[BC] putting phone calls on the air

[seaberg1@sbcglobal.net]

Barry

Your e-mail prompted me to reach about five feet, open a plastic storage 
container and voila !!! there-in resides a Heathkit hybrid phone patch Model 
HD-15  (must be hi-definition) .  Traditional Heathkit green with gray top 
and sides.  Worked many years at one of our flame-throwers.  Still would 
work for me but phone-patching is pretty much history on ham radio.

Bob -- W3MDM

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Barry Mishkind" <barry at oldradio.com>
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Sunday, September 17, 2006 9:35 AM
Subject: Re: [BC] putting phone calls on the air


> Hi Peter,
>
> Your experience does mirror mine in several aspects.
>
> At 10:55 PM 9/16/2006, Peter Smerdon wrote
>>Recording/airing of phone calls was allowed about 1966-68 provided a short 
>>"pip" was put to line every 15 secs to alert the other party that the call 
>>was being recorded/broadcast. This was done with a telco supplied box 
>>called a "recorder-connector" which was initially the only way to 
>>_legally_ connect external audio equipment to a phone line. The 
>>"recorder-connector" also provided the safety isolation.
>
>         I remember these very well in the same time period.
>         They probably came into use in the early 1960s
>         (or possibly the late 1950s) as this was in a smaller
>         market station - the theory being the tech would
>         have started in the large markets.
>
>>Soon enterprising broadcasters were adapting the tried-and-true telco 
>>hybrid transformer (2-wire to 4-wire, or simplex to duplex)for this task.
>
>         Or ... tap the speaker on the speakerphone,
>         which solved two problems, the caller could
>         hear the host, and the host could "talk over"
>         the other person (caller) - something it seems
>         is encouraged on cable TV shows these days.
>
>         In fact, in Tucson and Phoenix, for example,
>         the speakerphone was the most common
>         method of getting phone audio into a station -
>         even after some of the first hybrids came out.
>
>         Somewhere in the back of my mind, I want
>         to say Heathkit or .. some ham source ... for
>         the first hybrid I used.
>
>>The Major Network used a simpler system based around an early Swedish 
>>speakerphone called the Ouijaphone. They just tapped off the speaker 
>>signal and let the phone do all the work. A recorder-connector bridged the 
>>line to provide the warning pips.
>
>         I could be wrong, but it seems to me that
>         we had a switch to turn the beeps on and off -
>         assuming the jock remembered.  The sense
>         we had was the telco was much more interested
>         in the income from the coupler than any
>         operational legalities.
>
>>Of course this was expensive gear and only used in the on-air studios.
>>There were still the "unofficial" couplers with PTT buttons on the 
>>newsroom phones. This audio was always highly edited, so you could always 
>>say that the missing pips (on the aired audio) was lost in the edits, if 
>>it ever came up.
>
>         Now, what broadcaster would do that?  <ggggg>
>
>         barry
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________________________
> Barry Mishkind     -       Tucson, AZ    -   520-296-3797
>
>
>
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>
>
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