Before the Micropower Radio Movement, before the Ramsey FM-10 and Free Radio Berkley, before I really even thought about the term Pirate Radio; There was KSUC.
Those who know me, may know about some of my Micropower Radio movement exploits in the early 1990's, voices through your head @ 88.1MHz in Sonoma County, the FM-10 FAQ, working with Spephen Dunifer on radio transmitter and AMP designs. But few know the original story on how I got into the FM radio station hobby.
Well back in 1986 my buddy Boz and I acquired a FM radio transmitter and a Stereo Generator. The transmitter was a very nice crystal controlled Sparta that was commonly used in College and High School FCC class-D stations. We generated the Stereo input with a Leader LSG-231 stereo signal test generator, not really meant for production but man it sounded good.
Well after a few weeks of playing around with the transmitter we decided it would be pretty cool to start our own radio station. So off to Radio Shack to buy a mixing console, a microphone and some patch cables. We hit the hardware store for some 3/4 inch copper pipe, solder and a torch. We ran into a snag putting together the antenna, no S0-239 connectors at the local radio shack, so on the next trip down to Sonoma County we stopped into HSC in Rohnert Park for the connectors and Coax. Finally after it seemed like a month we had a ragtag studio at Boz's place, a huge copper J-Pole on the roof, and a bunch of music we liberated from the College Radio station (that they would never play), plus some choice bits from LA (I still wish I had my copy of GNR Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide!) and New York (ala Beastie Boys).
Tune up and testing went as good as you could expect, in no time we were on the air with 10 watts of power. We could be heard all over the CSU Chico area and we sounded dam good (well at least our station did).
We decided to call ourselves KSUC, a play on CSUC (i.e. CSU Chico) and play all kind cool music, comedy tapes and pranks like phone calls and people making fun of Robin Wilson. We rolled out in October of 1986 and played 4 nights a week for an hour to 4 at a time. We got quite a little following for a while and got shout outs in the Orion's personal message section. Things went well for a while, but homework and social schedules came to be more important than running a radio station, it was a lot of work! Over the next few months our schedule became ore erratic slowing down to 2 night a week in March of '87. Once Pioneer Days (P-Week!) arrive we abandon the station except for a few other broadcasts to promote the Robin Wilson Bar Cycle and Parade before summer break. By that time the idea of running a radio station had lost its shine and we packed it up and moved to other things like Rockets and TOW wire.
It should be noted, here and now in 2001, that I still have the old Sparta transmitter and I fire it up occasionally (in my Bird wattmeter/Dummy load of course) just to get a scent of the smell it makes when it warms up. That smell takes me back to a place of amazing freedom and good times, where anything was possible. It is good to remember these times, because in the here and now with the complications of family and a job, you can loose sight of how good life really is and it helps you remember that anything is still possible.
Groupies! Cheryl and Gina You Rock!
Big Mike's Condoms one of our only advertisers; Well we didn't really take advertisers, but Big Mike's was the coolest thing going, and we felt that their spot was more of a Public Service Announcement than an ad.
Some of KSUC's Radio Equipment.
FM MicroPower Radio a book I wrote and sold in 1993.
Mycal's MicroPower Radio Page a webpage I ran between 1994 and today.