Chapter 3
Preparing for a career
After discharge I moved back to Washington and enrolled at a local community college. I was working on a 2 yr degree in electronics technology that I hoped would be the foundation for an engineering degree. Interest in ham radio quickened and I took the time to learn the Morse code and take the test. I took a part time job at a local ham radio store and worked in the back room fixing radios, installing upgrades and whatever else came up.

At the college, I took some TV production classes and loved the mix of electronics and photography and landed a second part time job at the college TV studio. It was fun learning the nuts and bolts of TV production and a great addition to my goal of a career in broadcasting. Time was split between running a camera, running the switcher as a technical director and working with the TV studio staff planning productions. At one point they asked me to host an on-camera series interviewing dept heads. It was heady stuff.

Engineering prep involved advanced math and calculus and again it became a huge frustration to my dream. I took extra 100 and 200 level math classes to work on my foundations for advanced math and didn't have much success. I just didn't get calculus and differential equations. I decided I was more of a "hands-on" hardware guy and was eager to move ahead with a career in electronics, EE degree or not. My plan was to finish the two yr degree, take the FCC "1st Phone" license test and work as a technician for now. The FCC license permitted you to install, adjust and operate broadcast, radar and communications transmitting equipment.

Another notable part time job during college was as a projectionist at the local theater in Edmonds. I'd had some experience with professional 35mm equipment while attending DeVry in Phoenix and knew my way around large projectors and carbon arc lamps. I had a friend, Dan in one of my classes that worked at a local theater and said he could get me a job. It took a fair amount of skill to be a projectionist as each reel only lasted 20 minutes and you had to switch between two projectors without the audience knowing it.

You also had to manage the pencil-sized carbon arc rods which provided the strong light source. They slowly burned away and were pushed together with a small worm drive but they could run out in the middle of a reel if you weren't careful. It was harrowing at times and you had to be on your toes because the film ran through the projectors at 30ft a second and could break at any time, and did break. You had to be instantly ready to spring to the stop switches before hundreds of feet of film became compressed inside the projector.

The first time the film broke, I watched in horror as the movie screen projected a picture of a frame of film slowly burning a huge brown and yellow hole in the middle. I frantically pulled the film out of the projector and spliced it back together as people began throwing popcorn up at the projection window.

I can laugh now but it wasn't funny then. The splice had to be done correctly using a special tool and glue. If it wasn't done correctly, the next time you ran the film, it would break again and you'd be sweating as the splice went through the projector. Around the same time, I regained that part time volunteer job at KRAB-FM, the non-commercial FM station I had left seven yrs. prior. The station had become larger, more professional and had better studios and offices in an old fire station in downtown Seattle. They were even receiving funds from NPR and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

I ran the control board and announced for a shift a week. At times it became tense as one of the shows was a live group of 4 people discussing current news events in the adjacent studio. The news team leader would hand me a reel of tape with ten segments on it just before airtime. They'd be in the studio next to me and would discuss current news events in a round table format and I'd watch them through a big window. When the leader wanted the tape to play and stop, he'd frantically wave and gesture through the window. He didn't ever leave much time between the segments on the tape and I had to be on top of the tape machine controls or else it'd mess up the program. Our relationship became tenuous at times.

Another duty on my shift was the weekly airing of the Seattle City Council meeting. The radio station had a phone line connection to their PA system and feed the audio to the transmitter. During the meeting, I'd sit and listen and wait for them to begin and adjourn and then switch to the regular station programming.

One time I'd gone to the restroom and came back to the control room only to hear the rustling of chairs and silence and figured they'd adjourned. I picked out a jazz record to fill in the airtime until the next program. I was still listening to the city council audio on one of the monitors and all of the sudden they came back to order. Apparently, they had decided to take a short break while I was in the restroom.

I started sweating because I was now faced with the decision whether to go back to the city council and explain why or ignore it and play jazz. I played jazz! It was easier than to explain and apologize!

The station was always looking for ways to increase listeners and do exciting things. There were even stories of the time when they dropped a piano from a helicopter (and recorded it) back in the sixties. Each announcer was expected to makes a couple of pitches for listeners to join and support the station. So, I decided I'd give away a record. The local radio stations did it and I thought it would be great fun to try doing it myself. I bought some bargain-sale records at the local drug store and brought them with me to my next shift. During one program break, I announced the record give-away to the "third caller".

The problem was that I had failed to tell everyone else at the station that I was going to do this and there were only two or three phone lines. So, I gave this announcement and all the phones started ringing. I gave away the record to the third caller but people from all over the station kept coming into the control room asking "what did you just say?"

As graduation from the community college neared, I took the FCC test for the 1st class radiotelephone license, a "first phone". It had a ton of electronics theory and formulas and took most of a day. Holders of this license could legally install, adjust and repair transmitters, radars and other communications equipment. Since the industry was in the midst of changing from tubes to transistors, you never knew which test you would get, so you had to be fully studied in both.

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