J.J. Jackson at WTUR

[Shawn Mamros]

>There is, further, a common urban myth of this kind at just about every 
>college radio station that began as a carrier-current operation and had 
>train tracks in plausible proximity. I even heard it about WLDB, the 
>predecessor to WBRS, and anyone familiar with the Brandeis campus knows 
>that it's quite the haul from the area where the studios would have been 
>to the commuter-rail tracks south of campus.

That urban myth made its way to MIT as well.  In our case, the Red Line
tracks were the purported antenna.  Never saw any evidence of it taking
place for real, just heresay.

>Did the myth originate from a real event at Tufts? I suppose that's 
>possible.

A sorta-kinda-similar thing *did* actually happen at MIT.  Not with
train tracks, and (apparently) not on purpose, but...

I remember seeing documentation of an incident in which some sort of
ground system problem/failure at the MIT Sailing Pavillion resulted
in the signal of carrier-current WMIT (or had it changed to WTBS by
then?  I don't remember the exact year, unfortunately) being coupled
to the iron railing that separates Memorial Drive from the Charles
River.  It apparently worked well enough for the station to be picked
up on the Boston side of the river, until the fault was found and fixed.

I'll have to see if I can find that documentation again.  No promises -
stuff has been moved around quite a few times over the years, and it
wouldn't be surprising if stuff got lost along the way.

-Shawn Mamros
E-mail to: mamros -at- mit dot edu