KLOD

Because of my interest in electronics, when I was 20 I decided to build my own radio station — in my bedroom. Using some familiar tubes and other parts, I built a transmitter of my own design that put out about 7 watts on the AM broadcast band. The antenna was a fine long wire that ran from my bedroom window to the eave and overhead to the tree in our front yard, doubling back to a couple of power poles in back of our house. Alan Coalson (Class of ’64), helped me play 45 RPM records and talk on the air from my bedroom. We called it KLOD — ‘Clod Radio’ — how funny!

We turned it on each afternoon after we got home from work. First we were at 1610, just below the police calls. But some radios couldn't tune up that high since the AM broadcast band ended at 1600 in those days. So I finally ended up setting the transmitter to 1210, a vacant spot — the perfect frequency! We even got requests from some Lynwood kids I knew. What a blast!

However, the signal was a little too strong toward Pales Verdes — where the FCC monitoring station was located. It only took a couple of weeks at 1210 before a man from the FCC on Monday night showed up on my street with a special direction-finder radio inquiring of my neighbors about an illegal radio station. The neighbors were cool, but just before I signed off he discovered the thread-like antenna wire running to our front yard tree from which the signal was radiating. So he knew exactly where we were. Since it was after 10:00 PM, he did not visit us that night, but planned to come at any earlier time. But I had mentioned on that air Monday night just before sign-off that we would not be on the air Tuesday night because we would be at Mutual. So on Wednesday afternoon while I was at work, he knocked on our front door. My mom invited him in, and at his request she brought him back to my bedroom.

There it was — the bootleg KLOD-rig, along with my framed 2nd Class FCC license hanging on the wall, which gave me absolutely no authority to operate this transmitter. When I got home from work, my mom informed me that I had a visitor — from the FCC. Ah-Oh! Well, he was very polite and asked me to explain to him the design of my transmitter. And he informed me of the potential fine of $10,000 per day of violation.  But since I was not advertising anything, he would not recommend a fine. He was actually pretty nice, but he told me not to operate it again or he would confiscate my transmitter and impose a fine. So the KLOD chapter ended - fun while it lasted!