Ridin’ The Radio Range

One of the duties of old AM radio engineers was to perform something called field intensity measurements on directional radio stations.

A quick explanation of directional AM radio is in order. Directional AM radio stations have two or more towers. These extra towers may be energized part time or full time in order to “channel” the signal in one or more directions. The need for directional stations was to protect other stations on the same frequency that were licensed before the directional station was built. The majority of these stations were directional at night only because AM radio signals would travel farther at night than in the day. Many non-directional stations had to protect these earlier stations by reducing their power at night.

An example of a non directional station in Columbia, SC is WCOS which operated at 1,000 watts daytime and 250 watts nighttime while I worked there. WIS Radio (Now WVOC) was a directional station that operated at 5,000 watts both day and night but at nighttime the signal was channeled to the east-southeast (105 degrees) by the three towers.

Broadcast Engineers (now called Broadcast Technicians) who worked at directional stations had a few more tasks than their brethren who worked at stations with only one tower. One of those tasks was to perform weekly field intensity measurements at designated monitor points. Each Friday afternoon, I’d put the station into the directional pattern and joke with Gracie, our station receptionist as I stepped out of the front door of station with my trusty Field Strength meter tucked under my arm like a lunchbox that I was going out to “ride the radio range.”

The week that I began working at WIS Radio, our brown and tan Potomac meter similar to the one shown on this page arrived to replace the old black and grey one that the station had been using for years. For the first few months, I took both meters out and took readings from both of them to make sure that the new one was reading the same as the old one. I never got rid of the old one because I wanted a stand-by in case the new one failed. I needn’t have worried.

WIS had four monitor points, two on either side of the Saluda River so it took me about 90 minutes to drive to each of those points, fire up the meter take the reading, record it on the log and calculate the percentage difference from the reading it was supposed to be. That took only a couple of minutes at each monitor point. Because there was only one bridge across the river near the station it took me about 45 minutes longer than it would have otherwise as I needed to backtrack my path to cross the river via I-20 which at the time meant that I had to drive all the way down to I-26 to get to it. At the time there was no exit to I-20 from Bush River Road, the main drag near where the station was located on WIS Lane.

I should note here that the FCC required these weekly tests be performed at least one hour after sunrise and one hour before sunset, so that the daytime radio propagation conditions existed. Some of my fellow Broadcast Engineers caught grief from station management about needing to set the station to nighttime pattern for these readings but I was fortunate that I never had that problem; my management took these things seriously. Now, the DJ that was on the air was a different story. When I put the station on the directional pattern, I would walk into the studio and note it on the transmitter log, which he kept at other times. Without fail he would bellyache to me that I was costing him listeners. My response was just as savage. I told him that it was not a problem, that he had no listeners anyway. It was all in good fun and part of our friendship.

I dearly loved the quiet time driving my bright red Karmann-Ghia around Richland and Lexington counties between monitor points. Those were good times for me to mull over a problem that I was having with a piece of equipment or to plan in my head the next project I was going to take on at the station.

My number 4 monitor point was just off of Highway 378 a block off of I-22. It was in front of a mom and pop Lawn and Garden Equipment Shop. The owner was a man in his late 60s who had a gruff countenance and a heart of gold. I looked forward to that stop every week, as I was taking the reading, he would head out of the shop with a couple of ice-cold bottles of Coca-Cola and we would sit in the rocking chairs in front of the store and share a five minute conversation about any and everything.

A month before I left WIS Radio, when I made my “radio range ride” the shop was closed and he was not there. The next week was the same. Two weeks later both he and his wife were at the store but he was confined to a wheel chair after having a serious stroke. He had come in that afternoon to tell me good bye and that he was going to sell the store. To this day, if I am out driving in the countryside away from the hustle and bustle of the city, I can still see him in my mind’s eye sitting in that rocking chair wearing his denim overalls and white t-shirt, working on that green tinted bottle of Coca-Cola and mopping the heat off his forehead with his bright red bandana. Oh MY!