[BC] good ole boxes

[Rich Wood]

------ At 08:51 PM 7/20/2005, Clive Warner wrote: -------

>You can't get much more extreme than a 160-foot ship turning on anchor in a
>force eight gale and a one-sixty-foot cage-fed mast, and diesels fed by
>tanks that are rolling plus and minus thirty degrees.

I seem to remember Rosarito Beach being a little more stable than 
that. When I got to XTRA the array was in bad shape. The magnaphase 
activity was probably driven by the output end rather than its power 
source. Power was very unreliable and expensive. It would have cost 
us less to run the generator 24/7. Since the government ran the 
utility, supplying your own power fulltime was illegal. Our phone 
system could be disabled by a dab of dew. The site was on the other 
side of the road from the beach in a very hostile salt-laden 
environment. Bad for equipment. Great for signal. I believe the 
magnaphase would cause the Continental to shut down rather than just 
reduce power. I suspect it was doing exactly what it was designed to do.

One of the first things we did was hire a Consulting Engineer to 
repair and broadband the antenna to resume Kahn stereo operation. 
Once the array was repaired we had one of the highest fidelity AM 
signals on the air.

It was competitive with a highly promoted Group W FM (KJQY) for quite 
a while. I'm proud to say my last book there was a 4.7. It's never 
been duplicated since. I feel blessed to have been involved with a 
unique array of stations, an AM pioneer (WOR), New York, an FM 
pioneer (WJIB(FM)), Boston and a legendary border blaster (XTRA), San 
Diego/Tijuana, among others. Nothing boring about working for any of 
them. Even better were the people.

Rich

Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-303-9084
FAX: 413-480-0010