From: newsq@ampex.com (Stan Busby)
Subject: A series I call the AFRS saga.
Originator: wdp@gagme
Organization: Ampex
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 22:56:17 GMT

AFRS means Armed Forces Radio Service.  This organization brought
US broadcasting to soldiers in the field.  They probably still
do.  I will explain how I became part of it.
 
When I was about 16, I earned flight instruction by washing
airplanes and carrying gasoline from a gas station across
US 460 from the airstrip at Algren, VA.  Knowing there was a war
going on, I signed up in the CAP (Civil Air Patrol).  As I
approached 18, even though the war was winding down, I knew I
would be drafted, so I signed up in the Army Air Corps Enlisted
Reserve.  (It became the Air Force later).  I was ER 13182221.
 
By the time I was activated, I was a licensed pilot, ready to go
to pilot or navigator or bombardier school, but these were no
longer in demand, so I wound up in the Philippine Islands, near
Batangas, southeast of Manila, guarding bombs, parachute flares
and the like.  It was pretty dull.  Now not only was I a licensed
pilot, but I held an FCC first-class radiotelephone license.  I
pulled as many strings as a buck-assed private could and got
transferred to the Signal Corps.  It was then housed at what I
think I remember as Nichols field, an airport whose runway was
paved with those metal interlocking plates with 4-inch holes in
them.  I spent a little time there, being careful not to go out
into the civilian neighborhood.  The venereal disease problem was
so great that if you went out for a beer, there was a mandatory
prophylactic session when you came back on base.  A shot of
anti-spirochete gunk up your urethra, and some other stuff rubbed
on your private parts.
 
In due time, I was finally assigned to the Armed Forces Radio
Service, locally spoken of as the AFN, or Armed Forces Network. 
The station was WVTM, Manila.  We were barracked with the
newspaper people, and the Armed Forces Institute folks, who ran a
mostly mail-order do-it-yourself learning deal.
 
WVTM occupied the fifth floor of the Bank of the Philippines
building, just west of the river (the Pasay, I think).  On the
sixth floor were the studios of the chief civilian radio station.
 
The civilian station had just completed a new studio based on the
idea of live-end/dead-end acoustics.  The live end contained the
musicians, and the dead end had the microphone.  The live end had
bulbous rounded plywood knobbies to defeat standing waves.  The
studio sounded like everybody was singing into a set of Jamaican
55 gallon steel drums.
 
Episode 1:
The civilian station signed off at the same time as AFRS, and
usually some of us and some of their staff would repair to a
nearby ice cream parlor for a late snack.  For 35 centavos you
could get a banana split, with three flavors of ice cream.  For
25 centavos, you could buy a rainbow assortment (4 flavors).  So
we all started bringing our own bananas, ordering the rainbow,
laying out the bananas and cheating the proprietor out of at
least 10 centavos ( at that time, 5 cents US).
 
One of the civilian announcers was named Steve and called Stevie. 
He was openly and flagrantly swish, with limp wrist and the whole
thing.  Still, he was accepted by our group without rancor, but
occasionally there was banter.  Example:  After one of the
rainbows, most of us lit up cigarettes.  (Hey....it was Uncle Sam
that gave me my first pack of butts at a Thanksgiving dinner)
One of us offered a cigarette to Stevie and he declined.  Another
of us with something of a leer,  reached in his pocket and got a
cigar and proffered it toward Stevie's face...a cigar, perhaps? 
Stevie replied: "I save myself for bigger things".
 
Episode 2:
More on AFRS station WVTM and the nearby civilian station:
 
WVTM and the civilian station (I can't recall the call sign, but
I think at the time, the Philippines, being a US territory, were
using W and K to start their call signs) shared the same antenna
farm, which I think was west of town.  Downtown electric power
was furnished by powerhouse on a barge, brought over by the US to
help the people of Manila get back up to speed.  (The Japanese
destroyed almost everything of value, and also killed most of the
cows to eat).  It was a biggie, what with hydrogen-cooled
generator and all.  It was either 100KW or 1 megawatt, I don't
remember which.  Anyone outside of downtown supplied their own or
did without.  Our transmitter, for example had its own generator. 
As I remember our chief engineer was a black American civilian,
possibly named Turner, and there was an engineer there, a
Phillipino named Rudy who lived in a barrio on the edge of the
antenna field.  He, or one of the others, ran a length of twisted
pair called field-phone wire from the transmitter building to his
house.  This is the wire that is seven strands, 4 of steel and 3
of copper, or maybe the other way around.  This was to power a
single 25-watt bulb in his tiny home.  But he was a nice guy, and
allowed a neighbor to parallel his line.  But then the neighbor
was a nice guy, too.....and so on, until one night the wire
caught fire, burned, and melted.  Field-phone wire can cut up
your fingers something terrible.
 
Episode 3:
More re WVTM, Manila:
Many radio programs broadcast by AFRS in the Philippines, and
elsewhere in the pacific, were supplied on 33 1/3 RPM, 15 inch
diameter vinyl pressing.  For broadcasts of topical importance,
such as sporting events, news etc, whatever happened in the US
happened in the Philippines in the wee hours of the morning.  We
had dual (or maybe triple) diversity shortwave receivers so we
could record these events on acetate-coated aluminum platters.  I
think the recorders were REK-O-CUT, and a half-hour show took two
of them.  It was tricky to arrange the recording so that the
segway between disk one and disk two could be cued up and proceed
smoothly.  
 
Anyway, on one particular early morning watch, I forgot to make a
recording.  I didn't go to sleep.  It was on the schedule, but I
just plain *forgot* to record it.  IT was a football game.  IT
was not just ANY football game, it was the ARMY-NAVY game.  The
next day there were numerous well-armed military officers looking
for my hide to roast.  This had to be the biggest FU of my whole
career.  The station manager was a civilian and I think he saved
my life.  I was returned to barracks, was caused to level a
volleyball court single-handedly, and was quickly shipped off to
WXLH, on Okinawa, far away and out of harm's way. 
 
Episode 4:
WXLH, post WVTM.......
WXLH was a Hallicrafters transmitter, the one that was part of a
mobile communication truck, whose military designation escapes
me.  It was 350 watts for CW (continuous wave)(keyed), or 250
watts for Amplitude Modulation.  At WXLH, the high-voltage relay
was tied down with some string so that we had 350 watts and
modulation, too.  
 
My first memory of Okinawa was the day of my arrival.  Having
come from a rather laid-back short-sleeved military organization,
I reacted weirdly as I approached the PX and a damned cannon went
off.  I leaped into a nearby ditch.  It turned out that they
fired a formal retreat on Okinawa.  YUK.  
 
Being the new guy, I got the early Sunday morning classical music
DJ slot.  On about the second day, I ran Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano
concerto, which was three disks.  As it turned out, the station
manager, a military person was listening with bated breath for
the the famous buildup of big ten-finger chords at the beginning
of the first movement.  Instead he got the beginning of the third
movement.  OOPS! 
 
The whole operation was in a Quonset hut.  The antenna was a
relatively short vertical wire supported by some sort of wooden
pole.  There was what is called a loading coil (which you can
think of as a curled-up version of the part of the vertical wire
that you couldn't manage) inside the building.  There was a LARGE
insulated feedthrough at the side of the building, connecting to
the vertical wire.  The wire which did the connecting drooped
from the building to the vertical wire.  One day a second
Lieutenant appeared to inspect the installation.  He was not your
first-class kind of FCC guy.   He went outside, looked up at the
vertical wire, observed the slack in the feed line, reached out
and grabbed the feed line (with his bare hand) and shook it.  He
immediately went on sick call.  You would think that anybody in
his right mind would avoid touching anything which emanated from
a fixture which is made of glass and is six inches in diameter,
with a wire coming out of the middle of it.  But then we are a
special sort of person, aren't we?
 
I mustered out of AFRS with an Occupational Specialty number of
8192 (I think).  It means "Entertainment Specialist".  It lumps
me among stand-up comedians, Saxophone players, and the like.
 
I never shot at anybody, but I did get shot at.  It ruins your
whole day.
 
 
 
 
A

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