[SBE] Broadcast Degree program

[a9xw at cs.com]

I agree mostly with Mike's comments.  I have often written, the best education is one you provide to yourself. I started out making simple radios (oatmeal box coils with razor blade safety pin, Galena crystal, etc) around age 5 from library books and later all kinds of stuff from Geiger counters to receiver and transmitter projects in Electronics Illustrated and other magazines (Pop Tronics WPE9JEW was  my SWL call).  I spent nearly all of my hard earned money on parts, test equipment and other stuff, later worked at Olson Electronics where most of my paycheck (about $100 a week with minimum wage at $1.10 plus commissions) and Allied Radio and Heath Kit. I went to DeVry and graduated from their 2 yr course completed in about 4 months. It took me a year to pay the tuition and actually graduate. I had been run over by a car in my senior year of HS, graduated in the hospital, and did DeVry at home with a ankle to hip cast. One of the first practical lessons was to solder a number of wires.  I needed no help with that having done thousands prior. Course material included building a FET VOM, a scope and other items useful after graduation. With my 1966 minted FCC license I began repairing 2-way radios, and other stuff before heading off to college. In January 1967 I got vaccinated by WSUW FM Whitewater and soon got a job at WFAW AM-FM in Ft Atkinson. The rest as they say, is history. These opportunities do not exist today. I started early with SMD's (screw mounted devices) tubes, 1N34, CK721 CK722, 2N34 etc. When Germanium was replaced by silicon, there was a build it yourself article for an audio console in a magazine, so I built one. When done the modules worked fine and I added a 2N3055 regulated supply. I knew to drop the trap door to get the Mercury vapor rectifiers to start on the 50 KW Westinghouse FM transmitter. Got my ham license in 1969, worked my way to Extra. 
 
Today its a different world. IC's programs with no info, reboot, figure out what is in the black box (remember that in Pop Tronics?) from what it was supposed to do and figure out from there what was wrong or not and how to make it work. 
 
While some aspects remain, engineering today is often directed from group HQ and I read an ad for a job for CE that included welding broken chairs. Well I can solder coax and cooling pipe and figure out water chemistry but welding is not in my resume. I had to learn computer languages, networking, DOS, Windows, and other geeky stuff to deal with the unreliable stuff built on PC based boxes with buggy programs and parts that crapped out in a few months or a couple years vs the 1966 GVG 900 series hardware that still works in my garage that has never failed.  Often today its replace the box or board, not a wire wound resistor I made at Lectrohm in 1963 shipped from RCA Camden to fix an old CCA.  I still know how to load and lube a broadcast Cart from McCurdy or BE, straighten the capstan shaft on a multi deck machine and replace the bearings and razor blade splice 1/4" to 2" tape audio or video. Today that is nothing more than an edit program for $99 or less and a home PC, laptop or cloud.  
 
Yep, we still replace parts if it has any, find distortion from a linear IC chip that still works but has gone nuts inside itself, but we also do budgets, planning, work on contracts, climb towers, hold the Jock's hand when he screws up the electronic play list, replace the batteries in the self flushing toilet, change the air filters, and cuss at the utility company every time the power goes out, with or without a generator backup. We are the guys that climb up a mountain in a 4x4, or VW bug, Skidoo, or chopper in to replace that darn fuse, reset a mechanical breaker, replace a power tube, or tower light. We'll thump a guy wire to see if we get the right oscillation rate, mow the weeds, and with no bathroom at the transmitter site, make do with a plastic bag or corn field. As the T shirt reads, "Do you really want to know what was wrong with it or do you just want me to fix it?"  
 
Then again the AM tower was taken down by vandals, rust or a storm, and we retune for emergency Omni with our trusty AM 1 bridge and base current meter, figure out how to broadband the phasor to pass AM stereo without getting nothing but distortion in the nulls, run a radial to check propagation, and run a POP to make sure it all works according to FCC regs, gets the EAS EBS Conelrad signals logged, The FM antenna blew off the tower and landed on the roof and park, or the pan shaped power divider on the Jampro had an N connector rip off and let water into the coax for years because the former chief never check the line and when the VSWR kep tripping, drained out gallons of water from the horizontal run that only didn't get into the transmitter because of the gas barrier at the LPF. 
 
We made jock's sound "good" by making a tape loop reverb, or a spring or plate reverb, now replaced by some digital effects box with 9000 electronic handles and a program that will make anything sound like anything else. We did tape delay with a loop between two machines, even Quad's for video; kept the tractors and Ferris wheels from spitting out little boxes of tape, and sat in the middle of a self supporting 1000' tower in a thunderstorm as lightning hit the tower making the hair on our arms bristle feeling the tower sway as the little "give" in the bolts reached the end of travel then went back the other way. 
 
Yup, I think we need a Masters of Broadcast Engineering degree program, but I am not sure anyone would want to take a 10 year course for a job that today often pays little, has lots of hazards, get abused, unappreciated, and treated like the local backyard mechanic. But I'm willing to be a Professor again.  
 
Henry   SBE Older than Dirt but still cracking rocks


 

 
 
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