AFRS Asmara 1972-73

Roland Richter shares his memories:

We were running a Gates BC-1G transmitter with 1 kilowatt into a quarter wave tower with a really good ground system...120 radials quarter wave long...had good processing for the time, The Gates Solid Statesman compressor and limiter at the transmitter and an older Gates Sta Level at the studio with an equalized phone line to the transmitter site. I have a couple air checks from there and one tape that was sent by a DX-er from Finland who picked us up. We were live a lot more than most stations...live from 6am-11, from 1-2, and from 4 to midnight. The AM was top 40 most of the time, with two hours of country. The top 40 had a heavy soul mix in. Weekends were mostly oldies. The FM was automated taped beautiful music except 7-10 pm weeknights when there were specialty shows...classical, folk, oldies, album rock, etc. FM was 200 watts. TV was 100 watts on Channel 2. We were on 3 pm till 1 am weeknights...noon til 2 am on weekends...did half hour of news and weather at 6 and 10 every day and a live kids show on Saturday morning...for a time did a Saturday dance show and a quiz show sort of like College Bowl. I was there 1972-73. The station was actually on before it was an AFRTS affiliate. Kagnew Station was an Army Security Agency site and we had no trouble getting anything we needed! There were 4 am studios including a news room with 2 reel to reels, cart recorder and 4 cart playbacks, FM stereo studio with 2 Scully reel to reels and cart recorder and playback, gates automation system for FM with 4 reel to reels, two carousel cart players and three single play carts...a small and large AM production studio. Control room in AM had Gatesway II, and there were Sold Statesman boards in the smaller studios and in FM control. TV control had a Grass Valley Switcher and a Sparta ten pot audio board...we had Norelco cameras but I can't remember what the film chain was. No tape in TV in those days. We did shoot both film and slides for TV and the post film processor was across the street as part of PAO and they did processing and film editing for us.