The Seventies

Alan Duff from the '70-'73 era and I have planned to meet personally to exchange memorabilia but a mutually convenient time hasn't yet developed. Let me know when, Alan.

Don Strickland arrived in Asmara in July 1970. He had been News Director at WFM-TV, the closed circuit instructional television station at the Signal School at Ft. Monmouth, NJ. Don writes, "I only had ten months of service left in the Army when I received my orders. When I arrived at Kagnew I was surprised to be assigned to the radio side of the operation as I fully expected to be assigned to the television station.

"I was glad I got radio when I saw the television facility. It was, to say the least, primitive considering what I had been use to at Ft. Monmouth. They had no video tape capability and the video switcher was capable of only straight takes, dissolves and cross fades, real stone-age stuff. There were two black and white cameras in the studio that at least had zoom lenses. After seeing the control room I fully expected to see cameras with fixed lenses that had to racked and then the cameraman have to dolly or truck the camera around in order to frame a shot.

"When I arrived Rod Madden was the Program Director for radio and television, Don Brown (on air name Don Ryan) was Chief Announcer, George Allen was Sports Director and on air talent for the sports reports for television, Allen Christoper (don't know if that was his real name) was News Director and on air announcer for television news. George was a real short-timer when I arrived. I remember his staying up night and day during the week and taking copy off the TTY and trying to tape sports events from some sort of shortwave radio or some type of similar setup we had that would receive broadcasts from AFN Europe and then he would crash and sleep all weekend. It seems to me I remember his hanging out a lot with Don "Ryan" Brown. I don't remember who took over sports, but I remember doing it a couple of times when the regular guy wasn't available.

"Mike Bertalan took over from Allen Christoper and if I remember right the other TV news announcer was the guy identified as Phil Urie in the Sherman Watstein photo in the scrapbook section of Rick Fortney's Kagnew website. I took over as Chief Announcer on radio when Don left and turned the job over to Lou Krieger when I left in May 1971. My regular gig was a live country music show in the afternoon. I filled in for other DJ's when they were unable to do shows and did board shifts at times when regularly scheduled guys couldn't be there. Other DJ's doing live programs that I remember were Bill Coleman, Rick Glasby and my roommate Lou Krieger. We had several part time DJ's who were assigned to Stratcom, ASA or the Naval detachment. Two that I remember are Norm Bennett and Al Brandyburg.

"The thing I remember most was the temperamental nature of the AM radio transmitter. It would go off the air at anytime and especially during thunderstorms. I don't pretend to know how they did it but the engineers had rigged up a telephone at the transmitter site and when it went down we would call that number, the phone would ring and kick the transmitter back on. We could not tell our listeners how we restored power. Apparently the telephone setup was a no-no. I usually announced that I had called out to the site, the engineer had put a new hamster on the wheel and we were back in business.

"One other unusual incident I remember was when the TV station's film projector broke and while they were waiting on repairs the TV people pushed a camera up to a window of AM radio control room and broadcast Rick Glasby's show live over the air.

"When I arrived they were just finishing the installation of the automated FM-Stereo station. They installed several tape machines (I think there were five or six, not sure of the number) that played prerecorded 10-inch reels sent out by AFRTS. As one tape ended another machine would start. I don't think they ever changed those five or six tapes during my time at the station. I'm probably wrong about that but it seemed like whenever I listened I always heard music that had played just the day before." (Don is expected to provide photos - Thanks, Don)

Ron Buckhalt (03/71 - 12/'71) reports that he has 16 MM B&W news pieces that he did. John Kircher was the producer of the twice-weekly "Military News" and notes that Ron did an excellent job of anchoring and that it was a pleasure working with him. Ron recalls, "we shot the show we sent forward on 16 MM in the studio and edited it to appear like a real live air check newscast since we did not have a video tape at that time. Changed camera angles and everything to appear as if we had a multi-camera operation."

Ron further writes, "Pat Pipes and I worked on a film special shot on location at a leper colony in Massawa about the work being done by the Italian doctors there. He was the videographer, I was the news interviewer. Sylvana (sp?) an Eritrean/Italian native and wife of Rod Madden, served as translator for the film. Pat Pipes finished the production as I was able to get an early out to go back to school. He may know more about what happened to it. Have not yet been able to locate Pat. As I recall, the film did have some great shots of Massawa and a late afternoon panoramic from the Red Sea to the mountains to close the documentary. Since then I have produced many video news releases and features, but we cut our teeth on this one."

AFRTS-Asmara received the Freedoms Foundation Honor Certificate from the Freedoms Foundation in Valley Forge, PA for the radio special, "A July 4^th Special, 1971". The 30-minute program based upon historical events from the first July 4^th to those of later years, was aired on Independence Day, 1971, on both AM and Fm Radio. It was a narrated by SP4 Mike Edwards. ASA's Copy Desk Awards were also presented in recognition of the station's creation.

According to a 1972 article in the "Kagnew Gazelle" provided by Dean Tiernan, AFRTS underwent a face lifting in August 1971. New AM and FM studios were constructed to make room for new equipment, thereby increasing still more the station's broadcast and production capabilities. A new studio was constructed in early '72 for radio news.

In addition to his production responsibilities, John Kircher also hosted the longest-running live AFRS-FM program, a weekly Music of the Masters. It aired every Wednesday night without interruption from January 1971 through August 1973. John shares that, "When our twins were born on Wednesday, May 17, 1972, I began the show this way:

John Cooley has provided a couple of very interesting, personalized stories. I'll share one to hopefully stimulate more memories from those reading this -

The TV Transmitter Event -

You never know how much something is needed until it is not there. Most of the TV shows were 16mm film of older shows and of course Army info. A few local productions thrown in. After I had been there a while, 2 new techs arrived fresh out of school. The cardinal rule in any Army technical school is "Preventive Maintenance is SOP". Now these 2 tech were excited about their 1st assignment. It was decided to perform PM on the Television Transmitter. Now this transmitter was state of the art for its time, but I used tubes instead of transistors. Tubes need to be changed because they wear out. This is normal. But what the school didn't teach the techs was that, over time as tubes age the characteristics change. When a tube is removed from equipment for testing, it must be replaced back in the same socket. What the techs did was pull all of the tubes at one time, test them and randomly put them back. Of course when they turned the transmitter back on, there was no picture or sound. Normally in this situation, you would simply re-tune the transmitter (several hours long, about 30 steps). But we didn't have the necessary test equipment. Sgt. Aho called around and what luck, the calibration team was here to certify all of the field stations' test equipment. They had the necessary stuff. We borrowed it and promptly discovered it was defective and couldn't be used. The cal team managed to repair the test equipment and we continued. Several days had now passed with no TV. The troops were getting restless. Since I had the most experience, I got elected to re-tune the system. The second evening of tuning, I got a visit from a fresh young 2nd Lt. wanting to know why I wasn't done yet. What could possibly take so long? He was not technical. I picked up a 10" crescent wrench and informed him he could stay and wear it or quit bugging me and depart. He was a little upset at my reply. But he left. The following day I finally got the transmitter back on the air. I also got a visit from the post's Public Information Officer (I think he was a full Colonel). He thanked me for spending long hours fixing the transmitter, but asked if I could be a little more tactful handling new officers.

John has some more personal stories and memories. Some of his random memories to stimulate more input from YOU:

"All In the Family" was popular in the states. No one at Kagnew could believe that that type of show could be on the air…

The desert sand was so fine that the filters in the FM station automation system didn't keep it out. The system kept getting confused and never played anything in the correct order."

Rick Glasby ('71-'73) has provided an aircheck and jingles that Rick Fortney plans to add to the new Entertainment pages at the Kagnew Station web site shortly. Rick Glasby also was helpful in identifying those in the staff photo of March 1971 that is displayed on the website. Several identifications were added with the help of Bob Hunt and Ron Buckhalt. Here is the listing to accompany the staff photo on Sherman Watstein's Scrapbook Page linked above:

Back Row, Left to Right:
Ron Buckhalt, unknown, Mike Bertalan, Bill Coleman, Pat Pipes, Joe Scott, Donald Stric kland, unknown, Sherman Watstein, John Kircher
Middle Row, Left to Right:
SFC Pete Richards, John Kostelanski, Rod Madden, Lou Krieger, Ed Perry, Dan Minchen, Hal Gardner, rest unknown
Front Row, Left to Right:
Andy Fralic, Bob Hunt, Dan McGrath, Mike Rogers, Brian McGarry, Ron Laib, Phil Urie, Mike Edwards, Rick Glasby.

Bob Hunt promises to provide more photos and has a 1973 group photo. (Thanks again, Bob). Dean Tiernan, a contributor to www.kagnewstation.com and a member of the 2003 Reunion Committee was with the AFRTS stations in Asmara in the 1972-1973 period and is contributing air checks and most valuable information to OUR project, including the "Gazelle" story that appeared earlier.

Warren Krech, whose official job was Special Services (lifeguard), was, "a sidekick on the morning show on AFRS, 'The Big 14/The ROCK of East Africa'. The host was Mike King, with Roland Richter on news". Warren thinks the FM might have been simulcast (Roland [below] indicates only part of the day). On Saturday morning (having been a theater major in college) he did a kiddie cartoon show. "I was Crater Eddie, and we had some puppets and a studio audience of little Army brats and a few local kids." Warren, I'm waiting for the photos! (Thanks, again)

Roland Richter (mentioned above in Warren Krech's comment) was there form August 1973-December 1973. This meant he was there during the transition to the Navy's control of the stations. These stories will primarily interest those technically oriented…

Roland reports that it was during this time that a new Grass Valley switcher was installed in TV, which afforded the ability to do quite a bit in the realm of effects… mattes, keys, etc.
"They moved the audio console next to the switcher where one operator could do everything, even do slide IDS and start the cart machine for the audio all with one hand (if your fingers were long enough you could punch the film chain stop, and slide start and push the cart start all at the same time!). I know there were lots of different live shows done during the history of the station. For winter of 1973, we got a huge Christmas tree flown in from Germany and decorated it in the studio. We had one of the guys dress in a Santa suit and read letters to Santa every day after the news. Col. Light read parts of the Christmas story (very politically incorrect, but who really worries about that other than over wrought liberals anyway). We had a kids puppet/cartoon show on Saturday mornings. And there are some real stories about the Security Agency Benefit Association TV auction, too. In fact, one evening I was supposed to do a preview, showing some of the items and describing them. Some kind of altercation broke out in the control room and I had to just keep going … the cameraman just kept giving me the "stretch" sign, so I kept stretching! I was amazed you could not hear the bumping of people against the wall on the air! The director, who had delayed putting the preview on the air until after the first show following the news as getting "dressed down" by someone who had set up the scheduled times for the cut ins and ended up working somewhere else on post after that night!

The AM transmitter site was located in the base housing area … and was pretty much up to commercial broadcast standards. The tower was a quarter wave, with lots of ground radials. When I was there the transmitter was a Gates BC-1T. I was very familiar with it since I had taken care of one for three years at a commercial station in Texas. The program audio was fed via equalized telephone line, but at one point, we got a 900 mHz studio-to-transmitter link. I found an old Gates peak limiter in the shop, put new caps and tubes in it and used it as a pre-processor in front of the STL, with the Gates solid statesmen AGC and Peak Limiter at the transmitter site…the modulation was really HOT and it was the loudest thing on the dial…that transmitter was capable of highly asymmetric modulation, allowing modulation to about 130% on positive peaks without exceeding 100% on negative peaks. I had learned about that while working at KILT in Houston just before I got my draft notice. We also equalized the audio to make it really crisp while narrowing the bandwidth down to that which would fit most receivers…it was LOUD!!! And of course the Army kept us well supplied with fresh 833A's for both modulator and final. I am sure the station got reception reports before, but we really dragged them in from DX-ers as far away as Finland.

One disappointment is there was no audio processing at all on the FM. I understand the equipment was brought in when Wheeles was shut down in Libya…We had Gates solid state exciter and final amplifier with a pair of 6146's in it…put out about 50 watts into a four bay circularly polarized antenna up about 125 feet. Because of the mountain top location, of course, it was audible a long ways…even in Massawa. TV had been moved from Channel 8 to Channel 2 because of interference with one of the missions at Stonehouse. We had a Gates 100 watt transmitter and a two bay Batwing antenna up 100 feet. One day the Plate transformer blew in the transmitter, and we had to scrounge one from Tract D transmitter site…It had the proper voltage and more than enough current capacity, but it was too big to fit inside the transmitter cabinet, so we had it sitting on the floor, properly protected form the hands that might have been given a nasty shock. The transmitter and antenna did not match well, however, and turning it up was a real juggling act between getting enough power output and having it broadbanded enough to have decent definition. Color would never have worked!!! There was some serious phase shifting going on. I forget what was in the final of that transmitter, but I know we could not readily get spares, so we watched the tuning closely. The AM could run for weeks with no attention. It ran at a cool kilowatt 24/7…

We did lots of news on both AM and FM in the mornings, and did full financial reports in the afternoon on FM, probably more for the folks downtown than anything else.

The old 250 Gates rig was set up in the PA&E building at the end of the street behind the studio building and was supposed to be a standby, but when we got there, it had not been used for years. There was a vertical whip antenna on the roof of the tin building with a military type antenna tuner that was supposed to match it…but no one took into account that the tuner only worked down to 3 mHz…a couple of us managed to score some big fixed capacitors and a vacuum variable and rebuilt the thing and soon had it working like a champ. As I recall, it had a pair of 810's modulated by a pair of 810's…and those we could get by the dozen! After re-tubing the old beast, it was sounding great. I think it was only really used seriously on the air a couple of times when we took the BC-1 down for maintenance and the one time we had a power failure in the housing area.

The only real pain the place were the Scully 260's and 280's in the place…those things have always been a real bear to keep tensions right and brakes adjusted so they would not spill tape. But it was nice to have two in the stereo production room…we could do some neat spots. The stereo production room had a Gates Solid Statesman stereo console in it and doubled s a live studio for FM when we weren't on automation.