Page created March 13, 2007

My involvement in KUPS (University of Puget Sound) was long before the present KUPS-FM station went on the air.  In 1968 a group of students got permission, but no support, from the administration to put a student-run, campus-limited AM carrier-current station on the air.  We raised what funds we could, and built our own equipment from scratch.  Each dorm had its own carrier-current transmitter that was tied into the electrical system so that it could be picked up within the dorm.   It operated on the then vacant AM frequency of 880. 

While sorting my vast tape library, I stumbled across the following original sign-on for KUPS.  I had no idea until tonight (4-14-07) that I even had this tape.  An odd excitement came over me as I listened to this historical piece of audio.  Here is that first sign on of KUPS in 1968:        KUPS Sign On Audio

It was a small beginning of something that in later years after I graduated grew into the current FM station that is now KUPS.   This was the console I built for that first carrier current station:

This next picture is an interior view of the same console.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of info still on file from the early KUPS days other than what I've already posted, so much of this has to depend on what I remember.

KUPS first went on the air as a carrier-current station in the fall of 1968.    We were given a fairly good sized room on the second floor of the SUB, which served as both studio and office.  In addition to the home-built console, we managed to get some of the local radio stations to donate some used turntables for the records, and we purchased a consumer-grade tape recorder.  With this we were off and running.  

 What I do recall about the beginnings was that I spent most of the summer of '68 between my Junior and Senior years building the console that I have pictured here, and the six 50-watt carrier current transmitters that were placed around the campus in the various dorms and buildings we were hoping to cover.

Lacking a big budget for more sophisticated equipment was somewhat of a problem, because we did not have any good "processing" to give our sound the punch and fullness of a "real" radio station.  But, all things considered, we did pretty well with what we had.

The staff was  small at the time, and we only were able to program live a few hours a day.  At the end of the live programming,  we would start the tape machine to play for about an hour and half of taped programming, and at the end of the tape it would switch to re-broadcasting an FM station (with their permission) from Seattle.

And that was the beginning of what is now KUPS.   I don't know what year they were able to move from the very limited AM system to the FM channel they now have,  I just know it was after I graduated in 1969.   Having visited the station a couple of times in the past years, I'm proud to have been a part in its beginning. 

(Update posted April 15, '07:  It was 1975 when KUPS became a 10 watt educational FM station, and in 1983 they were able to increase their power to the current level of 100 watts.  I'd like to thank Brenden Goetz, current manager of KUPS for providing this information.)

 If anyone has any notes, pictures, or other interesting information from those first years, I'd love to add that to this page as well.

-- Rockwell Smith,  UPS class of '69