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I found out about a job opening at WHOK via the grapevine and called the general manager Stan
Robinson about the open engineering position. I met with him and the owner of the station Bill France at
a restaurant where I was offered the chief engineer's job. I gave a two week notice at WBNS
and went to the radio station to begin working as their chief engineer. When I arrived at the station and announced to the receptionist that I was the new chief engineer, she promptly told me they already had a chief engineer. I asked to see the station manager Stan Robinson, who had me sit in the lobby while he found Charlie Houston the current chief engineer, to tell him he was being replaced that day. For me it was very embarrassing to begin a job in this way. Charlie had been with the station since 1948, and had put the station on the air from the beginning and, in my opinion, he deserved better treatment. It wasn't long after working there that I realized that a chief engineer at a radio station was very different than being a chief engineer of a TV station. As a radio chief engineer, I was not only responsible for all the equipment maintenance but for any and every dirty job no one else wanted to do, including unclogging toilets. I thought I'd share a story or two while working at WHOK. One night I came to the station and found the DJ Tim Ackers who used the air name of Dean Jeffers crying out for help and wanting to go the hospital. I called 911 and was told the radio station was out of the city of Lancaster and they couldn't respond, but when I mentioned it was Dean Jeffers who needed help, they said they'd be right there. I rode to the hospital in the ambulance and when arriving at the hospital, and as they took Dean away, the hospital staff asked me for more information. When I mentioned his name was Tim Ackers, boy did I get the dirty looks from the EMS people, who just didn't understand real names and air names. After getting home late one night, I was called back to the station due to some equipment problems they were having. When I arrived the DJ mentioned the FM transmitter kept going off so he taped the transmitter on button down so it would keep working. When I walked into the transmitter building there was a blue flame coming from the top of the transmitter. I took local control and shut it off. When I looked around outside the whole building was covered with black webbing which turned out to be the heliax coating from the three inch RF transmission line that had burned in half. The line had separated about 30 feet from the ground. What a night that turned out to be. |
