WFUN-AM

You might wonder why on earth would you have studio's way out in the Everglades miles from anywhere. The reason was back then you had to have a new directional transmitter site manned for 1 year. Once the directional was proved stable then it could be remote controlled. So rather than pay people to sit and take readings 24 hours a day, the studio's were at the transmitter site.

The owner that had just recently bought WFUN was fiscally conservative (tight) and many short-cuts were taken. The building was a pre-fab rather than hurricane proof cement block like the old site.
The 7/8" co-ax was some surplus cable with an unknown number, we just assumed it was 50 ohm cable and used it. There was one spot that the outer skin was cut and repaired with electrical tape. All these cables were sunk into the swamp.
He had bought RG-8 to use for sample lines. That's right, sink RG-8 into the swamp. However, turned out that he had made 2 applications for construction. The first was for the antenna system filed early to get the construction permit going. Then at a later date the paperwork was filed for the sampling system. Well, by applying later he missed the cut-off date and was now required to use phase-stabilized heliax sample line. Boy was he mad.

It was a day and night directional with 2 patterns. Five days a week base currents had to be read for both patterns. I did this at evening pattern change, before and right after pattern change. I had a flashlight in one hand and a machete in the other looking a lot like Indiana Jones. Quite often there were rather large snakes on the paths out to the towers. I did not kill them, just chase them back into the swamp.
Because of an engineering shuffle that would have required me to move to Chicago, I left the company shortly after the swamp site went on the air.