[BC] Frequency Measuring

[Jerry Mathis]

Ooooh, this thread brings back memories. One of the first things I got to do
in radio was accompany the Chief Engineer to the studios of WORM, AM and FM,
Savannah, TN, 250 watts on 1010 kHz and 3KW on 101.7, and put the
transmitter on the air with the old-style dial tone, just as you say. This
was the late 60's.

I remember one time I thought I would make an "improvement" to the process
by putting on a tone from an audio generator instead of the dial tone. That
generated a phone call from Claude Gray, telling me in no uncertain terms
that he wanted the dial tone, so he could distinguish our station from all
the others on the air for testing. Needless to say, I didn't make THAT
mistake again!

I was recently clearing out the shelves in the transmitter shack for WFFX,
1450, Meridian, MS, and came across stacks of cards from Mr. Gray. Amazing
what emotions a few pieces of paper can trigger.

JM


On 3/24/07, gRAdy Moates <lists at loudandclean.com> wrote:
>
>    I remember Claude measuring WJHO, Opelika, AL, 1 kW
> on 1400, changed to WANI in 1997.  The call letters were
> for the station's founder, John Herbert Orr, co-founder of
> Ampex and founder of Orr-tronics and make of Irish
> recording tape.  I'm sad to see that the call letters have
> changed.
>
>    When I worked there, Claude insisted that we modulate
> the transmitter during the test with the "old-style" telco dial
> tone from AT&T days, because he said that it "cut through"
> the noise better than anything else.
>
>    When the local company switched to the dual-tone
> dial tone that we all know and love today, we had to
> use a recording of the old one.
>
>    Claude was also dead-set against the use of the
> term "Hertz" to replace cycles-per-second.  We talked
> about that at 2 AM on a number of nights.
>
> Grady
>
>
>