Keith taught me lots and lots of things too. One I remember to this day is: “The best ad libs were written down first.” Shoosh, don’t tell people that one.

The other impromptu outside broadcast was triggered by a failure. Like most AM stations, 5UV’s transmitter was located in a swamp rather than on a tall hill. I don’t have time to explain why. Anyway, a trench digger cut the cable to the transmitter. Pre-microwave days, kinda.

My on-air shift was next, the drive-time show. So to keep the station on air, Rick Palmer grabbed me and a little equipment, and we drove out to Dry Creek and into the swamp to plug directly into the transmitter itself.

We had a small 4-channel mixer, one mic (Electro-Voice 635A since you asked) and a long cable, a cart machine for the idents and promos, a turntable and a box of records, and a Nagra IV-S reel-to-reel tape machine (pictured) to play back the pre-recorded bits.

It was a clear evening, so we just set everything up outside the transmitter hut (which was hot and stuffy) on the upturned milk crates we’d thrown the equipment into. This was in the days before mobile phones so we had zero contact with the outside world.