It just doesn’t have the same ring as Disk Jockey or DJ. However, that would be an apt description of the person who plays the hits on most radio stations these days.
It is mostly just drag and drop the next element into the play deck if anything needs to be done at all.
Technics SP-15 Turntable
I remember when DJs actually jockeyed disks, it was a sight to behold. Back in the day when everything was on vinyl except the commercials, which were on the cart, the DJ had his or her hands full. Most of the songs were in the 2:30 to 3-minute range, so while the song was playing, the next song had to be cued up on the platter, the old song needed to be put back into its sleeve and shelved (most of the time), check the log to see what was on deck, pull the next commercial stop set, answer the phone and god forbid if the Program Director called on the hotline and it rang more than 3 times. And hopefully, the head wasn’t too far away, that coffee went somewhere, after all. While all that is going on, timing, audience interaction, hitting the post, and sounding fun. In spite of what Howard Stern says, it was not easy.
Today, of course, if there is even a person in the studio, they may glance up at the computer screen every now and then to see when the next time they need to talk. Otherwise, they would be engaged in talking on the phone with their girlfriend, texting, surfing the internet, or watching a baseball game on TV.
One of the unfortunate signs of the times is the increased theft of valuable materials. Copper, while not as expensive as it once was, still fetches a fair amount at the scrap dealer. One local telephone company has been having a difficult time keeping its aerial cables intact in certain areas. For radio stations, the situation is compounded by remote transmitter sites with lots of copper transmission lines and buried ground radials around AM towers. Reduced staffing levels also mean that the weekly trip to the transmitter site is now every two weeks or perhaps once a month or even less.
Sites that are not visited or monitored very often are prime targets for copper theft. Forget asking the local constabulary to patrol more often, the few times I tried that I was met with a blank stare.
A few common sense type things that I have learned over the years may keep your site intact:
Keep up appearances. A neglected transmitter site is more likely to attract the wrong type of attention from the wrong type of people. Clean up any rubbish, dead equipment, keep the weeds and trees cut down, etc. If a site looks well tended and is often visited, a thief may think twice about lifting valuable metals.
Along with #1, keep things buttoned up. Secure all transmission lines to ice bridges, remove any deadlines, etc. If there are ground radials poking out bury them, same with ground screens, copper straps, etc. Out of sight, out of mind, leaving this stuff exposed is asking for somebody to come along and give a tug.
Fences and locks. Towers are required to be fenced and locked to prevent electric shock hazards. It is also a good idea to fence the building, generator, and fuel tank if possible.
Post all sorts of warning signs, RF warning, high voltage, no trespassing, under video surveillance, pretty much anything to deter trespassing and vandalism.
Add video cameras with a video recording device since most theft occurs during non-working hours. Last year, the company I used to work for traded a video surveillance system for the studio location.
Compensate a neighbor to keep an eye on the place and call you if they see any suspicious activity. It doesn’t even have to be money, I once worked out a deal with a neighbor for some T-shirts and CDs. That was the best alarm system we ever had.
In the long run, keeping all the copper parts where they belong is a great way to avoid those annoying “the station is off the air” phone calls not to mention the expense of replacing damaged transmission and ground systems.
On this, the 98th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, some radio history is in order. Before broadcast stations, radio was mainly used by ships at sea sending messages in Morse Code to coastal radio stations. These messages could be routine; we are on schedule, we are carrying such and such cargo, request port clearance, etc. They could also be urgent; the ship is sinking, we need medical advice, etc.
RMS Titanic, April 10, 1912
Most of these early radio stations were owned by Marconi Company, which later became RCA. One of the first Marconi Stations was in Wellfleet Cape Cod, the original call sign was MCC (for Marconi Cape Cod) later changed to WCC.
On April 14th about 11:45 pm, the Titanic struck an ice burg and sank about two and a half hours later. The RMS Titanic call sign MGY was equipped with a radio transmitter at a time when ships were not required to be. Sadly, the finer details of distress procedures for radio-equipped ships had not been worked out. After this incident, radio distress procedures were codified and the SOS evolved into an internationally recognized distress signal.
On the night the ship sank, the Marconi employed radiooperators were sending routine traffic to Cape Race, Newfoundland radio. Because the radio apparatus used spark gap transmitters and crystal radio receivers, interference from other ship stations often caused problems. Earlier in the evening, a Titanic radio operator had strongly rebuked the operator from the closest ship, the SS Californian, telling him to “Shut up, shut up, I am busy; I am working Cape Race.” At about 11 pm the SS Californian operator retired for the evening and the Californian never received the distress call. Sadly, this incident probably led to the high loss of life because the Californian was just over the horizon to the west and would have likely been able to rescue many of the passengers before the Titanic sank.
Coast Guard radioman Jeffrey Herman has a good SOS story from the late 70s. Being stationed in Hawaii, he was on duty late one night at Coast Guard Radio Station Honolulu, call sign NMO.
John Davies, the radio operator on board the Eriskay also has a story about receiving an SOS while at sea. Fortunately, that one turns out a little better.
I remember one night, hearing an automated SOS on the international lifeboat frequency (8364 kHz). I imagined some poor guy cranking the lifeboat radio not knowing if it was going out or not (I was right, it turns out). We heard him on Guam and DF’d him to off the coast near Australia. We notified the Australian authorities, who diverted a nearby ship that picked 26 survivors up the next morning.
I am sure there a quite a few old CW (morse code) radio operators out there that have similar stories. By the 1990s most maritime communications had moved to INMARSAT, and CW and coastal radio stations became redundant.
The end of commercial Morse Code in the US came on July 13, 1999, when KFS, the last coastal radio station, signed off. Most of them have been scrapped and the valuable coastal land sold off to developers.
The development of broadcast radio was a direct offshoot of these radio stations. AM radio, or rather AM technology was developed by ATT as an adjunct for their long-distance system. ATT used High Frequency (HF) voice circuits to span oceans for several decades, up to about the mid-1960s. Amateur radio operators began fooling around with voice broadcasting, using ATT’s patented AM technology around 1915 or so, after tube-type transmitters and receivers became available. Somebody realized that money could be made with the new-fangled radio contraption and commercial broadcasting was born.
If you have a shortwave radio and are feeling a little bored lately, late (or early depending on your perspective) at night, tune around to 4625 kHz AM. If the propagation is right, you might hear a peculiar buzzing noise. That is a Russian radio broadcast station, call sign UVB-76, it has been nicknamed “The Buzzer.”
This shortwave radio station has been on the air since sometime in early 1982. Its exact purpose is somewhat of a mystery. It transmits a 0.8-second buzzing sound followed by 1 to 1.3 seconds of silence 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The station’s transmitter is located about 25 miles northwest of Moscow (56° 4′ 58″ N, 37° 5′ 22″ E) in an area thought to be near the communication hub of the General Staff of the Russian Army. It transmits with a carrier power of 10KW into a horizontal Dipole antenna about 65 feet high.
Dipole antenna for UVB76 transmitter
There are only 3-4 times during its almost thirty-year history that voices were transmitted on the station. They said (from Wikipedia):
At 21:58 GMT on December 24, 1997, the buzzing abruptly stopped to be replaced by a short series of beeps, and a male voice speaking Russian announced: “Ya — UVB-76. 18008. BROMAL: Boris, Roman, Olga, Mikhail, Anna, Larisa. 742, 799, 14.” The same message was repeated several times before the beep sequence repeated and the buzzer resumed.
A similar voice message was broadcast on September 12, 2002, but with extreme distortion (possibly as a result of the source being too close to the microphone) that rendered comprehension very difficult. This second voice broadcast has been partially translated as “UVB-76, UVB-76. 62691 Izafet 3693 8270.”
A third voice message was broadcast on February 21, 2006 at 7:57 GMT. Again, the speaking voice was highly distorted, but the message’s content translates as: “75-59-75-59. 39-52-53-58. 5-5-2-5. Konstantin-1-9-0-9-0-8-9-8-Tatiana-Oksana-Anna-Elena-Pavel-Schuka. Konstantin 8-4. 9-7-5-5-9-Tatiana. Anna Larisa Uliyana-9-4-1-4-3-4-8.
There seem to be two semi-official explanations; One website claims the station is meant to “Transmit orders to the military units and recruitment centers of the Moscow military district,” and the other is the constant buzzer is the High-frequency Doppler method for ionosphere research. Both of these seem implausible since the station was on the air for fifteen years before any voice transmissions and the station’s location is not near any known research facilities.
Naturally, there is a youtube video of it:
Other possible uses include some type of dead hand system. Is Russian, this is called Perimetr or “Hand from the coffin.” It is an automatic or semi-automatic launching system for nuclear ballistic missiles. In theory, if an incoming first strike is detected, the system is turned on and it waits for input from the military leadership. If none is received, as would be the case if all military and civilian leadership were killed in the first strike (as the so-called “decapitation strike,” or more recently “shock and awe”), then the surviving nuclear weapons would be launched automatically in a retaliatory strike.
Think of something like 4 8 15 16 23 42
Is this the true purpose of The Buzzer? The only ones who really know are the Russians and they, of course, are not saying anything.
If this radio station is used in a system like that, I would imagine that there are radio receivers tuned to 4625 kHz at Russian military installations. That frequency likely propagates well to most of the Russian landmass. In addition to an automated launching system, it might also be used as a “communication of last resort” type system. If the buzzing stops, an alarm sounds, and the speaker un-mutes. This would be a good reason to use AM vice some other type of pulsed or digital modulation scheme, which would likely perform better for an automated system.
If that is the case, then we each should say a little prayer every night that UVB-76 aka “The Buzzer” keeps on buzzing.
