KSRH, 88.1 FM

KSRH is the student radio station located at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California. I have been associated with this ten watt educational station off and on for about 20 years. The station first went on the air while I was chief engineer of KTIM in San Rafael and the instructor at that time, Bill Pearson, would call for advice. Over the years I have helped them get equipment donated and installed much of it. As you can imagine, keeping equipment at a high school in good shape is a challenge and I really can't spend as much time helping as I would like.

The current instructor is Marianne Melnick, and for the past eight years she has done a outstanding job of getting her students motivated and introducing them to the world of broadcasting. She has several students who have gone on to work in San Francisco radio and more attending colleges and universities studying communications. Not a bad track record.

In January 1998, My good friend Dennis Foote and I rebuilt the main air studio at KSRH. We used alot of equipment donated by KCBS and Alice@97.3 and items from our own collections. Here are some before and after pics of the studio. The carpet and some of the furniture are the same, Marianne can't afford to have that replaced but the equipment is new.

This is the old main air studio. The console was a McMartin B802. This was the main FM air console for KFAC in Los Angeles. After I left KFAC they retired their McMartin consoles and I got a hold of them. One was installed at my former station, KKHI, and the other was given to KSRH. After about 10 years of use by students the console was really on its last legs. The problems were starting to really mount up and spare parts were extremely scarce. The CD players are Sony home units and the turntables are Technics Sl1200MKIIs.

Here is a shot of the new equipment. The console is a Arrakis 5000SC, with 16 input channels. We are only using 12 inputs and we have hidden the other four modules to guard against breakage and to use as parts. The new CD players are Sony CDP3000s with CDS3000 control units. We re-used the Technics turntables and the BeauCart cart machines. The new console sounds wonderful on the air and the kids really like having CD players that they can cue and actually play music the moment you push the start button.

This is another view of the old air studio showing the rack. At this time KSRH was using a Continental Electronics exciter fed by a Inovonics "David" processor. The Continental was a loaner from a local radio station to replace KSRH's Sparta 660 exciter which was suffering from a variety of ailments. I repaired the 660 and it is now on the air. The Sparta was originally located at KFAC and was the exciter for our main transmitter, a Sparta 625. The exciter feeds a two bay antenna located on a tower up on a second story roof of the school.

Here is a shot of the old production room. Not much to look. The old console was a Mackie CR1604. There are two BE Duratrak 90 cart machines that are being moved to the air studio soon. The two Teac reel to reel machines are gone, no one wants to learn to edit I guess. The turntables were Russco Studio Pros, good radio turntables in their day but, the kids kept leaving them in gear and the idlers were almost square. Only one of the Sony CD players is still alive.

I just re-built the production room over the summer of 1999. Still have a few odds and ends to do on it but it is much more user friendly now. A re-conditioned Ramko DC38-5S stereo console is now in use. It is a terribly finicky board and will probably give me some problems over time but it is easier to use than the Mackie mixer. Some re-built ITC Delta cart machines re-placed the BE Duratrak 90 cart machine and the BEs will go into the air studio. The Sony CDP3000 CD players are dying and will have to be re-placed with home units. Only one left for the prod room. Two Technics SL1200 MKIIs, a cassette machine and DBX mic preamp with ART effects processor round out the room.

Some people wonder why I donate my time. There are several reasons, one being that when I started out in my high school radio station, we never had anyone from a "real" radio station come and help us out. This is not to say that we were not welcome at local stations to hang out and learn, but no one came and put in time at our studios. I get a kick out of helping the students have a good enviroment to learn in and it gives me a chance to give a little of my experience to future broadcasters.

Soapbox time. If you have a local school with a student radio station, I urge you to see if there is someway you can help out. I think you will find it a rewarding experience.

Updated 9/10/99