[BC] Silly engineer tricks

[Craig Healy]

In the early 80's I had a couple of TI-99/4A computers.  These had an
exceptional text to voice adapter.  You could use the Extended Basic program
and send text so it would speak what was sent to it.  Great add-on!

So, I took this thing and wrote a program that would send the word "ribbit"
randomly between 5 to 15 minutes.  Sounded just like a fifty pound bullfrog.
Took the output and sent it to the circuit that went to the off-air recorder
for WBSR which was the Brown University Student Radio carrier current
station.

There was a student who was significantly "uppity" and snobbish.  She played
a classical show and recorded it.  Of course, the "ribbit" showed up on that
but not on the air or in the headphones.  On one break the voicetrack went
like this...

"We'll be back a a minute..."

"RIBBIT!"

"Next is a symphony from..."

Just serendipity.  A perfect "ribbit" injection.  When she played it back to
the student program director, he immediately figured it out.  By the time he
could stop laughing, he told her not to worry.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Around 1983 we installed our first satellite dish at WBRU-95.5.

One of their jocks would just talk way too much.  I took an old meter from a
frequency monitor with center at zero.  Pulled it apart and relabeled it as
an Arbitron live report.  Mounted it nicely in a rack panel and put it in
the air studio below the remote control.  Very obvious.  Ran a pair of wires
to the engineering room to a battery and potentiometer.  Even took a blank
panel from the Scientific Atlanta satellite receiver and labled it
"Arbitron".  Let it be known that we had a Live Arbitron Report on that
satellite.

When this jock started talking too long, I'd slowly turn the pot down.  It
made it look like he was losing 5%, then 10%, to as much as 50% of his
audience.  Took him a while to notice it, but he did.  The last break where
he spoke too long, he looked at the meter, saw the audience loss, and pretty
much immediately shut up and played the next song.  He got real Drake-ish
after that.

I gotta tell you, I wish I could do that today to some shows....

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Then there was WHJJ-920 in the late 80's where I worked part time.  They had
an Eventide delay in line for some talk shows.  You know, the one with the
big yellow Dump button?  Well, around 3am I was doing some work.  I realized
the jock was about to read the weather forecast.  He was listening off-air
in the headphones.  I put the delay online and inconspicuously held the Dump
button in to keep it on real time.  As he started reading the weather, I
took my finger off the button and left the room.  As he was talking, the
delay gradually started it's automatic increase.  And his voice started to
slow down and drop in frequency, almost like a record playing and the
turntable shut off.

Partway through he ripped off his headphones and finished the report.  Then
he found me outside and tried cursing the heck out of me, but we were both
laughing too hard.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I have some more, but that's enough for now.

Craig Healy
Providence, RI