Re: College engineering (was WWZN)

[Ron Bello <RBello@BelloAssoc.com>]

I believe that until the early 80s, all directional AM stations
had to have an operator with a 1st class FCC Radiotelephone
license on duty.  There were no directional FM or TV stations.


At 04:27 AM 6/13/03 +0000, aread@speakeasy.net wrote:
>There used to be a requirement that a licensed "Chief Engineer" (as in, 
>the legal term) had to be employed by the station to some degree, didn't 
>there?  If there was a requirement, is it still in place?
>
>BTW, most medium-sized, and some smaller, college stations DO farm out 
>their tech support...either to a contractor or to some hapless Joe in 
>another college department.  WGAO, WHRB, WZBC, WMLN all immediately come 
>to mind.
>
>A lot of smaller ones (WMFO, WZLY and WBRS come to mind) do without any 
>real engineering service at all...and get by with the occasional techie 
>student.  These stations are frequently in very sorry shape.
>
>- Aaron
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Shawn Mamros [mailto:mamros@MIT.EDU]
> > Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 09:47 PM
> > To: 'Sid Schweiger'
> > Cc: boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org
> > Subject: Re: Fwd: Herald: Is WWZN dragging down SNR?
> >
> > [Reformatting to 80 char width lines, to avoid the wrath of Garrett...]
> >
> > >[...]  Unless a college station is run by professionals, what group of
> > > students is going to have time to do all that, with classes, papers,
> > > projects, exams AND the FCC breathing down their necks?  Further, what
> > > group of students (yes, even EE students) knows enough about AM
> > > directionals to be able to properly maintain and troubleshoot the array?
> > >
> > >I know whereof I speak, BTW.  I went to Cornell for a brief time.  Their
> > > student-run station was and still is a commercial FM operation...and was
> > > known campus-wide for the flunk-out rate of its staff.
> >
> > Sounds like a familiar story... (fortunately, not *that* familiar. :-)
> >
> > Seriously, though, I think these days that the only college stations
> > with student technical staff tend to be "techie" schools like Cornell
> > and MIT.  I believe most non-technical schools contract out to consulting
> > engineers for their stations.  Not that they would necessarily have the
> > time to constantly babysit a directional array, either...
> >
> > -Shawn Mamros
> > E-mail to: mamros@mit.edu
> >
>