From KAL to KALX: The Early Years 1963 – 1968
By: John Grilli BSEE 1968 and Sam Wood BSEE 1968
Introduction
As Engineering students, we were intrigued by the opportunity to use our skills to actually build something. Joining Radio KAL as a volunteer was the start of a rewarding yet time-consuming experience that would complement our academic experience at Cal. The following narrative captures our experiences from an engineer’s perspective. We helped build an unlicensed (but legal) Carrier Current AM Radio station at the University of California Berkeley and make the transition to the first FM radio station, KALX, on the Berkeley campus.
Radio KAL Origin – 1962
Radio KAL was created by two UC Berkeley roommates, Jim Welsh and Marshall Reed in their Unit 2 residence hall room in 1962. They had a vision of building a volunteer, student run, broadcast radio station that could broadcast programs to the university community. The initial audience was limited to Unit 2 Ehrman Hall residents using AM Radio Carrier Current technology. The audience was limited to the residents of Ehrman Hall.
AM Radio Carrier Current Technology
Traditional AM radio broadcasting uses high power (10 – 200 Kilowatt) FCC licensed radio frequency transmitters connected to a large antenna array. The broadcasts can reach AM receivers within hundreds, if not thousands, of miles radius. AM Radio Carrier Current broadcasting uses low power (100 milliwatt) FCC compliant un-licensed radio frequency transmitters coupled to the AC power lines in a building. The broadcast can usually reach AM receivers within 20 feet of a power outlet in the building.
The equipment infrastructure was bare minimum. AM broadcast transmitters and the audio mixing console were hand built by the founders and a few volunteers. The first microphone was borrowed as was the turntable. Aluminum cafeteria trays were used as cost effective chassis material for the vacuum tube technology AM radio frequency transmitters. Through trial and error, the founders determined that one AM radio transmitter was needed on every other floor in each building (9 floors each) to achieve full coverage. As the staff grew, a dorm room was not adequate, and more studio space was needed. Radio KAL volunteers converted two music listening rooms in the Unit 2 basement into a studio booth and control room.
Station programing consisted of music, news, and the Cal home football games. The football game announcers used a volunteer built portable two input remote console to send the program from the stadium to the studio control room. The program audio was sent to the control room on telco leased pair of wires. The remote console included a communication capability directly to the studio control room on the same pair of wires. News broadcasts were sourced via a free UPI short-wave radio service and teletype.
Radio KAL was initially sponsored by the University Chancellor’s Office with an annual budget of $600.
Fall 1963
As a freshman and resident of Unit 1, Sam Wood found Radio KAL and joined the volunteer staff. Radio KAL broadcast coverage was incrementally increased by installing more hand-built AM radio transmitters in each of the other Unit 2 buildings (4 total) and then Unit 1 buildings (4 total). Where possible, Radio KAL volunteers pulled wire into building conduits to connect the AM transmitters to the studio. Where not possible, leased telco lines were used. Sam Wood began building a self-contained telephone system for Radio KAL using donated and scrap yard salvaged PBX equipment.
Spring 1964
Radio KAL was merged with the ASUC Radio Television Theater group that was responsible for recording events and activities on campus and distributing the recordings to other campuses. Radio KAL was assigned office space within the Eshelman (now Moses) Hall ASUC offices. The Radio KAL News department was moved into the Eshelman Hall offices. The Radio KAL broadcasts still originated from the Unit 2 basement studios.
As a result of the merger, Radio KAL gained access to the ASUC Radio Television Theater group’s Dwinelle Hall studios and the Intercampus Audio Network that allowed sharing of programs with other UC campus radio stations. Two Ampex 10″ reel to reel monaural audio tape recorders and several microphones augmented the Radio KAL equipment.
Dwinelle Hall Studio Facility
The Dwinelle Hall studio space was originally constructed by the university to recording studio standards with one large (~20′ x 40′) control room and two smaller (~15′ x 15′) Studio A & B sound isolated rooms with sound proof doors and windows between them. The Radio Television Theater group utilized Studio A & B for their productions and the control room was used for storage.
Summer 1964
Radio KAL takes over the studio space in Dwinelle Hall formerly occupied by ASUC Radio Television Theater group. Radio KAL cleaned out all three rooms to begin the transition.
Construction began on a custom counter in the control room to hold the two deck mounted 10″ and two 7″ tape recorders, two turntables, and the on-air donated broadcast mixer console. Four donated 19 inch equipment racks were also installed in the control room. Studio B became the announce booth with a table and chairs and Studio A initially housed the record and tape library in new custom built shelving units.
Sam Wood completed the self-contained Key Telephone System and connected the Radio KAL studios, news room, and office.
Fall 1964
As a freshman John Grilli found the Radio KAL studio in the basement of Dwinelle Hall and met students working on installation of equipment onto counters and adding audio interconnect wiring. He joined the Radio KAL volunteer staff the next day helping to wire the audio signal patch panel. Radio KAL began broadcasting from the Dwinelle Hall studios and retired the Unit 2 studios.
Donations
In the early days, Radio KAL relied heavily on equipment donations to provide the radio station operation infrastructure. The broadcast console was a RCA 8 input monaural analog console donated from the San Francisco commercial radio station KCBS when they upgraded from vacuum tube to semiconductor technology. Four 19 inch equipment racks and an Audio Compression amplifier were also donated by KCBS. Ampex donated two Ampex 7″ reel to reel tape recorders. The university donated telecom equipment from a PBX telephone system upgrade on campus. All of the studio audio and telecom wiring used cable salvaged from the July 1964 RNC Convention held at the Cow Palace in San Francisco. After the convention, Radio KAL personnel and volunteers participated in the tear down of the temporary cabling resulting in a donation of miles of perfectly good audio and telecom cable.
Spring 1965
Radio KAL expanded AM coverage to the new Unit 3 Residence halls (4 buildings).
The radio station used an audio signal patch panel to connect individual audio sources to destinations. Sam Wood recovered a usable Cross-Bar telephone switch from a scrap yard and designed and built an audio signal switching system. A switch at each audio destination could select any audio source in the studio without use of the patch panel. This eliminated the time to find the source and destination signals on the patch panel and manually connect them. It also reduced wear and tear on the patch panel extending its maintenance interval.
Two significant equipment upgrades occurred. The consumer grade turntables were replaced with “instant start” turntables. This provided the ability to cue a selected track on an album and start it immediately with the flip of a switch. This eliminated the difficult and often unpredictable methods that were previously used. The studio also received two new single reel continuous loop cassette tape players. This replaced the use of a reel to reel tape recorder for short audio segments. Station branding (station ID, promotions, and announcements) was much easier to achieve with these easily played cassettes.
Fall 1965
Radio KAL received a second donated RCA 8 input monaural analog mixing console. This console along with two “instant start” turntables and two single reel continuous loop cassette tape players were installed in Studio A and became the primary on-air studio for broadcasts. The Studio A console could access Studio B and any tape recorder in the control room using remote stop/start controls. This studio addition resolved the conflict with on-air broadcasting and taped program production in the control room.
With the addition of Studio A as a second source for on-air broadcast audio, a method for selecting and switching the sources was needed to eliminate manual patching. Sam Wood designed a failsafe protocol and implemented it in relay logic. The “Drop/Take” system allowed multiple audio sources to share the on-air broadcast bus and transition on and off the bus seamlessly under the failsafe protocol.
Mary Ann Branton joined Radio KAL as the first official volunteer Record Librarian. Previously record management had been an ad-hoc responsibility handled by whomever was around when new records were received. With the record library growing rapidly. it needed to be consistently organized and managed.
Record Library
The record library located in Studio A initially consisted of approximately 200 LP vinyl records obtained through a few donations and mostly record company promotional copies. The collection quickly grew to over 3000 LP vinyl records. Upon receipt, all albums received a stenciled red painted KAL on the album front cover to prevent inventory shrinkage. All records were logged into a database consisting of one 80 column Hollerith (punched) card per album. The 80 characters included a log identification number (genre code + serial number), Album Title, and Performer/Artist Name. The cards were stored in a box that was hand carried to the campus data center for processing. For each new album received, a list with the required information was taken by the record librarian to one of the many Key Punch rooms on campus to create the new Hollerith cards. The new cards were then stored in the card box. Great care was taken in handling the punch cards and card boxes. There was NO backup. Periodically the card boxes were taken to the campus data center and three reports could be created: Albums sorted by Identification number (used by the librarian), Albums sorted by Album Title, and Albums sorted by Performer/Artist. With multiple people using the library, the careless miss-filing of albums became a significant problem, so a color coding system was created to easily identify miss-filed albums. Additional shelving was constructed in Studio B to handle the growing collection.
Radio KAL extended coverage to include the Fernwald-Smyth residence halls using a commercial low power (100 milliwatt) FCC compliant AM Radio Transmitter. The student residence complex of multiple wood framed buildings located on the hill above Dwight Way made a low power AM radio transmitter option possible. A single low power transmitter and long wire antenna was placed in a centrally located building’s crawl space.
Radio KAL moved with the ASUC offices from the old Eshleman Hall to the new Eshleman Hall near the Student Union. The Radio KAL News department stayed in the old building until a news studio was constructed in new building’s office space.
Spring 1966
The radio station equipment installations and infrastructure were completed. Going forward the engineering activity focused on equipment maintenance, volunteer training, programming support, and remote broadcast support. There was also a renewed interest in the FM broadcast license application having failed to obtain UC Regents approval in 1964. With encouraging feedback from the university, we began preparations and assisted the UC Chief Engineer with the FCC license application documentation.
Jim Welsh, Sam Wood and John Grilli applied for and obtained FCC First Class Radiotelephone licenses that were required to operate and maintain FM broadcast equipment at that time. Having that FCC First Class Radiotelephone license qualification, John Grilli was able to obtain summer employment (1966 and 1967) at KGO Radio in San Francisco. This job provided an excellent experience to understand the details of operating an AM and FM broadcast station.
The Radio KAL News studio moved from the old Eshelman Hall to the new Eshelman Hall building.
News Department
The Radio KAL office in Eshleman Hall was updated to include the News Department studio for live news broadcasts. The studio equipment included a commercial four input mixer console, a Uher portable tape recorder, and microphones. The office also included a purchased UPI teletype service giving access to world news events.
Marshall Reed (BA Geology) graduated
Fall 1966
Radio KAL became KALX-FM with the UC Regents approval to apply for a 10 Watt FM broadcasting license. Efforts began to achieve FCC Third Class Radiotelephone Operator licenses for all broadcast operators as was required at the time.
Spring 1967
Installation of a commercial 10 watt FM transmitter and custom designed antenna on the roof of Eshleman Hall began.
KALX-FM was on its way to finally realizing the original vision of two roommates, Jim Welsh and Marshall Reed in 1962.
Sam Wood designed and built a self contained 40 line electronic PBX Telephone System to replace the existing Key Telephone System. The PBX expanded the KALX-FM telecom connectivity to include the studios, news room, office, engineering locations around the campus, and remote broadcasting sites.
Jim Welsh (BSEE) graduated.
Fall 1967
The Radio KAL founders 1962 vision of building a volunteer, student run, broadcast radio station that could broadcast programs to the university community was achieved when KALX-FM broadcasts started in early October 1967.
Spring 1968
Sam Wood (BSEE), John Grilli (BSEE), and Mary Ann Branton Grilli (BA Criminology) graduated.
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Ref: Sam Wood, Jim Welsh and the birth of KALX radio, Magdalene L. Crowley November 2, 2017 UC Berkeley EE & CS News, Sam Wood, Jim Welsh and the birth of KALX radio – EECS at Berkeley
Ref: Berkeley Sounds: The Early Days of KALX, Nate Seltenrich October 31, 2017 UC Berkeley Engineering, Berkeley sounds: The early days of KALX – Berkeley Engineering
Ref: Maker’s Mark: The KALX Origin Story, Nate Seltenrich January 17, 2018 Cal Alumni Association California Magazine, Maker’s Mark: The KALX Origin Story – Cal Alumni Association
