WBPZ Technical

Chief Engineer Al Stratmon

In February of 1967, I stared work full time at WPPZ AM FM in Lock Haven, Pa. WBPZ was a Class IV AM on 1230 (1000 watts day/250 watts night) with WBPZ FM (Class A) was on 92.1 Mhz with 3kw. I must say this was a decent place to work and Al Stratmon was a good engineer. The Control Room equipment, when I started was OLD, in all probabilities the original dating back to 1947, however it did work pretty well. The main console was an RCA 8 channel, with both A and B sides. B side was used for cuing and production and of course A side was on air. Support equipment included two old RCA 16" turntables that took about 3 turns to get up to speed and a home brew 45/33 RPM turn table that sat on top of the console. Additional equipment included two spotmaster cart players, a Magnacorder 1023 and a Magnacorder PT6 reel to reel. The most interesting piece of equipment was a Gates Spot Tape machine. This was the technology in between using reel to reel and carts for produced commercials. The unit had 100 tracks up to 90 seconds long on a wide tape belt. Selections were made with a fount mounted pointer. The unit was not without its own "personality" as it was noisy when you had to rewind and you could not play commercials back to back from it. By the time I arrived it was mostly being used for show intro's, Psa's, etc. Usually the tape belt would break at the least opportune times and you would have to re-record all the tracks to the unit. That job fell to me since I had 3 hours of Mutual Network talk and news shows each night. The control room mic was an probably an old EV 674 mic mounted to the console with almost no adjustment. Remote control was from two separate units one was an Gates the other was probably an old RCA. The AM transmitter was located near Lock Haven Hospital and used a mono pole tower, the only one I have ever seen. (I believe is was torn down when Lock Haven Hospital expanded and replaced with a conventional tower). The FM was located to the Southwest of Lock Haven at the former WBPZ TV site. I never saw either transmitter but I am assuming the AM was an RCA and the FM a Gates. Both sounded great on the air as they were fed by balanced dedicated phone lines with a decent processing (I believe a CBS unit) in the control room. One thing the station had was a fantastic patch bay, you could do just about anything with it you could imagine.

The production studio was sparse with a home brew 3 channel mixer, turn table, reel to reel, and cart machine. Most of the DJ's preferred to do their production on the main console since you had a lot more capability.

About mid 1967 the corporation decided to replace the console and turn tables and retire the Spot tape machine. They ordered a new Gatesway II 8 channel console and new 12" gates turntables and an EV 668 microphone again console mounted, (the one thing I hated). I can remember one night after sign off at 1 AM, Al came in and I stayed to help him replace the console. We finished up just about the time Jim Eckert, the morning guy, came in, the last few connections were made while Jim was on the air.

WBPZ carried a lot of sports including Phillies Baseball fed by lease dedicated telephone line, when that system went down the backup was to pick the feed off WRAK FM from Williamsport. That system worked fine as long as everybody remembered to give a warning that ID was coming. If not you could have SEVERAL different station I.D.'s on the air, usually prompting a call from the Program Director asking what the hell you were up to.

I stayed at WBPZ until November of 1967 and I must say they treated me fairly while I was there. Harris Lipez the General Manager was another classic radio station manager, always very professional. I worked for them again briefly in 1971 filling the Saturday overnight after WBPZ had gone 24 hours.