 tower array by day, and for that, it was a pretty liberal, with the main lobe to the south. At night it was 1Kw 4 tower array, also to the south at that time, (6 towers total, with one common to the day and night array) so you could actually hear it in Baltimore and DC. In fact, many of the Jocks at 1450/WOL Washington actually graduated to WDAS, after achieving some measure of success. And in many cases, became legendary in Philadelphia. As a Kid, I had always felt, as if I was looking at true radio Gods, mingling in the AM studio. Now, I am sure of it. Names like, Georgia Woods, Larry daily, Lord Fauntleroy (John Bandy), Jimmy bishop, Louis Williams, Bob Perkins (news) and of coarse Butterball, (Joe Tamburro), who Hy brought with him to WDAS, the first time he was there in 1961 when Hy briefly left WIBBAGE During the payola scandal). Incidentally, Hy and Butterball were the only white DJ’s to ever work on the Air at WDAS AM, besides the news departments’ Joe Rainy, Steve Shore, and my stepsister Wynn Alexander. Gerry Wilkinson, now the president of the Broadcast pioneers of Philadelphia, moved from engineering to Operation manager at WDAS for a decade in the 70’s.
Anyhow, back to the technical. The studios were situated around the transmitter/engineer room, with big wide original style broadcast studio windows so the engineer, could look in to all studios including the news booths at all times from a birds eye view. Therefore, no DJ’s or broadcasts were ever out of the view of the engineers. The engineer had a common RCA control board for the levels, for all the studios and was kind of a board op to the AM, as engineering was required to record the hourly network spot feeds, and then insert them into the appropriate stop sets, or news breaks, with hand signals from the DJ’s. The AM DJ’s had no volume controls in the studio, just Mic control, and turn tables, which the DJ cued and activated. (Incidentally, Mic control was rare in those day’s as Hy could never activate his Mic at WIBG, an engineer had to turn it on and off for each intro, and spot break, as the preeminent board op, from the adjoining engineering room.) Engineering also kept log on all commercials and programming content played, while maintaining the DA arrays and the FM transmitters. The original FM antenna was on one of those little ¼ wave towers closest to the transmitter room, pumping the entire 50 Kw practically into the ground, until they moved to the Roxboro antenna farm in 1973.

I LOVE reading about this stuff! How cool that you grew up in radio, Sam. I first heard you on WKXW when you and your Dad moved in there; later, on WIMG 'i-13.' which didn't last too long.

 

[qtpieislit]

OMFG. I gotta tell you this story. Immediately after WKXW FM, I accepted a quick deal at 1300/WIMG Ewing NJ. I was hired initially for a 2 or 3 week fill in, for the vacationing daytime staff, broadcasting from the WIMG Princeton NJ studios. It was a lavish, state of the art facility, complete with full bay studio windows over looking these rolling lawns, and the geese and the man made lake, with a fountain, it was unbelievable. Right out of a rolling meadows dream. I didn’t know which was better, the on air assignment or the view. So anyway, after I completed the fill in assignment, the owner, who ironically was blind, indicated that he had just received nighttime authorization from the FCC for his 1300 frequency, and he wanted me to come on permanently on the 8pm–12 midnight shift. It was summer and the station was signing off at local sundown, 8:45pm, but now WIMG could stay on unlimited. However, he indicated that I would have to broadcast from the transmitter site, which was located on the Delaware River, in Washington Crossing Pa. Apparently the meter reading equipment in Princeton, wasn’t calibrated for the new nighttime 4 tower signal, and they couldn’t lower the power from the Princeton studios, so, as part of my job description, I would manually lower the power, during my shift, and take the appropriate meter readings, Loop phase, and I think base current readings once a week. I figured, why not. It was good money, No program director around, just me, the transmitters, under the towers, and my own little intimate audience. A perfect setting for success. OK no problem.
It was rather serine, on the Delaware River. The transmitter studios apparently hadn’t been used for the previous decade, but the equipment seemed to work fine. Vintage RCA boards, gates turntables, early, very early cart machines, all under the glow of the transmitters. It was cool. I brought a stack of record with me form the main studios, so it looked like a go. On the air at 8, I switched transmitters and lowered the power at 8:45, and dug in for the night. After the power change, things started getting eerily quite, in the transmitter studios, cricket quiet, if you know what I mean. Then the locusts started their mating calls, which I guess added a cool special effect when the Mic was cued. But it was starting to get loud, really loud. Crickets by what seemed like the thousands and locusts by the hundreds, and some other insect life that I really can’t identify by their mating calls. Around, 10 pm, right before I was getting ready to do the ID, this remarkably large water rodent casually walks across the control board, and stopped to stare me in the face. And I’m looking at him, and he was looking at me, and we were probably thinking the same thing, 'What the hell are you doin here'. It was almost like a game of dare, who would flinch first. Well, after I finally unfroze, I jumped out of the broadcast chair, and I think in one leap I hit the transmitter plate off button, and was completely out the door without even touching the ground. Needless to say, the next day I thanked the owner for the opportunity, but indicated that I could not operate in a water nature environment, for any reasonable measure of time. Within weeks Hy and I would land at 1540/WRCP and 104.5/WSNI FM.

 

[oaktree]

Great post, Sam! Tremendous. Those were the days.

The Mrs.' father worked for Western Union for 35 years as a tech and I have one of those clocks. I believe they ran off a phone line to the naval observatory when "time" came from Washington instead of through radio waves by way of Ft. Collins and WWV. But you hit it, Sam. It was like a Christmas tree in that WAMS studio.

 

[DaveWilliams]

To give everyone the story on the WAMS directional set up, it started out as a 4 tower directional in the late 40's with 1000 watts day and night at the site outside of Greenville. In the late 50's, the 5000 watts was added, the 5th tower went up and the WAWZ/WBNX pattern set up started, DA1 was for WAWZ, DA2 was for WBNX,using all 5 towers. DA3 was the night pattern, basically what they started out with (it had to protect New York, St Louis and Atlanta per the license!). WAWZ operated Mon-Sat 7:30-9A and 6-7:30P and Sunday,starting at 9AM, every hour and a half til 8:30PM. This was really noticeable when I lived just outside Chester, PA as WAMS would vanish when WAWZ was on. I later found out why when I was hired there in 1969 as a staff engineer. So in the summer , WAMS had a "Pattern Change Weekend", it was changed a total of 12 times! ALL of the engineering staff had to go in on Saturdays so that field measurements could be taken and the pattern adjusted as needed. The DA1 went away when WBNX bought out WAWZ AM, WAMS was then a semi normal 2 pattern station, which it stayed til it was shut down in the early 90's (I was the CE there then) WhenWAMS first went on, they attempted to get the calls WARS but that was turned down. And having looked at all of the past engineering history prior to the place being vandelized, the FM went away on the late 50's, then on 99.5 but there was also references to 96.1. which I don't think ever made it on the air. The 99.5 was in the center of the array, and the tower was cut to a quarter wave height when it was removed. The remaining tower then ended up as part of the tower of WJBR, which was installed upside down, and the old WAMS FM antennas were still on the roof of the studios in the early 90's! Bad signal? Not really, it served its purpose, turned out some GREAT radio and made Rollins some money!