XERF: A Blast From The Past

XERF: A Blast From The Past

[@ideasforlife11]

This engineer, Mike Venditti, was my father! I'm so grateful for this video. He passed away in 1998, when I was just 15, and I don't have any other video of him. I was actually born in Del Rio while he was working on XERF. ❤

[@TheRenoLuna]

Hello Mike, Contact me at [e-mail].

[@poetsdreamsatc]

@ideasforlife11 I’m so sorry for your loss. Your dad seemed so cool and so brilliant to take on that challenge of getting the radio station back on the air. I imagine your dad was fun and helpful for the old science projects we had to do. Your dad left an amazing legacy and played an important part of radio history. What a fascinating story! Here’s to your dad. 🥂🎶 Again I’m very sorry for your loss. 🙏🏼❤️

[@johnpinckney4979]

Your dad was a legendary engineer who is much missed! My condolences...

[@markg6328]

Sorry for your loss. So amazing that he was able to get the station on again at that time!

[@pata299]

True genius. He was an inspiration to all us radio engineers!

[@oldsalt7534]

I was born and raised in Del Rio. I graduated high school with Paul Kallinger's son. I remember those days so well. RIP Wolfman.

[@timford3599]

Mike Venditti was more than a "Super Tweaker" or super electrical engineer. To have been able to think this complex 250K/Watt transmitter thru though and get it up and broadcasting in only 40 days, his nick-name should have been "Electronic Magician."

[@greghowe9550]

I don't know how many people out there were around in the 60's & 70's when the Wolfman was in his prime but I was. He used to call people up in the morning and ask them if they were naked !!!! On Sundays there was a program on that was religious. Sister Margret XERF was a riot to listen to.

[@donaldiarussi309]

it is amazing how creative and ingenius this man was, wolfman jack was. I met him in 1994 in Washington DC at a jazz club

[@goodluck5642]

Very cool

[@alwolf6491]

Wolfman Jack let me imitate him on the radio one time. I was "pretty good for a ten year old". He had me say the F word on air then ran behind me to protect him from my dad who was furious. He said he didn't know which one of us to be more angry at. :D

[@bqkmg2037]

Airwaves from Baja California to..XERF..LOS ANGELES...best late night oldies but goodies playing 50s n 60s music ..during the 70s n 80s.

[@user-vj2bp7ib4t]

Wow. What a time to be alive back then. Makes me want to go back in time even more.

[@jbncnow]

I grew up in Del Rio Texas from 1969 to 1988 it was a wonderful place to grow up

[@petesessa2041]

Michael Venditti was my cousin. (His Mom and my Mom were sisters) When my family would go and visit Any Happy and Uncle Mike just outside of Burlington, NJ. Michael would drive me around in his old Jaguar and we'd listen to music broadcasting from a station he built in his boyhood home. His preference for music was Do-Op from the 50's.

[@ideasforlife11]

I love this! I suppose that makes us second cousins?

[@bendover7089]

XERF used to lay down a flamethrower signal in Chicago; The Wolfman used to give the crew at WLS a run for it's money!

[@dalehall2067]

All we had in this country was 50,000 W of power. But it popped out a bunch. I live in Oklahoma City and KOMA Went to Australia also. But 250,000 W wow wow and then asked you already had 100,000 at the other end of America in Tijuana

[@NickG123]

True! Although there is a rumor that at night WLW (Ohio) would take advantage of their old 500,000 watt transmitter! I have heard XERF as far as NY, giving even 77 WABC some competition!

[@juans6639]

I was born and raised in Del Rio. Graduated from Del Rio High School in 1965. He used to broadcast from the sixth floor of what used to be the old Roswell Hotel in downtown Del Rio, TX. Remember him very well. R.I.P. Wolfman Jack.

[@johnmerrifield7532]

In my early days of rock and roll and driving a car around 1960 it wasn't worth drink 400 miles from Dallas to via cuna without listening to wolfman Jack,he really made the badlands howl with his own original style in the wee hours of the morning driving thru Texas under a full moon.

[@jeblack3407]

Wolfman sending the office girl out for cheeseburgers, smoking weed, and giving us Rock n Roll.

[@anthonykeaveny8860]

We got it here in Eccles Manchester England . Also WKBW and CKLW a Monster Motown Border Blaster station in Windsor Ontario. All the way to Sweden. ! XERB 1973 American Graffiti ! Mazeltov !

[@ideasforlife11]

That's incredible!

[@THEMOJOMANsince1959]

Great Thanks,,,Lana and I met him once in LA at a recording studio,,,as we got off the elevator he was walking up the hallway,,,He said "Can I help you folks". We explained we were there to by chance see him. He said he had heard of me,,telling me I had the gift of making the listener feel that you were just talking to him/her. One of my greatest compliments. It was Gary Theroux's studio

[@fullthrottlejeffry]

Sid you were a darn good dj yourself... Surprised to see you here. Hope you're well. A Chattaboogie Fan

[@bobjlv]

Listened to XERF as a kid in Tampa, Florida.

[@grampsradio]

250,000 WATTS! WOW!!

[@pata299]

When radio was creative

[@redstickham6394]

Radio was really enjoyable to listen to back in the day. I really enjoyed listening to the radio when I was growing up. Not so much anymore.

[@brandonh8910]

I wonder if there lives were shortened by being so close to a transmitter like that?

[@RustyZipper]

Certainly, the engineer who resurrected XERF passed in 1998 when his child was only 15 years old.

[@gilly4881]

250 thousand watts! Thats nothing - Radio Luxembourg had 1million 300 hundred watts of power. Planet earth`s biggest commercial radio-station. Those were the days

[@ApartmentKing66]

But was it AM or shortwave?

[@johnpinckney4979]

@@ApartmentKing66 AM/Medium Wave on 1439 KHz back in the day...

[@toinewillekens4710]

@@johnpinckney4979 The great 208 .

[@johnpinckney4979]

@@toinewillekens4710 The FCC briefly allowed WLW in Cincinatti, Ohio to use 500 KW of power under an experimentl license until 1939. After that, it was only briefly allowed to use that transmitter occasionally during WWII and the Cuban Missile Crisis, on the "request" of the U.S> government. Since that time, many essential components have been removed due to containing HAZMAT. Mainly PCB's. The exciter for it ran 50 KW and was used in the Y2K panic as something from 1928 was unlikely to vulnerable to any problems.

[@arthurfears9464]

@@ApartmentKing66 Radio Luxembourg also was on Short Wave until 1992!

[@James_Bowie]

Although the RCA transmitter was capable of 250,000 watts output, being the highly inefficient AM mode, that would require about 400,000 watts of electrical power on the input side. The unregulated diesel DC generator powering that station back in the years when Wolfman Jack was broadcasting from there was not capable of producing anything like 400,000 watts. Engineering estimates put the station's maximum output back then at around 80,000 watts -- which is nothing to sneeze at but is a long way from 250kW.

[@maryrafuse3851]

My husband grew up in a radio broadcasting family. It was hard & expensive to maintain full rated power with tube transmitters. Tubes fade and new output tubes are very expensive forcing some broadcasters to use rebuilt tubes. The coming of Nautel in the early 1980's changed broadcasting with high power solid state AM & then FM Transmitters. Nautel started with radio beacons and then established themselves with the kind of steady high power broadcast transmitters that were a dream come true for so many radio stations. Other companies imitated Nautel but Nautel was first with high power solid state transmitters. To this day Nautel customer service is second to none.

[@tw364]

always some engineering geek to try to shit on the power of XERF. Try again. son. it didn't work.

[@scotttodd3506]

Judging by what few shots of that transmitter they showed, it looked like a scaled up version of the BTA-50G Ampliphase transmitter we had as a backup at the KSTP transmitter where I worked in the early 80s. It was quite a bit more efficient than the high level plate transmitters of that era since it didnt require a separate modulator amplifier. FWIW, I think there were some changes in the North American broadcasting agreements, and now Mexican stations are limited to 100kW day and 50kW night, with the exception of a couple of high power stations in the DF.

[@q95oldies57]

Nice Koss Pro headphones too. I still 2 pairs.

[@garytaylor4990]

Comin at from ciudad acuna Mexico.

[@MrPotatoesLatkie]

What is the name of the song he's playing while he beats on thew wastebasket?

[@wdsracer]

MrPotatoesLatkie it’s called wastebasket beat down town

[@ivanhoesanchez2606]

Texas and coahuila

[@kevinvanmeter2264]

Didn't Wolfman Jack Announce from there?

[@Tiffany.1970]

British radio sucks when one thinks about the radio that gave us the wolfman jack show howl

[@James_Bowie]

These days all radio sucks. But ... stations can license the Woflman Show: www.wolfmanjackradio.com/

[@radionicpowers5938]

well that WAS cool

[@kbuinowski]

that is one song i'm trying to figure out what is the name of that song and who sang it that is played in the video when they were singing all night long.

[@BradLovett]

Does anyone know the date of this reunion?

[@randallmiller8238]

I'm curious as well, Wolfman passed in 1995. I'm guessing this was about 1989/90?

[@aceanonymous3647]

Where is the video from

[@TheRenoLuna]

This video was a vhs to DVD transfer for a client.

[@ideasforlife11]

@@TheRenoLuna Is there any way to get a hard copy of this? Mike Venditti was my father, and this is the only video I've ever seen of him. He passed away in 1998, long before smart phones and social media.

[@TheRenoLuna]

ideasforlife11 - please contact me at [e-mail]

[@TheRenoLuna]

@@ideasforlife11 contact me for a hard copy. [e-mail]

[@gregsells8549]

The opening graphics look like PM/Evening Magazine. This incarnation of XERF was known as Love 16 with the CCM format, and once it carried a Texas-Arkansas basketball game. But this did not last, and after several other programming attempts the station was turned over to the Mexican government, which now programs XERF (and FM sister XHRF) for Mexican nationals in the U.S.