KCAL-FM AM/FM
96.7 MHz
Redlands (San Bernardino), CA
 

I Was There:
1986

Station Information:
Freq: 96.7 MHz
Power: 1,750 Watts ERP
Height/DA: 348' AAT, 3046' AMSL
Class: A
City Of License: Redlands, CA
TX Site: Cloudland
Format: Classic Rock

Owner: SBC Broadcasting, div. of Anaheim Broadcasting Corp. (Tim Sullivan, President)
GM: Jeff Park
CE: Paul Sakrison
PD:
SM: Jeff Park
Engineers: Solo
Talent:
Sales Geeks:
Vehicles:


KCAL-FM Microwave Rack
located in Program Director's office for security reasons. A second rack had not arrived at this time.

 KCAL-FM was using a Continental 10-kW transmitter into a single-bay ERI superpower antenna. Cloudland, its transmitter site is located just west of Hwy 18 on the way up to Lake Arrowhead. It gets VERY WINDY up there. The door had a rope attached to hold on to so you don't get blown off the hill. The perimeter fence was bent over about 60 degrees from the force of the wind. Backup transmitter was a dead McMartin 3 kW (on a good day)
 

The Main KCAL-FM Transmitter
Continental 10kW


STL Equipment Rack and McMartin 3KW Transmitter
Moseley PCL-505 STL receivers, TRC-15 Remote Control and McMartian. It was not in good shape.


Main Antenna
Connected to the 10kW Continental. There was also a 2-bay below this hooked up to the McMartin rig.

These pictures are fuzzy because they were grabbed from video footage I shot while being inundated by RFI. This site would not pass today's RFR standards.
I'm really glad I was still able to have kids...
While I was Chief Engineer at KEZY, Anaheim, in 1986, the owners bought KCAL-FM, breaking the FM from the AM. I designed new studios and offices for the location they had to move to after the split. Moving them out of the old KCAL-AM studios way out in the middle of nowhere. I took care of it for three months, while working on some kind of salary increase to cover my additional responsibilites and the expense of the 120-mile round trip.

Tim Sullivan couldn't see why I should get an extra $500/month for these additional duties. So he hired someone else for $500/month to be on call and I stuck to KEZY for a few more months until going back to Astor Broadcast Group fulltime as VP/ Engineering...

Anaheim Broadcasting petitioned for and benefitted from an FCC Rule change that allowed the same Call Letters to be owned by different licensees for each service (AM/FM/TV), so they could keep the established KCAL-FM mark. Subsequently, the Call Letters were also taken by KHJ-TV, Channel 9 in Los Angeles, becoming KCAL-TV.