From dave@skywaves.net Thu Nov 5 21:21:23 2015 From: dave@skywaves.net (Dave Doherty) Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 21:21:23 -0500 Subject: No Static! Message-ID: <001b01d11839$d4e70f10$7eb52d30$@skywaves.net> Hi, all - In celebration of 50 years of FM broadcasting from the Empire State Building master FM antenna, they put on a light show to Steely Dan's "No Static At All" last Thursday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfyPB1XnWLQ Pretty cool! -d From scott@fybush.com Thu Nov 5 22:05:35 2015 From: scott@fybush.com (Scott Fybush) Date: Thu, 5 Nov 2015 22:05:35 -0500 Subject: No Static! In-Reply-To: <001b01d11839$d4e70f10$7eb52d30$@skywaves.net> References: <001b01d11839$d4e70f10$7eb52d30$@skywaves.net> Message-ID: <563C18FF.6050300@fybush.com> On 11/5/2015 9:21 PM, Dave Doherty wrote: > Hi, all - > > > > In celebration of 50 years of FM broadcasting from the Empire State Building > master FM antenna, they put on a light show to Steely Dan's "No Static At > All" last Thursday. "They" included me - I had the huge honor of moderating the AES panel discussion that followed the light show! Here's part of my video from the party the building threw to watch the show: https://youtu.be/-q6CHXaz1oY s From dave@skywaves.net Fri Nov 6 18:03:15 2015 From: dave@skywaves.net (Dave Doherty) Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2015 18:03:15 -0500 Subject: [Possible Spam(mid)]-RE: No Static! In-Reply-To: <563C18FF.6050300@fybush.com> References: <001b01d11839$d4e70f10$7eb52d30$@skywaves.net> <563C18FF.6050300@fybush.com> Message-ID: <00d301d118e7$51899c60$f49cd520$@skywaves.net> Nice, Scott! Thanks! -----Original Message----- From: Boston-Radio-Interest [mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@lists.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of Scott Fybush Sent: Thursday, November 05, 2015 10:06 PM To: boston-radio-interest@lists.BostonRadio.org Subject: Re: No Static! On 11/5/2015 9:21 PM, Dave Doherty wrote: > Hi, all - > > > > In celebration of 50 years of FM broadcasting from the Empire State > Building master FM antenna, they put on a light show to Steely Dan's > "No Static At All" last Thursday. "They" included me - I had the huge honor of moderating the AES panel discussion that followed the light show! Here's part of my video from the party the building threw to watch the show: https://youtu.be/-q6CHXaz1oY s From joe@attorneyross.com Sat Nov 7 01:37:33 2015 From: joe@attorneyross.com (A Joseph Ross) Date: Sat, 07 Nov 2015 01:37:33 -0500 Subject: No Static! In-Reply-To: <563C18FF.6050300@fybush.com> References: <001b01d11839$d4e70f10$7eb52d30$@skywaves.net> <563C18FF.6050300@fybush.com> Message-ID: <563D9C2D.3060700@attorneyross.com> So now that the new World Trade Center building has been finished, are TV stations moving back there from the Empire State Building? On 11/5/2015 10:05 PM, Scott Fybush wrote: > On 11/5/2015 9:21 PM, Dave Doherty wrote: >> Hi, all - >> >> >> >> In celebration of 50 years of FM broadcasting from the Empire State >> Building >> master FM antenna, they put on a light show to Steely Dan's "No >> Static At >> All" last Thursday. > > "They" included me - I had the huge honor of moderating the AES panel > discussion that followed the light show! > > Here's part of my video from the party the building threw to watch the > show: > > https://youtu.be/-q6CHXaz1oY > > s > > > > ----- > No virus found in this message. > Checked by AVG - www.avg.com > Version: 2015.0.6173 / Virus Database: 4457/10958 - Release Date: > 11/06/15 > > -- A. Joseph Ross, J.D.| 92 State Street| Suite 700 | Boston, MA 02109-2004 617.367.0468|Fx:617.507.7856| http://www.attorneyross.com From scott@fybush.com Sat Nov 7 08:21:10 2015 From: scott@fybush.com (Scott Fybush) Date: Sat, 7 Nov 2015 08:21:10 -0500 Subject: No Static! In-Reply-To: <563D9C2D.3060700@attorneyross.com> References: <001b01d11839$d4e70f10$7eb52d30$@skywaves.net> <563C18FF.6050300@fybush.com> <563D9C2D.3060700@attorneyross.com> Message-ID: <563DFAC6.60902@fybush.com> On 11/7/2015 1:37 AM, A Joseph Ross wrote: > So now that the new World Trade Center building has been finished, are > TV stations moving back there from the Empire State Building? Not yet. Everyone's waiting to see how the repack and spectrum auction works out. No point building an expensive new facility on, say, RF 38 if you're going to end up on RF 12...or off the air entirely. So everything's effectively on hold until early 2017 or so. From markwa1ion@aol.com Mon Nov 9 20:40:56 2015 From: markwa1ion@aol.com (Mark Connelly) Date: Mon, 9 Nov 2015 20:40:56 -0500 Subject: Northeast Blackout Radio Reminiscences, 50 years later Message-ID: <150ef0d94bc-3fe0-954d@webprd-a92.mail.aol.com> From: Mark Connelly, WA1ION This is being written on the 50th anniversary of the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965. Power went out in large parts of New York, New England, and some other adjacent states and Canadian provinces. The evening of November 9, 1965 was going on pretty much like any other after-school night. At my family home in Arlington, MA we had just finished supper. It was a chilly night outside and I went in the living room to do a little radio listening on a Realistic TRF portable ( http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1964/h080.html ) that had good sensitivity to pick up the many AM music stations from around the northeastern United States and adjacent parts of Canada. A bit after 5 p.m. I was listening to WNJR on 1430, a black R&B station skipping in from Newark, NJ (after local WHIL Medford had done its sunset sign-off). The song "Two is a Couple (Three is a Crowd)" by Ike & Tina Turner ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GUA5IaDhOw ) was playing. At 5:17 p.m. the lights dimmed, blinked off, blinked on, and then quickly went off to stay off for quite a while. The radio became the only link to the outside world that ran on battery power, so its role became much more important than usual functions as a source of music and long-distance hobby listening ("DXing"). I was a junior in high school at the time and was developing an avid interest in electronics. I was already building the occasional project and logging many broadcasts from around the world. A couple of my friends (Phil [later N1PZU] and Dick [WA1FAE / later KB1DN]) chatted with me on CB channel 11 from time to time on 100 milliwatt walkie talkies (' http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/html/1965-a/h003.html ' or similar) including, I think, during the blackout. In less than two years I would be a licensed radio amateur (now WA1ION). The world of 1965 was one that had recent memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and JFK assassination. The Vietnam War was starting to ramp up and civil rights struggles rocked many cities. Late that summer, folk protest music was making a resurgence with Bob Dylan's songs and "Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntLsElbW9Xo ). Such music had been earlier in vogue around '62 and '63 but was sidetracked a while by the British Invasion juggernaut. Cold War hysteria was never much below the surface in the autumn of 1965. The massive popularity of James Bond spy movies and of TV shows such as "Man from U.N.C.L.E." and "The Avengers" had a lot of appeal to young people. Sci-fi was also big. Space exploration and science had a certain amount of a "cool" factor; kids interested in it weren't necessarily thought of as geeks and nerds. Boston's Route 128 technology belt was growing by leaps and bounds as government and private money poured into aerospace, defense, computer, and telecommunications advances. Proximity to world-class universities spurred much of the activity. As I listened to the radio that November evening, it quickly became apparent that this blackout was not one of the usual ones just affecting our street and maybe, at most, a couple of others nearby - your typical branch-lands-on-wire or car-hits-pole scenario. Reports came in not only from nearby Boston but also Providence, New York, Albany, and quite a few other locales with stations that I could receive on the transistor radio. There was a pervasive uneasiness out there and various theories running from Russian sabotage to domestic loonies / criminals to UFO's abounded. The AM dial was an interesting mix of absent usual signals - gone with the loss of power - and other stations which had managed, thanks to generator availability, to come back on. Leading local Top 40 station WMEX 1510 lost power at the Boston studio but managed to get a generator going at the transmitter site, then located in North Quincy, MA. An improvised broadcast got going when some of the staff arrived there from Boston, 6 miles to the north. But either the voltage level or AC frequency of the generator was a bit off as records being played lurched along between too slow and too fast. I remember "Let's Hang On" by the Four Seasons ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8782KIj_rKw ) playing in a most discordant manner. Aware of the problem, the people at the transmitter quit music for a while and just talked. Houses started getting chilly as many furnaces wouldn't fire up without electricity. Fortunately the power did come back and a more normal pace of life returned. There is an online article written by a New York City broadcast professional that gives a good insight of how various stations responded to the blackout: http://nrcdxas.org/articles/blkout1.html Some other links: Dan Ingram on WABC New York http://www.mediafire.com/download/c2020aqx6j38m3b/WABC+1965+Blackout-1.mp3 Action at WDRC Hartford, CT https://www.facebook.com/groups/transmittersites/permalink/969803296414651/ NBC TV news coverage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o47VVM5riaQ Boston Globe 50th anniversary articles https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/11/08/the-day-massachusetts-went-dark-fifty-years-later/EjabrHTQkJpRFn4eYuThcN/story.html http://www.boston.com/news/history/2015/11/09/remembering-the-day-boston-went-dark-years-ago/X4Be7F3fiGx3mw3QbFC5tK/story.html?s_campaign=bcom%3Asocialflow%3Afacebook How I Got Started in Radio and Electronics http://www.qsl.net/wa1ion/wa1ion_history.htm Besides songs mentioned in the narrative above, some of the other big hits I remember on Top 40 radio around then include: Look Through Any Window (Hollies) .. their greatest https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3B2_OTRpPd4 Turn, Turn, Turn (Byrds) .. taken from the Bible and huge follow-up to Dylan-written "Mr. Tambourine Man" of the early summer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKP4cfU28vM Something About You (Four Tops) .. soul classic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6P-v5RD02g Rescue Me (Fontella Bass) .. another soul classic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9mp3s2gpy8 Five O'Clock World (Vogues) .. working man's anthem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9Nm_c3GVY Get Off My Cloud (Rolling Stones) .. Stones string of successes continues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlhPRuAve8k Mystic Eyes (Them) featuring Van Morrison https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Bo3IwYZlkw I'm a Man (Yardbirds) rocked-up blues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAdCePtwoW4 Liar Liar (Castaways) .. garage monster https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EpP9DPZ0Xo Sounds of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel) .. title cut from an outstanding album https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fWyzwo1xg0 Once a week, WBZ's Jefferson Kaye brought us to an alternate universe of folk music and, occasionally, blues. Here are two of the more important tunes spinning in late 1965: Children of Darkness (Richard & Mimi Farina) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWPjWh_EwBo Shake Your Money Maker (Paul Butterfield Blues Band) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1L2vJ0U4Bc From lspin@comcast.net Tue Nov 10 08:04:09 2015 From: lspin@comcast.net (Lou) Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:04:09 -0500 Subject: Blackout 1965 Message-ID: <000001d11bb8$4a356240$dea026c0$@comcast.net> Mark, Great piece! I, too, remember hearing Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg on WMEX through a transistor radio. The music was playing a bit fast. I had asked my dad why, and he explained the use of generators. I guess the power generated wasn't very clean. In The North End, where I lived, the only lights to be seen were the bright lights of the newly renovated St. Stephen's Church, again courtesy of a generator. Your discussion of The Cold War was interesting, as well. A lot of people we spoke with were fearing that it was "The Russians" doing evil things to us. Others were blaming UFOs. It was a Twilight Zone-y night, for sure. From: Boston-Radio-Interest [mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@lists.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of Mark Connelly via Boston-Radio-Interest Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 9:16 PM To: boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org; am@nrcdxas.org; irca@hard-core-dx.com; badx@yahoogroups.com; CapeDX@yahoogroups.com Subject: From francini@mac.com Tue Nov 10 08:54:32 2015 From: francini@mac.com (John Francini) Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 08:54:32 -0500 Subject: Blackout 1965 In-Reply-To: <000001d11bb8$4a356240$dea026c0$@comcast.net> References: <000001d11bb8$4a356240$dea026c0$@comcast.net> Message-ID: <29D0348B-FEC3-4553-BEA9-35524270408A@mac.com> More likely, the power generated had a frequency somewhat higher than 60 Hz. Most turntables of the day (like clocks) used synchronous motors whose speed was determined by the incoming line frequency. The frequency of power from the utility was (and likely still is) highly regulated to be as close to 60 cycles per second as possible. Generator power is not that well regulated, so devices that rely on line frequency as a synchronization source will run at different speeds than intended. Most likely that generator was running fast. john btw: For those of us on the BRI list that didn?t see the original post, can you send a link? > On 10 Nov 2015, at 8:04 , Lou wrote: > > Mark, > > Great piece! I, too, remember hearing Arnie "Woo Woo" Ginsburg on WMEX > through a transistor radio. The music was playing a bit fast. I had asked > my dad why, and he explained the use of generators. I guess the power > generated wasn't very clean. In The North End, where I lived, the only > lights to be seen were the bright lights of the newly renovated St. > Stephen's Church, again courtesy of a generator. > > > > Your discussion of The Cold War was interesting, as well. A lot of people > we spoke with were fearing that it was "The Russians" doing evil things to > us. Others were blaming UFOs. It was a Twilight Zone-y night, for sure. > > > > > > > > From: Boston-Radio-Interest > [mailto:boston-radio-interest-bounces@lists.BostonRadio.org] On Behalf Of > Mark Connelly via Boston-Radio-Interest > Sent: Monday, November 9, 2015 9:16 PM > To: boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org; am@nrcdxas.org; > irca@hard-core-dx.com; badx@yahoogroups.com; CapeDX@yahoogroups.com > Subject: > > > > > From Donald_Astelle@Yahoo.com Tue Nov 17 01:21:29 2015 From: Donald_Astelle@Yahoo.com (Don) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:21:29 -0500 Subject: 1700AM Message-ID: Anyone know what I might be picking up on 1700AM in the Northern Suburns of Boston late at night? Could it be WRCR from CT? Pretty steady signal and audio....maybe someone forgot to power down? Anyone, Buehler? Don From raccoonradio@gmail.com Tue Nov 17 08:05:12 2015 From: raccoonradio@gmail.com (Bob Nelson) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 08:05:12 -0500 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: It probably is WRCR which is licensed to Ramapo, NY. I picked them up after sunset on the North Shore some time back, doing minor league baseball (Rockland Boulders of Can-Am league). There is not much competition on 1700. Not considering travelers' info stations or pirates, radio-locator (do advanced search, then enter frequency) lists 6 US licensed stations on 1700, the others being in Iowa, Texas, etc. 10kW DAY, 1 kW night , two patterns non directional On Tue, Nov 17, 2015 at 2:18 AM, Don via Boston-Radio-Interest < boston-radio-interest@lists.bostonradio.org> wrote: > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Don > To: > Cc: > Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 01:21:29 -0500 > Subject: 1700AM > Anyone know what I might be picking up on 1700AM in the Northern Suburns > of Boston late at night? Could it be WRCR from CT? > > Pretty steady signal and audio....maybe someone forgot to power down? > > Anyone, Buehler? > Don > > > From scott@fybush.com Tue Nov 17 07:08:33 2015 From: scott@fybush.com (Scott Fybush) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 07:08:33 -0500 Subject: No subject In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <564B18C1.3030903@fybush.com> Almost certainly WRCR (from NY, not CT). I'm pretty certain they do power down to 1000 watts at night, but that's plenty to make the trip to Boston. I hear them up here in Rochester most nights. On 11/17/2015 2:18 AM, Don via Boston-Radio-Interest wrote: From dlh@donnahalper.com Tue Nov 17 11:23:06 2015 From: dlh@donnahalper.com (Donna Halper) Date: Tue, 17 Nov 2015 11:23:06 -0500 Subject: Alan Douglas In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <564B546A.2020505@donnahalper.com> I don't know how many of you have worked with or encountered Alan Douglas of Pocasset. He had the best collection of old radios and old radio memorabilia I ever saw. His garage was like a museum. Anyway, I was just informed that he died on Monday. I believe he was 72. From TVNETDUDE@aol.com Mon Nov 30 09:02:50 2015 From: TVNETDUDE@aol.com (TVNETDUDE@aol.com) Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:02:50 -0500 Subject: WVCA Message-ID: <290701.37c4fdc4.438db10a@aol.com> I checked and you are right Dave. >>>Skywaves Call Sign History Search --------------------------------- Input: WVCA (Contains) ----- 21828 DWVCA FM 287 SELMA, AL PRCAN WVCA 1989-03-14 to present 880602OE 0000-00-00 to 1989-03-14 ----- 61409 WBOQ FM 285 GLOUCESTER, MA LICEN as of 2000-04-04 WBOQ 1988-07-18 to present WVCA-FM 1979-12-07 to 1988-07-18 WVCAFM 0000-00-00 to 1979-12-07 <<<<