JaxRadio.net

JACKSONVILLE RADIO, AUTOMATION, AFVN

By Billy Williams, N4UF

INTRODUCTION

WJAX, JACKSONVILLE'S MUNICIPAL RADIO STATION

INSIDE BASEBALL, WEATHER AND JUDGE SANTORA

TOP FORTY RADIO REVOLUTION

SHRINKING TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES

SEMI-AUTOMATED RADIO

EARLY JACKSONVILLE BROADCAST AUTOMATION

TOMMY TUCKER AND ED BELL

FM RADIO AUTOMATION 9,500 MILES AWAY

FROM SAIGON, LADIES & GENTLEMEN, THE BEAT GOES ON

MICROWAVE TROPOSCATTER DISTRIBUTION

UNDERWATER CABLE AND THE FOLLIES

MOSTLY A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

GATES AUTOMATION

FINAL YEARS OF AMERICAN RADIO IN SAIGON

A WHITE CHRISTMAS AND 105 DEGREES IN APRIL

GATES ON AUTOPILOT

Today, automated programming systems for radio broadcast stations fit inside a closet. Using audio from satellites and computer memory, automated stations are capable of operating for days, weeks and even months with little or no human intervention.

Gone are spacious studio suites and large station staffs. With twelve-in-a-row music sweeps and few breaks, an announcer assembles a six-hour faux-live music program in twenty minutes or less.

But fifty years ago, it was a different scene. Most equipment was mechanical, composed of complicated arrangements of motors, gears, springs, pulleys, levers and belts.

A live master control operator manipulated switches and knobs on a big desktop mixer board to meld various audio sources into a cohesive radio show.

Tape cartridge playback units, turntables, reel-to-reel tape machines and several racks of vinyl records and tapes typically surrounded the master control operator.

A good master control operator kept everything spinning correctly and often doubled as announcer, dj or show host. Radio stations using separate master control operators and announcers generally existed only in larger cities and infrequently in middle-sized markets.

Via www.floridamemory.com

This pre-1940 scene looks northwestward from Main St. Today, Downtown Campus sits off to the left. The two-story WJAX studio building is the red structure between the two towers. I remember it as mostly cream-colored or white. The upper floor included studios and administrative offices. The bottom story was mainly storage space by the 1960s.

Broadcast Place runs at an angle behind the studio building. Hogan's Creek flowed near the edge of Broadcast Place. It was notorious for temporary flooding after heavy rainfall. Broadcast Place was little more than a widened alley from Laura St. to the building.

The main WJAX entrance from Broadcast Place was near the northeast corner of the building. Entering the building led directly to a stairwell rising to the second story entrance to WJAX studios and offices.

The WJAX nerve center, the AM radio master control room, was in the center of the southern end of the building on the top story. The only other exit from the top floor was a fire escape adjacent to the master control room. Obscured by a small tree, it faced the front of this sketch.

WJAX also transmitted, presumably from the lower floor, at this location until the late 1930s when a new transmitter site opened at the Hyde Park Golf Course in west Jacksonville.

One tower remained to be used by various city agencies. The longwire antenna and second tower were removed after the transmitter moved to Hyde Park.

Major interior upgrades in 1940 included a new master control console and an enlarged studio for live orchestras. The studio building was demolished in 1972 after WJAX moved to the waterfront Civic Auditorium.

Other WJAX scenes include a miniature golf course in the grassy foreground area.

WJAX, JACKSONVILLE'S MUNICIPAL RADIO STATION

Fifty years ago, old-line, full-service stations affiliated with national networks rated high among adult listeners. Locally, Jacksonville's municipal radio station, WJAX, pumped out 5,000 watts of amplitude modulation (AM) on 930 kHz from a transmitter site on the Hyde Park golf course in west Jacksonville.

WJAX aired NBC News On The Hour and other NBC programs, frequent local news weather and sports summaries, assorted public affairs programs, city librarians reading or talking about books, announcements about upcoming meetings of civic groups--including NOFARS.

Other non-network programming on WJAX included general announcer chat with roughly a 50/50 mix of vocal and instrumental standards. WJAX didn't play Beatles songs, except for subdued cover or instrumental versions. And they were not timid in telling the audience about their Beatles aversion.

INSIDE BASEBALL, WEATHER AND JUDGE SANTORA

Jacksonville Suns baseball came live from Wolfson Park on WJAX. When the Suns played on the road, WJAX re-created the games in their studio complete with crowd noise and other sound effects.

Sketchy details arrived at 1 Broadcast Place, WJAX's studio location, via long-distance telephone.

A contact at the ballfield called every half inning with a brief summary of each at-bat. Typically, the contact person was a scorekeeper, PA announcer or newspaper reporter at the game who doubled as a WJAX stringer for $25 a game or so. Time was tight and reports were very brief.

The WJAX studio crew included a play-by-play man along with a color commentator. A third person received phone messages and a master control operator mixed in sound effects and produced the Suns broadcasts.

The contact might say "Jones struck out on a 2-2 count; Smith grounded out 6 to 3 with a 2-0 count; Martin walked on 3-2. Wilson homered to left scoring two runs; Harris relieved by Sykes for Asheville; Johnson F-7 on the first pitch."

From the terse message, basic details transcribed by hand onto pre-printed forms were delivered to the two sportscasters in the studio.

Using this sparse data, they could manufacture a half inning that lasted 10 minutes or more. In earlier days, a Western Union telegraph circuit conveyed action reports from ballfield to studio.

Baseball re-creations sometimes transformed monotonous minor league games on Podunkesque ballfields witnessed by 200 paid admissions into mammoth events where legions of screaming fans cheered when a garden variety F-8 flyout became a spectacular, leaping catch against the left-center field wall to steal away a sure home run. (cue crowd noise)

Suns broadcasts began a half hour after the game started in order to build up a buffer of reportable action. But if the contact person was busy or a big inning caused a long gap between calls, that buffer was depleted.

While they waited for the next telephone call, re-creaters creatively stalled for time using long sequences of foul balls, visits to the pitchers mound, broken bats, electrical failures, other equipment problems, manager-umpire rhubarbs and even delays caused by elusive dogs running loose on the field.

Access to volumes of time fillers provided additional cover. Each sportscaster kept a scoresheet which was retained in a spiral notebook for future reference. They also had a plethora of obscure statistics, player trivia, scores of other games and wire service sports copy to fill gaps in the action.

Quick plays could be stretched out to where a sharp 5-4-3 double play lasted a half minute. A simple picked-off-first-base putout might expand into a lengthy mad rundown pursuit.

Immediately prior to the Triple-A Suns International League franchise coming to town in 1962, an abysmal Sally League team, the Jacksonville Jets, resided at Wolfson Park for only one year in 1961.

Going back as early as 1940, the Jacksonville Tars and then the Braves of the Sally League aired games on WJAX. Team owners believed that radio broadcasts of home games discouraged fan attendance. For most years, it was road game re-creations only.

NCAA limited live college football on television. Compared to today, colleges appeared infrequently on telecasts. No satellite-assisted cable systems or ESPN. Fans relied heavily on their team's radio broadcasts to get game details.  WJAX carried the FSU Seminoles and Georgia Bulldogs.

NOAA weather radios were still in the future. A National Weather Service (then simply referred to as the "weather bureau") staff meteorologist delivered a ten-minute daily late-afternoon weather report live over WJAX via remote microphone from old Imeson Airport north of the river on Main St. These weathercasts included detailed descriptions about troughs, ridges, fronts and pressure cells and their movements around the United States. Conveying geographic details to an audience using only sound was rough.

After the new Jacksonville airport opened in the late 1960s, WJAX dropped live broadcasts by meteorologists and relied on their staff announcers to deliver detailed ten-minute weather reports ripped from the the station's NOAA weather teletype.

Another popular WJAX program was Judge John Santora's weekday show. The judge stopped by the station after work to offer a 15-minute candid and colorful monologue summarizing events that day in his courtroom. Judge Santora was a favored radio companion for many during their afternoon commute home.

WJAX carried NBC Monitor on weekends. And Monitor did play the Beatles.

TOP FORTY RADIO REVOLUTION

Starting in the mid 1950s, AM radio broadcast stations playing forty or so contemporary hits with oldies mixed in, along with breaks and chatter after most every song, attracted large audiences, especially among younger listeners.

Fifty years ago, most every large town or city had at least one fulltime AM top 40 music radio station that ranked high in audience measurement ratings and included large numbers of listeners under age 30 or so.

Often that station was limited in power output, as little as 250 watts. Towns were more compact then and good programming trumped low power limits.

At night, spotty local coverage resulted from nulls in radiation patterns produced by directional antenna systems. Undeterred, throngs of teenagers and young adults listened to these noisy fading signals anyway as a testament to the dearth of entertainment alternatives in those times.

Some stations emulated elements of the top 40 presentation to program country music or rhythm and blues. Others aired specialty formats.

Even with the popularity of AM radio, many radio stations were marginal operations financially. Broadcast managers were burdened by substantial labor costs to staff a station whenever it was on the air, an FCC requirement fifty years ago.

SHRINKING TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES

By the late 1950s, technical advances in transistor technology resulted in shrinking sizes and falling prices for AM radio receivers. During the 1960s, consumers increasingly chose pocket-sized units over larger tabletop radios.

In contrast, relatively expensive receivers and poor signal coverage helped keep FM radio audiences small. Daytime listeners were so few that some FM stations waited until late afternoon to sign on.

Before FCC mandated separate programming in the late 1960s, most FM station operators simply duplicated programming from their AM counterparts.

In Jacksonville, only two or three FM stations had measurable audiences. Most car radios were AM-only. FM in cars was rare. I remember airing radio commercials in 1974 that touted $25 converters to add FM reception capability to AM-only car receivers.

SEMI-AUTOMATED RADIO

Semi-automated programming systems operating with minimal human assistance first appeared in Jacksonville during the 1960s. I saw one at Jones College around 1964.

Way up in the Riverton Towers near the old Mathews Bridge tollgates, Jones College stations--on 1220 kHz AM and 96.1 MHz FM--used several large reel-to-reel tape machines to play almost continuous low-key background music and announcements. Students at the college tended the equipment. They occasionally switched between program elements and changed music tapes every few hours.

EARLY JACKSONVILLE BROADCAST AUTOMATION

I saw a first generation set-up Sunday night after the 1971 W4IZ Field Day wrapped up in the Gator Bowl. Assigned to the Army Signal School near Augusta, I was in Jacksonville that weekend to operate the W4IZ CW station.

Another W4IZ FD operator was NOFARS member Jim Free, WA4VUL. He was an engineer at WMBR-AM radio, 1460 KHz, near Beaver St. and Ellis Rd. Jim invited me to stop by WMBR that evening on the way back to Augusta.

Jim was a self-educated broadcast engineer and an innovator. After leaving WMBR, he worked at the Voice of America's Greenville, NC plant and helped maintain an impressive array of high-powered transmitters and monstrous antennas that sent VOA signals all over the globe. Unfortunately, Jim passed away at an early age.

The automation included a bank of large reel-to-reel tape units and tape cartridge machines with rotating carousels.

WMBR-AM played mostly contemporary music without the harder stuff. Live personalities were still big with that type of radio in the early 70s so automation was confined mostly to weekends.

I made my next visit to WMBR-AM four years later when several NOFARS members participated in a roundtable promoting Amateur Radio on Walt Friend's Sunday night talk show. Walt was a renowned Jacksonville talker who worked at several stations and also had a long running TV show on Channel 7, Jax PBS.

By then, Jim Free had moved away and the automation was gone. WMBR's chief engineer was Elton Chick, W4LWP. Rounsaville Broadcasting owned WMBR along with several other stations in Florida and Elton supervised technical operations at these stations.

Broadcast station owners became more enamored with automation and its benefits. During the 1972-1974 period, WPDQ-FM and WJAX-FM acquired automated programmers.

WPDQ-FM transmitted "Solid Gold" from a syndicated programming service that provided large reels of taped music tailored for use on automated systems. Despite its title, Solid Gold was a mix of current pop songs and older hits, some quite obscure.

WPDQ-FM was the second FM station in Jacksonville to feature rock music around the clock. During the summer of 1970, WIVY-FM became the first to turn on the rock music full time. By the mid 1970s, audience surveys indicated stations playing contemporary music on FM were overtaking AM competitors in numbers of listeners.

TOMMY TUCKER AND ED BELL

The automation at city-owned WJAX-FM required an operator to change tapes every six hours or so and also record short newscasts on a tape cartridge which was inserted into a designated slot.

WJAX's Station Manager, a legendary Jacksonville broadcaster named Tommy Tucker, was locked in a feud with Jones College's broadcasting chief, Ed Bell who was W4LLT.

During the 1950s and into the '60s, Tommy was a mainstay on local live television shows. He often appeared on WMBR-TV Channel 4 which later became WJXT. For the first few years, it was the only ballgame in town until UHF channel 36 appeared.

For several more years, channel 4 still was the only TV game in much of northeast Florida. Weak transmitter power, vagaries of UHF propagation, ghost effects around trees and near waterways along with poor performing consumer electronic hardware in those days combined to hamper signal coverage on channel 36.

Most televisions included tuners that only received channels 2 through 13. For reception of higher channels, a set-top converter box or an internal modification to the television was required. Not until the mid 1960s did the FCC require new television sets to receive all TV channels, 2 through 83.

Some may remember Tommy Tucker as "Mr. Fortune" on channel 17's daily "Dialing For Dollars" movie during the late 1960s.

He hosted morning and afternoon drive programs on several local radio stations imitating a duck as his on-air sidekick and playing big band music, show tunes and other similar fare.

For several years, Tommy was the ring announcer at weekly wrestling matches in the Coliseum which usually drew 10,000+ screaming fans egged on by good guys and ogres.

After being hired to head city-owned WJAX AM & FM, Tommy pushed hard to get the city to buy him FM station automation in order to make a run at stealing away some of Ed Bell's large "easy listening" audience.

I forgot who made the system, but the analog time announcement capability was a real wonder. Digital speech was a Star Trek type dream then.

So humans recorded voice announcements for every minute of the day. These short announcements then were dubbed onto two giant tape cartridges, even minutes on one and odd minutes on the other. That works out to around 720 announcements on each tape cartridge.

When the automation system controller was ready to give the time, it fired off one of the two cartridge machines to play "it's x:xx" or a short variation and maybe a few additional words. If not activated, the tape advanced beyond the unused time hack after the next minute began.

A year or two later, WJAX-FM dumped the automation in favor of live programming after making little headway against Ed Bell and Jones College.

More about WJAX and AFVN


FM RADIO AUTOMATION 9,500 MILES AWAY

Several months after seeing Jim's broadcast automation at WMBR-AM, I worked with a top-of-the-line, commercially-built set-up. Really two of them.

One was in Saigon, South Vietnam with an identical unit almost 400 miles upcountry in Danang. These covered the two most populated areas in South Vietnam. In distance and geographic location relating to Florida, Saigon and Danang could represent Miami and Jacksonville respectively.

Gates Radio manufactured these two automated programmers. Each filled a room, about 10 by 20 feet, and fed audio to high-powered FM transmitters elsewhere in the compounds that produced RF on 99.9 MHz. from the American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN). Nearby, huge generators hummed to keep the stations on the air.

Colonels, generals, high ranking civilians and other brass favored the softer music broadcast by AFVN-FM instead of the upbeat contemporary, sometimes raucous, music programs that dominated AFVN-AM.

"From Saigon, Ladies & Gentlemen, the Beat Goes On"

A frequently-heard AFVN-AM "liner" voiced by Sebastian Cabot

After being drafted away by the Army from a daily shift at WJAX, I wound up doing music radio on AFVN-AM starting at the station on Monkey Mountain near Danang then going to network HQ in Saigon, the capital city.

From Saigon for six hours daily, my broadcasts went out over a chain of 50 KW and 10 KW AM transmitters covering South Vietnam from the Mekong Delta at the southern tip of Vietnam to the demilitarized zone bordering North Vietnam.

The Saigon-area transmitter was 50KW on 540 kHz. located in Cat Lo near Vung Tau, a seaside resort area on the South China Sea which was also a popular in-country R&R spot. Its signal strength provided booming coverage over a wide area.

At night, signals reached Australia, India, Indonesia and even Hawaii occasionally. We got a reception report from California at least once. 

Along with other powerful transmitters on several frequencies in the Central Highlands and Danang, over 90% of South Vietnam was within AFVN's beam.

AFVN had a staff of military and civilian broadcast engineers to maintain these far flung detachment sites. Several were also American Amateur Radio operators.

Several AFVN detachments were located near mountaintop Signal Corps sites close to larger towns. These were not huge mountains, maybe 2,000 feet or so elevation. Driving a jeep or truck from ground level up a winding clay hardpan road took 20 minutes or so.

But the added altitude enhanced signal propagation. Some signal sites and AFVN detachments had occasional danger from infiltrators, snipers, rocket and mortar attacks. Other hazards included mines, booby traps, B40 rocket-propelled grenades and exploding taxi cabs.

Collins KWM series transceivers and linear amplifiers tuned to around 7250 kHz provided internal two-way communication capability for AFVN between detachments and Saigon HQ. There was a daily SSB voice net and also old-style mechanical RTTY teletypes to handle written orders and communications. Amateur Radio was not legal in South Vietnam for the most part.

MICROWAVE TROPOSCATTER DISTRIBUTION

Microwave troposcatter equipment which provided countrywide military telephone exchange service and teletype communication also distributed AFVN's AM network master control audio feed from Saigon to detachments for retransmission. Titled the Integrated Wideband Communications System (IWCS), the troposcatter network was designed and constructed by Army Signal Corps units and civilian contractors.

Wideband signified that the system could multiplex hundreds, maybe thousands of voice and data streams simultaneously--then a great accomplishment.

1969 statistics indicate that a million telephone calls and 100,000 messages passed through IWCS each day. IWCS included 86 communications centers and 25 automatic digital terminals. It also provided the communications gateway to the rest of the world.

Before satellite communications became reliable and easily available, troposcatter was a favored mode of moving large volumes of voice and data communications over extended distances. Using powerful transmitters and huge antennas reminiscent of old drive-in theater movie screens, signal hops of 150 miles between manned relay points were possible compared to the usual 30 miles for conventional microwave.

Because of technical limitations though, FM programming from AFVN couldn't be distributed in high-fidelity stereo via troposcatter. Hence, a need for two Gates automations to originate programming from both Danang and Saigon.

UNDERWATER CABLE AND THE FOLLIES

Undersea cable communications capability along with short-wave radio links allowed AFVN's listeners to hear a limited number of live daily programs via California. Paul Harvey News was a popular daily feature though some teeth gnashed when he referred to Vietnam as "Nixon's stupid war." The World Series, NFL and College Football and other sporting events came through live for AFVN broadcast.

The underwater cable provided a two-way link. An AFVN staffer attended the JUSPAO--Joint U.S. Public Affairs Office--daily briefings held in downtown Saigon every weekday around 5PM. The staffer taped these briefings and returned to the station on Hong Thap Tu to feed recorded audio back to the U.S. presumably so that military officials on both ends could stay in sync.

During these briefings, American and Vietnamese military public affairs representatives reported on recent military actions and events to an audience of reporters from radio and television networks, newspaper press people and independent stringers. The briefings were commonly called the "Five O'Clock Follies."

I went to the Follies a couple of times. For years, the briefings were at the Rex Hotel, a premier establishment in central Saigon. It was (and still is) a luxury hotel. During the war the Rex was famous for its rooftop bar.

Some news reporters preferred spending time each day drinking at the Rex and other hangouts in downtown Saigon to being out in the field collecting material first-hand. They kept their stateside bosses happy with columns and news stories rewritten from items and material disseminated at the Follies.

But accuracy of statistics and information provided there was considered by some to be highly suspect and the Follies were viewed with contempt by many reporters.

MOSTLY A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE

Few aural entertainment alternatives existed for Americans in the Vietnam combat zone. A few military owned short wave receivers. Some listened to records and tapes purchased at the PX or sent from home.

But for most, a small AM transistor radio tuned to AFVN was the link to current hit music and to what was happening back in "the world." (U.S.)

American & Allied military, civilian contractors and a huge Asian shadow audience listened to AFVN-AM. Close to three million residents lived in the area near Saigon and the station sound played everywhere.

 

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

Besides producing and announcing a daily music DJ show live on AFVN-AM, my shift also included airing prerecorded music program segments from stateside luminaries including Wolfman Jack and Casey Kasem.

On AM, we rocked to Led Zeppelin, Steppenwolf, Jimi Hendrix, Animals, CCR, Rolling Stones and the like. The Vietnam War had its anthems which generated requests from the troops and these songs played on AFVN-AM. Hits like We Gotta Get Out Of This Place....Magic Carpet Ride....All Along The Watchtower....The Letter and Paint It Black which also were hits in the United States.

Let's not forget Peter Paul & Mary's Leaving on a Jet Plane and yes, Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets, another favorite that produced numerous requests which I honored often.

Also, popular "regional" favorites. Jimmy Cliff's 1970 rendition of Vietnam comes to mind along with Cathy Gregory's After Cambodia and Jaimie Brocket's Talkin' Green Beret New Yellow Hydraulic Banana Teeny Bopper Blues--a challenge to say in one breath.

To country music listeners, Merle Haggard's Okie From Muskogee appealed on multiple levels both to those with pro-war outlooks and others with anti-war sentiments.

For comic relief, AFVN-AM transmitted daily short serials like Chickenman and the Tooth Fairy--Benton Harbor and Newton Snookers respectively.

No, Chickenman was not related to Heathkit.

GATES AUTOMATION

Like Jones College radio in Jacksonville, much of AFVN-FM's automated programming was primarily low-key mush, derisively called "Otis elevator music" by us AM announcers.

The Gates automation included four huge reel-to-reel tape playback units plus two rotating carousels, each containing 24 four-track tape cartridges. There were additional slots where tape cartridges containing priority announcements and information could be plugged in as needed.

The programming unit, tape machines and other associated hardware were mounted in five vertical sections of six-foot tall racks covering most of an entire wall in the room.

AFVN's staff sequenced the various program elements by setting thumbwheel rotary switches. The settings of fifteen or so switches covered one hour of programming and the sequence started over near the top of each hour. During the day, designated operators programmed and monitored the Gates automation. But at night, the AFVN-AM announcer/master control operator on duty also watched over the FM system after the daytime staff left.

Each tape machine sequenced by the Gates controller played one song at a time before the controller module initiated a shift to a different tape machine to vary the music being played on the air.

There was some live, more hip and eclectic FM programming for which the automation was disabled.

During most of my airshifts, the Gates hummed away on FM soothing the VIPs while I blasted out the hits on AM.

Everyone was satisfied.

As the various FM tape machines and sound sources played in sequence, pilot lights on a remote control box indicated the active sound source. A unique pilot light represented each source.

The remote box was in the AM master control room, where I worked, and the Gates itself was fifty feet or so down the hall in its own small room.

If a pilot light stayed lit for more than three minutes or so, the automation probably was hung up causing dead air. Usually, resetting the controller restored pacifying music to AFVN FM. If not, it was possible to manually sequence the tape machines, carousels and other programming hardware remotely from the AM master control room to keep FM music playing.

AFVN-FM also carried five-minute, top-of-the-hour newscasts. The Gates automated set-ups in Saigon and Danang were programmed to include the hourly AM network newscast feed on AFVN-FM.

FINAL YEARS OF AMERICAN RADIO IN SAIGON

By 1972, progress in stabilizing the Thieu administration and South Vietnamese military was minimal at best. Many more years of U.S. participation were still needed to make South Vietnam a viable nation on its own. It was obvious that Vietnam was becoming a bottomless money pit for American dollars.

Vietnamization, with former American responsibilities assumed by the South Vietnamese, seemed the only option short of an expensive long-term U. S. recommittment. Vietnamization success seemed to be unrealistic optimism, not unlike more recent American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The Paris Peace Agreement took effect in early 1973. All AFVN detachments closed. AFVN-AM and TV signed off. AFVN-FM Saigon became the American Radio Service to serve a small residual group of Americans allowed to remain under terms of the peace agremment.

American civilians replaced military broadcasters.  In other areas of South Vietnam where Americans remained, 50-watt Bauer transmitters, equipped with type 6146 power amplifier tubes, rebroadcast the American Radio signal picked up via troposcatter relay.

IWCS provided communications for a peacekeeping force composed of military and civilian personnel from four nations--two communist and two non-communist.

The Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), AFVN's parent organization, became the Defense Attache Office (DAO). It took over the huge MACV complex, once known as Pentagon East, adjacent to Tan Son Nhut Airport in metropolitan Saigon.

The American Radio Service transmitted from the former AFVN compound on Hong Thap Tu in downtown Saigon. It included a staff of four Americans--two announcers, an engineer and station manager Ian Tervet, K6MHQ.

Ian also made numerous contacts operating from XV5AC at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, the only legal Amateur Radio station in South Vietnam until late 1974 when another American affiliated with DAO was issued XV5DA.

Several Vietnamese civilian workers and Gates automation supplemented the station staff. The Vietnamese workers were capable of maintaining and operating the automation without help from the Americans but were not allowed to deliver newscasts or otherwise speak on the air.

After the peace agreement became effective and the American military presence disappeared, an inflexible, inept and corrupt South Vietnamese government was poorly matched against the North Vietnamese and their sympathizers in the south. 

A WHITE CHRISTMAS AND 105 DEGREES IN APRIL

The former AFVN-FM Gates automation system was still in service on April 30, 1975. Officially, American soldiers left several years earlier.

Most Americans in Saigon received the order to evacuate via VHF FM tactical two-way radios. They hurried to designated rooftops or weaved through mobs to reach the American Embassy compound about a half mile south of the radio station.

To help spread the word that it was time to leave and possibly mitigate panic among Vietnamese civilians, American Radio aired a pre-arranged song accompanied with a cryptic announcement.

Chuck Neil, a civilian contract announcer there from early 1973 until the last day, wrote in John Ketwig's And a Hard Rain Fell: A GI's True Story of the War in Vietnam that he programmed the Gates automation to play Tennessee Ernie Ford's version of "White Christmas" as a signal to evacuate along with an announcement that "the temperature in Saigon is 105 degrees and rising." Then followed military band music.

GATES ON AUTOPILOT

Chuck and other staff took the station jeep to the American Embassy where helicopters eventually whisked them away to a ship off the coast.

The next day with Saigon under North Vietnamese control, from the ship Chuck tuned a radio to 99.9 MHz, the American Radio Service and former AFVN-FM channel.

It was still occupied by Gates on autopilot!

Chuck heard his own voice make an announcement and concluded "the generators must have still been operating because we were still broadcasting. And I thought to myself, 'Gee whiz, it's funny they haven't gone to the radio station and shut everything down or blown it up.' Well they didn't want to blow it up, they wanted to keep the equipment."

More of Chuck Neil's account via

http://lde421.blogspot.com/2012/12/chuck-neils-vietnam-dreaming-of-white.html

Frank Snepp also detailed those final days in Decent Interval though he says that the Gates played Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" on the air instead of T. E. Ford.

I favor Chuck Neil's version. He worked at the radio station and other details about the station in his accounts agree with what I remember.



AFVN-AM NETWORK MASTER CONTROL IN SAIGON.

THE DESKTOP GATES DUALUX MIXER BOARD FED NETWORK AUDIO TO A 50 KW AM TRANSMITTER NEAR VUNG TAU AND ALSO TO HIGH-POWERED TRANSMITTERS IN OTHER PARTS OF SOUTH VIETNAM VIA IWCS.

THE AFVN-FM AUTOMATION REMOTE CONTROL BOX SAT ON TOP OF THE RIGHT HALF OF THE GATES DUALUX BOARD.

TO THE RIGHT OF THE AUTOMATION CONTROL BOX WAS A REVOLVING TAPE RACK THAT HELD THE THEN-CURRENT TOP THIRTY "STATESIDE SURVEY" HITS, RECORDED ANNOUNCEMENTS, TOP OF THE HOUR SYSTEM CUES AND IDs, JINGLES, ETC.

IN ADDITION TO CONTROL ROOM AND NEWSCASTER MICROPHONES, SOUND SOURCES FOR AFVN-AM RADIO BROADCASTS INCLUDED TWO TURNTABLES, THREE GATES CRITERION CARTRIDGE TAPE PLAYERS (STACKED ON THE LEFT) WITH REMOTE START AND A PAIR OF AMPEX REEL-TO-REEL TAPE MACHINES. REMOTE STARTS FOR THE REEL-TO-REEL UNITS SAT ON TOP OF THE LEFT SIDE OF THE GATES MIXER BOARD.

LIMITED LIVE PROGRAMMING (SPORTS, NEWS FEATURES) FROM THE U.S. ARRIVED VIA UNDERSEA CABLE AND WAS CONNECTED TO THE GATES CONSOLE.

THE WINDOW GLASS HAD TAPE APPLIED IN A CROSSHATCH PATTERN TO HEDGE AGAINST SHATTERING VIBRATIONS CAUSED BY NEARBY EXPLOSIONS FROM AMMO DUMPS, TAXIS LOADED WITH EXPLOSIVES, ETC.

BEHIND THE GLASS WAS THE AFVN NEWS TANK USED BY REPORTERS TO DELIVER HOURLY RADIO NETWORK NEWS BROADCASTS.



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