K5JMP - About Me

I hope this doesn't turn into a life's history...

About Me

About K5JMP

Hello for those of you who don't know me..

My name is Mike Perryman...

I kinda grew-up in radio... my dad was a "Chief Engineer" for many small and meduim market stations when I was just a young pup. Something about radio took hold of me at around 9 yrs of age... I think maybe it was when my dad talked me into trying to get into the locker room after a Harlem Globetrotter's Show in College Station, Texas. He said I should take his tape recorder (emblazened with call letters of the station he was the News Director for at the time... WTAW-AM), his press pass (like I really had a full beard at 9 yrs.) and see if I could get in.

Well.. it worked, and I was hooked!

Only a few short years later, I had become his "assistant" (no pay of course for the fun stuff... only cutting the grass at KDOK-AM in Tyler, Texas), for all the "little jobs". I will talk more about that later.

We spent many nights through Junior High School rebuilding, and updating KDOK. New control board for the AM when it got "taken-out" by lighting (man That Collins board sure was cool!!!) Putting in a first-gen Harris MW-1 (yep, that's right, the one that constantly blew diode stacks...) Rebuilding the production room... endless evenings chasing down audio hums, and the like. Those were good times!

The sister station for KDOK was a "Full Class-C FM" KNUE...
While working on the transmitter one night, the "Ole-man" got across some high voltage from a defeated interlock (remnant of a previous engineer) and I was lucky enough to get an important lesson at his expense.... One I will not soon forget! That was 26 yrs ago, I still to this day swear by the "Jesus Wand"... If you don't wave it out of respect, you could meet "him" very quickly.

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My dad sent me an E-Mail with a link to these images tonight.. it inspired me to fill-in this template page. It had been sitting here for months with nothing but the default text.. funny how that works!!

I never was what you would call "COOL" in Junior High... but that was OK. It left a lot of time to cruise around with "Pops" listeng to Pablo Cruise, Little Feat (that was the name of Pop's boat), Clapton, Kansas and Chicago. Either on the way to setup a remote broadcast... Or to tear one down.... Waaay too much great music back then to list them all... and the great part was .. I got all the duplicate promotional albums!! I was in "hog-heaven"... Free music!!! And it was current stuff!!! What more could a teen-ager ask for? ( A turntable of his own... maybe?? ) Foriegner, Boston, Pat Travers... All free for the taking!!!

Then, there was High-School...
"Pops" graduated to AM-Directional Arrays, and my education began...  He became a Broadcast Consultant....  He wasn't just maintaining them, but rather building them from scratch. Construction on KTXZ-AM licensed to West Lake Hills had begun. And the free ride was over. I actually had to sweat now!!! I learned what it meant to dig ditches in the hot Texas summer sun...(repeatedly, because the rain kept filling the back in) to fight the rattle snakes (not for fun anymore), yellow-jackets (irritating little bastards!!!) and "day-laborers"..(also irritating!!)....

We plowed well over 5 miles of #10 copper wire into the ground just for the ground system alone!!!

It's 6:00 AM ... and I'm late to pick-up the day-labor "crew" from the Texas Employment Commission.... then off to school.  Out at 1:00 PM on "work-release" (that was what we called the "Work Education Program")...   Anyway, off to the transmitter site again. Work until dark, then carry the "crew" back to the TEC for evening drop-off. Not a moments peace, and damned little time to rest. A nine tower random spaced array takes a while to build!!! It took most of the summer and all winter!!!! By the way, Austin can get mighty flippin' cold in the winter when you are outside all day...   and sometimes all night. I don't give a damn how warm you dress...

Then the "Tune-up" phase began...  dead of winter, and spending nights lugging test equipment from tower to tower. Lots of repitition here. But, blessed Jesus, no "crew" of day-laborers!!!

Anyway, to make a long story short... all this "messin'" around with medium wave directional has gotten into my blood. I spent a number of years travelling around contracted to larger consulting firms learning the craft.

When the Texas economy went bust in the early 80's I wound up joining the army in search of "three hots, and a cot"..
After completing my tour, I was once again pounding the sidewalks looking for work. I was picked up by a Washington consulting firm, and have made my home there ever since. The owner of the firm got me interested in Amatuer Radio.. most likely in hopes of increasing my knowledge of transmitters.

Not much to tell after that point....

73's
Mike

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