[BC] Silly engineer tricks

[Broadcast List USER]

That reminds me.  I ONCE HEARD (because I would have nothing to do
with this) of some guys at the Mutual Broadcasting System who had two
Boonton signal generators.  They were pretty amazing for their time.

Mutual was on the 12th floor (top floor) of an office building in
Crystal City (Arlington), Virginia, nearly next to National Airport,
and in sight of the Capitol and Washington Monument.  On the roof, in
addition to the network's RPU and satellite antennas was an FM antenna
for Muzak.  In the basement is a Metro station, and a mall that
connects several office towers.  The mall played Muzak pretty much
everywhere, including the food court.

Just prior to going to lunch, one generator would be set to 101.1 MHz,
the frequency of WWDC-FM, DC-101.  The curious thing was that the rock
station's subcarrier was Muzak.  The second Boonton would be set to
67kHz to modulate the first generator.  The second generator was
modulated with the "tape out" from the shop stereo receiver, which was
tuned to WHFS, the progressive station.

We, um, I mean, those guys I heard about would go to lunch.  The mall
had WHFS playing everywhere instead of Muzak.  No one seemed to miss
Muzak -- from what I hear.  Of course, I have no first hand knowledge
of any of it.

Also, in my misspent youth, I worked in a DC Radio Shack (where I
first met my friend, John Reiser) to help pay my way through college.
One of the employees liked WKYS, which was the disco station.  He
would put it on the big receiver with the BIG speakers, and turn up
the bass.  I couldn't stand it.  It was a constant radio fight.  I
would set another stereo receiver to 10.7 MHz off the big receiver's
frequency.  He never did figure out why WKYS's signal got to be so bad.

Then there was the guy I worked with at WPGC.  His shift started at 5
AM, so he retired early.  He got a new neighbor who loved WKYS.  She
would come home late, and put it on loud.  He tried to reason with
her, but she didn't care.  So, she came home one night and he put a
signal generator on it, modulated VERY heavily.  He said she said
something to him about her speakers being burned out.  She was looking
for advice because she knew where he worked.

--chip

On Jul 15, 2009, at 10:19 AM, broadcast-request at radiolists.net wrote:

>Message: 29
>From: Brew <brew at theMode.com>
>
>Funny thing, in 1973 when I was a Test and Field Service guy at CCA in
>Gloucester City for some reason there was always factory wide
>interference on the reception of the country and talk radio stations,
>only the FM rock stations had good reception on the factory floor.
>
>Interesting that a Boonton Grid Dip Oscillator radiated better around
>the plant than a 20 kW FM transmitter under test.  Of course, the
>transmitters were tested into 3 1/8 line through the harmonic filter
>into a completely shielded water cooled 50 Ohm dummy load.   The
>Boonton GDO was, um....., a much better radiator.
>
>brew  Bruce Schiller at CBS-TV NY Master Control Maintenance and
>WA2ZST