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Once upon a time, there was a pair of radio stations. They were
happy at 1470 Leisure Lane in Sacramento, but then Caltrans wanted to build an interchange
through the property. So the KXOA folks opened up the Gates Radio catalog and
ordered almost two complete radio stations. They found another building just down
the street for the new studio, but for the new 5 kW day, 1 kW AM transmitter site they
unfortunately cloned the existing 3-tower array about a half mile west in the American
River Floodplain. For the FM, they bought a new board, automation, 10 kW transmitter, and 10-bay antenna that they put on the center tower of the AM array. Here's the building they moved to...I forget the exact address, but it's on Commerce Circle next to Highway 160 in Sacramento. |
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In 1971, the owners of KXOA & KXOA-FM sold them to different
companies. The AM went to some folks from San Jose who changed the call to KNDE and
continued to do Top 40. The FM went to four famous men: Bill Drake, Gene Chenault, and Mike and Willet Brown. They had already made KGB in San Diego (owned by the Browns) and KYNO in Frenso (owned by Gene Chenault) famous as "Boss Radio" stations. They moved the FM stations to a couple rented suites on Loma Vista Dr. in Sacramento, pictured to the left. The left-hand front window was for reception/traffic, and the right-hand window was for the GM's office. That's when I started working here in February of 1971. |
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Here's the FM board after it got moved to Loma Vista, as the production board. Later it would be the on-air board. |
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The automation was a Gates SP-10 that got named "Roberta Tobor"
or Roberta for short. It had four reel-to-reel decks, five carousels, a two-cart
time annouce deck (see picture at left), and three cart decks. It got moved to Loma Vista into a room in the back on the west side. Later, when the station went live, it got moved to storage. Then, when it went back to automation, it got installed in a smaller room in the back on the east side, where this picture was taken. The picture shows what happens when automation systems puke. |
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There were three different formats while I worked there: automated
Drake-Chenault "Solid Gold," live AOR, and then automated Drake-Chenault
"Classic Gold." Maybe the picture to the left is "Classic Gold KXOA's" only promotion? In this case, at Howe Park in Sacramento. At least we all got t-shirts! Chief Engineer Larry Grant on the left, and "Automation Technician" Scott Simmons on the right. |
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In 1973 I moved to Canoga Park, CA to work for Drake-Chenault Enterprises
to make the tapes instead of play them. You can learn all about Drake-Chenault at http://www.drakechenault.org I moved back to Sacramento in 1976. |
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In 1978, after getting my First Class Radiotelephone license, I was hired
by Chief Engineer Hank Schwartz to be his Assistant andd and to work for the Browns again.
They had just bought KXOA AM. I was the one to turn the 1470 transmitter off
at the end of "the reign of KNDE." A literal quote from the last KNDE
jock. I say it was unfortunate that they cloned the 1470 array, 'cause they could have improved on it, including moving it farther south, because it protects a station in Mexico which puts a null right through the center of Sacramento at night. A fourth tower may have made it easier to achieve the separate patterns. Plus, being in the floodplain meant having to elevate the transmitter building and tower bases and tuning houses. And of course, sometimes it floods. The KNDE jocks did their shows from a studio at the transmitter, because there was no remote control. |
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This was our engineering vehicle, a 1979 Ford Bronco that I called the Yellow Submarine. Since the KNDE jocks were all let go, Hank had to hire transmitter watchers, and sometimes we had to "ferry" them out to the site. |
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When the water got deep enough, we'd have to blow up the raft and row out. In the shallow parts, someone, me in this case, would put on the waders and tow Hank here in the raft. |
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Fortunately, the ground under the building was higher, so we could usually reach the gate lock. |
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Here's how big heavy stuff gets in and out of the building, in this picture from 2001. |
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The water got pretty deep at the tower bases, but never has never gotten
into the tuning houses as far as I know. The black widow spiders like the space under the platforms, and the wasps LOVE the insides of the tuning houses. |
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One of my first jobs was to help rebuild this studio for a live AOR format
which would be "AM 14. This Langvin board was very cool for the late 60's. In the late 70's it was not so cool, but still good." Unfortunately, I don't have an "after" picture. |
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I think this was the AM's production room, which stayed intact, although the FM had already moved to Old Sac from Loma Vista and most of the production was done there. |
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In about 1976, the 107.9 FM transmitter moved to the KCRA TV tower
downtown, and the 1470 Collins 5 kW transmitter got replaced with a Gates MW-5 and they
bought a new MATCHING phasor. The air handling system included this hood over the main transmitter, which drew air from a filter box in the floor of the building. This worked great until the exhaust blower's motor died one hot summer day, which caused one of the tubes in the transmitter to melt internally: continuity between all the leads/rings. |
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The solution was an intake blower and an exhaust blower that started and
stopped together and backed each other up. The intake blower was still working in 2001! |
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The backup transmitter, that got moved from Leisure Lane, was this late
40's-vintage Raytheon RA-1000. My wife Patti (modelling the transmitter) and I came and got it at Thanksgiving of 2001 before it got thrown away after ABC/Disney bought the station and installed a new Nautel solid-state transmitter as the main. You can read all about "Our Old Transmitter" at http://www.sbe124.org/old_xmtr_rescue/our_old_xmtr.html |
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It still worked great the day we took it apart. Talk about "old school!" Here's one side of the inside. |
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Here's the other side of the inside. The transmitter sits in storage until we have a garage with 8' ceilings in which to install it. They make great ham radio linear amplifiers on the 80 or 160 meter bands and only draw about the same current as an electric dryer at 220 volts, single phase. |
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The Nautel is to the left of the phasor cabinet at the far left in this 2001 picture. |