The SPARC Museum is often invited to set up displays in malls, other museums, and various special events. We take items from our collection into the community to promote awareness of the history of radio, the part it plays in our culture, and how we are preserving the artifacts of radio. Whenever appropriate, our approach is to include equipment from our broadcast section, setting it up in the manner of a 50s/60s "Broadcast Remote". Radio stations often did these live pickups, sending us live music from dance halls, or spinning records on location from malls and even furniture stores! It was great promotion for the station and the locations involved.
What we do is to transmit our music (at low power) to the radios on display in the area. We also have begun sending the program on a stream to the internet. If it's on a Sunday, the remote stream can actually be broadcast back at the Museum.
Events (with Pictures) on this page (click on the description) - or - Return to the SPARC Broadcast News Page
The Langley Area Mostly British club's car show
The Treefest Broadcast Remote in the CKNW "Crystal Palace"
At Brentwood Mall with the 1950s McCurdy remote mixer board
Same board, but in the Gazebo in Maple Ridge
On the porch of the Mission Museum - using the Collins 212-J1 remote from CKWX
In Mackin House at Maillardville's "Fair in the Square" - with the McCurdy 8-mixer board from CJAV
"The British are coming"! Cars and music, that is. This is an annual show held at Fort Langley - this year on April 25th, 2010. SPARC had two tents - a radio display area, and the remote broadcast table. To be in tune with the many wonderful antique British cars, we featured "British Invasion" music, and played old jingles and clips from the British Pirate Stations of the 60s. For this show, we used a very compact broadcast set-up, using the Collins remote mixer (detailed further in the Mission Museum story on this page).
Here are DJs Peter and Martin at the broadcast table. Peter is interviewing the group "The Fab Fourever", Beatles-revival musicians who were on-site that day.
Go back to 'REMOTES' selections
Treefest is put on by the Riverview Horticultural Society in the Fall. The Riverview Hospital land is home to a huge variety of tree types, making a yearly festival of conducted tree tours, and other horticultural displays and talks, a well-attended occasion. Interestingly, our Museum building is also in the Riverview grounds.
The Treefest organizers always book the EPR event trailer (courtesy of Meridian RV and EPR Financial). Originally, it was designed and owned by CKNW and known as the "Crystal Palace". You may recall seeing it at the PNE and other remote broadcasts. These days, the trailer appears at many other local events, such as the Blue Mountain Music Festival (described elsewhere, and attended by SPARC).
Since Treefest is on a Sunday, it coincides with SPARC's regular opening day, so we are able to originate our Sunday program from the trailer as a true "remote" broadcast, and have it heard on the Museum floor.
When we have the use of the trailer, we use the original CKNW control board, which is still in the trailer. In fact, most of the equipment used during its broadcast days is still in place, either at the operator's desk, or in the rack behind the operator's back (just barely discernible in the exterior picture of the trailer, near the open sliding-window). The major item that's missing is the Onan power generator that, if needed, could run the entire unit, including air conditioning. Besides Treefest, we have done programs from the trailer in a similar manner for the Blue Mountain Music Festival in July.
Thanks to Meridian RV, we always are allowed to spend a couple of days beforehand at their facility, giving some TLC to the equipment. We must take our own "portable AC power" to work at their storage facility, since there is no hydro near the trailer in the lot. Once all circuits are checked or repaired, and switches cleaned, we add our own reel-to-reel and cartridge tape machines to the trailer and set up the levels. Pictured are an Ampex AG-600 and Revox PR-99, plus an ITC triple cart deck. We also supply the monitor-speaker amplifier.
On Treefest morning, Coquitlam Towing donates the trailer-move to the grounds. Next, we move our audio gear into place, run a long power cable, and begin our day's programming. We feed the program up the hill to our SPARC building. Also, the Treefest's shuttle bus does its rounds through the grounds, and the bus radio plays our music (from our low-power FM signal) for the whole day. Treefest is always a great joint event. The pictures show the trailer - notice the CKNW control board still on its desk, the original CKNW electric clock, plus the SPARC gear that we've added.
The board is a McCurdy, and is the same model as donated to SPARC by CJAV (see the pictures on this page for the Mackin House Remote, and also look at "Consoles" on the Studio News page for restoration details on our own McCurdy).
Notice the genuine CKNW sweater.
Go back to 'REMOTES' selections-- Late August, 2002
Pictured is the set-up in Brentwood Town Center in August 2002 for an event that honoured the late broadcaster Jack Cullen for his contribution to the Vancouver radio and music scene. In the 70s, Jack ran a record store in Brentwood Mall, with his own broadcast studio in the rear. In those years, his shows originated in that studio. It was big enought to have a smallish audience of artists and friends as part of the shows. The Northern Electric console he used there is the very one we use now as the museum's master control!
Here's an excellent shot of our "remote", with operator Peter at the controls of our restored McCurdy 1950s remote control board (described in more detail elswhere on this site).
>>> Click on this picture for an equipment close-up, then return with your "Back" button.
The setup here for tape machines used a play-only Revox PR-99, left of the console, and an Ampex AG-440 (with a Jack Cullen 16-inch transcription hanging on the back of it). Aside from microphones, the other source is an ITC triple-deck cartridge machine. Since we have all our material copied to tape or carts, this makes a complete programming set-up without turntables. The large mock "cathedral" radio at the front is really only a playback speaker, made years ago by CKNW for their remotes at the Pacific National Exhibition.
Two other interesting items were on display on the table, seen at the upper right: a Magnecord PT-6 from 1952 (it still has the CKNW "Top-Dog" logo!), and a Magnemite "portable" recorder that had a wind-up motor, such as on an antique Victrola.
Go back to 'REMOTES' selectionsThe Maple Ridge Museum hosted us on August 4th, 2007. That event was the Mayors' Heritage day, held in the Memorial Peace Park. We were located on the Bandstand. As you can see, we had a good sampling of our radios, and an ambitious broadcast operation playing the music.
Left: In the "Gazebo" in Memorial Peace Park. We always get good weather! Right: The operator's position. Our gear here includes the Revox PR-99 (from CFUN) and A-77 (from CJAV, Port Alberni), plus a "Broadcast Electronics" triple-cart deck for the vintage commercials and promos. The board is our McCurdy PE1000 from the 50s (donated by Global TV- thanks, Vic!).
Go back to 'REMOTES' selectionsClick here for more information on Maple Ridge, including the Maple Ridge Museum.
Below, our operating position... This is the first outing for our recently acquired Collins 212-J1 portable remote mixer that once saw service when CKWX was broadcasting the baseball games from Nat Bailey stadium. Feeding it, we have a "Broadcast Electronics" cartridge tape player, and an Ampex AG-600, now in running shape, because we found a new belt for it. The other tape machine is the Revox A-77 acquired from CJAV in Port Alberni. This is the Revox's fourth outing. Also, on the desk, can be seen a wireless mike (ex-CBC) that we use to go out into the crowd for on-the-spot action.
The Collins portable mixer - front panel.
The SPARC Museum has participated several times at the annual Fair In The Square event - over the July long weekend. We have some of our nice old radios from our collection on show. To support the display, we run a 'broadcast remote', transmitting music to our radios that were set up at our outside table, to the sound system for the performance stage between shows, and throughout Mackin House itself.
New, summer 2008 - we were streaming our live program direct to the SPARC Museum building! Our normal opening museum day is Sunday, and all our visitors, including the visitors from 'KidsWorld', could enjoy the live remote. Our connection was via the internet, using a TELUS wireless data card in a laptop. The quality was excellent, and there were no 'hiccups'.
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Here we are in these pictures (from July 2006) in Mackin House. Our "studio" was set up in the pantry, with our 'transmitter' site in a car parked outside. The studio consisted mostly of equipment donated by CJAV, Port Alberni. It was taken out of service when CJAV moved from AM to FM - they built new studios and a new transmitter building, and are now known as "The Peak". SPARC even has their old RCA BTA-1S one-kilowatt transmitter, and it's now restored and fully operational at an off-site location! (No antenna, and no licence.)
The board is a clever little eight-mixer McCurdy from the early 70s. The reel-to-reel is our reliable Revox A-77. The turntable is a Panasonic SP-10 Mk II direct-drive. Now, there's a great broadcast turntable - starts on a dime and stops on a dime - and it's a dream for cueing records, even 78s. In the following years, the turntable gave way to a second tape machine - either an Ampex AG-600, or a Revox PR-99. All of these, including the triple-cart deck, have remote start from the coloured buttons seen on the McCurdy board. The announce mike is an RCA BK-5B.
Go back to 'REMOTES' selections"Remotes" are further explained in the October/2002 Newsletter, archived on the SPARC News page.