Hi Group,

This discussion brings back a lot of interesting memories for me as 
well.  In particular, periodically through out the history of our 
illustrious Buffalo Bills NFL football team, I used to be able to pick 
up the stadium to studio back up feed when the Bills were playing in 
Rich Stadium--now of days known as Ralph Wilson Stadium--after our late 
owner.

We had a colorful and very emotional broadcaster named Van Miller in 
those days, and during commercial and traffic breaks, he would be 
chatting with the broadcast crew and sometimes even yelling stuff down 
to the crowd or the opposing players.  Some of it was rather off color 
or at the very least rather insulting--and therefore--for snooper types 
like me--quite humorous!

On 3/31/2015 11:07 PM, Jim Gammon wrote:
> Those are interesting recollections Martin.  I remember listening
> to FM public service stuff from around 35 44 MHZ using a tunable
> receiver back in the 60's and 70's.  Car phones could be heard
> all over the place even some long distance ones around 35 MHZ and
> of course the local ones around 152 MHZ.  You could often hear
> PD's FD's and snow plows on the low band VHF frequencies, many
> were using repeaters and you could often hear both sides of the
> QSO when they were using simplex as well.  When my daughter was
> in high school, they used a MARTI unit on 152.  something VHF to
> remote their football games from the stadium to the fm station
> studio at the high school.  It was funny because you could hear
> the remote station on 152 mhz far better than you could hear
> their commercial FM station around the area.  It was also great
> because when the Fm station took breaks for whatever reason, they
> left the mic open at the game and you could often hear the
> commentators talking about different plays and how stupid the
> players were who made a bad play.  Will never forget one guy
> talking about the half time program when he said something like,
> "Now the cheer leaders are down on the field doing their tricks,"
> which made them sound like, well, like they were hookers! Jim
> WA6EKS
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Martin G.  McCormick" <[log in to unmask]
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date sent: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 21:55:47 -0500
> Subject: Re: 25.909 fm?
>
> 	When the bands are full of Sporadic E or F2, no telling
> what you will hear between 25.9 and about 26.5 MHZ.
>
> 	When I got my first general coverage receiver that would
> tune all the way to 34 MHZ, actually 37 MHZ if you counted the
> images at the high end of the dial, it was early 1966 and I
> discovered broadcast links rather quickly.  As many of you have
> probably noticed, narrow-band FM must be slope-detected if your
> receiver does not have an FM detector.  The audio is best when
> slightly mis-tuned.
>
> 	These frequencies aren't used nearly as much as they
> used to be due to the fact that VHF high-band has many
> allocations for IFB's and remote broadcast units as does the
> 450-MHZ band and 900 MHZ range.  None of those frequencies have
> the
> problems of skip encountered in the 25-26 MHZ range.
>
> 	For hams and SWL's, skip is wonderful.  You can sit in
> your house in Oklahoma or Arkansas as I did in the late 60's and
> early seventies and joyfully waste a whole Saturday afternoon
> listening to a live broadcast from the Montana State Fair,
> countless mobile news reports of fires, accidents and you name
> it from towns up and down both coasts.
>
> 	There used to be several radio and television
> engineering nets.  One was around Chicago and another seemed to
> be in Northern California.
>
> 	They put booming signals in to middle America and they
> consisted of station and transmitter engineers shooting trouble
> on their microwave and related links.
>
> 	Back in the sixties, some of those engineering networks
> could control parts of their network remotely with tone signals.
>
> 	One would say, "I'm going to turn on the beam gate."
> You'd hear a pager-like signal and maybe something like, "Is
> that better now?"
>
> 	There would be a reply and they'd leave it alone or try
> something else if it didn't fix the problem.
>
> 	A number of those remote pickup units or IFB's were and
> maybe still are AM.  I remember a remote broadcast from such a
> system in 1967 or 1968.  The transmitters were essentially
> CB-like rigs licensed to operate in the 26.something range.  The
> audio was good but the music was played back at the station and
> the DJ doing the broadcast would key down a few seconds before
> the song or commercial ended so the guy running the board could
> smoothly cut over to him.
>
> 	I was in Hot Springs, Arkansas at the time and the
> remote broadcast was clear as a bell from Santa Barbara,
> California.
>
> 	Nowadays, there is so much illegal free-band activity in
> English and Spanish in AM, SSB and even FM that a station
> engineer would almost have to be a fool to try to use one of
> those frequencies for an on-air link but they are probably okay
> for an IFB feed if you don't mind getting your ears blown up by
> a pirate station somewhere.
>
> 	Definitely give those frequencies a listen periodically
> as there is still a dwindling but interesting batch of signals
> to be heard.
>
> 73 Martin WB5AGZ
>
> Dave Marthouse writes:
>   That station is probably an IFB cue channel.  IFB or interrupted
>   feedback is a channel that is setup to provide a signal from a
> broadcast
>   studio to a reporter in the field who sends live feeds back to
> the
>   station.  In addition to the broadcast you may hear interuptions
> with
>   instructions from the stations master control engineer to the
> talent in
>   the field.
>


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