WGK
- St. Louis
John
Frank at the WGK
Operating Position in 1951; from RCA Advertisement.
Why was WGK, which was west of the FCC's
Mississippi call letter dividing line, not KGK? Perhaps because it started life east of the Mississippi. The 1935 FCC
Annual Report contains the following statement: "The coastal telegraph
station formerly located near Cincinnati Ohio, has been moved to St.
Louis, MO., in order to serve more efficiently ships navigating the
Mississippi, Missouri, and Ohio Rivers." It is very likely
that this station was RMCA's WGK, putting it on the air in St. Louis in
1935, and making it the first station serving towboats.
Though some is known about the Army Corps of Engineers early CW use on the rivers see: Government Stations CW use by WGK raises many unanswered questions about the history of CW for commercial communications on the rivers: When did the towboats start usingCW? Were there Radio Officers on the towboats or, unlikely, were the captains and/or pilots also trained as CW operators? Most of this history is probably lost.
In
the 1940s the station was located at the foot of Rutger Street in St.
Louis on the 2nd floor of
the Mississippi Valley Barge Line terminal. There
was an
excellent panoramic view of the Mississippi from the operations
room. Although MVBL was probably the largest WGK customer
there
were many others notably Federal Barge Lines.
The 1942
FCC Annual Report says: " --- the
commission licensed a new coastal harbor station at St. Louis, Mo
---." This was the beginning of WGK's radiotelephone
service. However, this RMCA
1946 document indicates that WGK still had CW capability at
that time.
 1959 Saint Louis Post Dispatch Photo |
Early in 1949 WGK announced a 90 day trial period of 21 hour operation, up from 16 hours. If this was succcessful the station intended to move to full 24 hour operation.
There
were two identical operating positions at the station. In the photo
above, the unit with the sloping front panel was the main controller
for the station. The telephone dial on the upper right, was the dial
for the two-tone ringer system that was sometimes used to selectively
call a boat .
The main transmitter was made by Wilcox,
and is identical to the one shown in the photos of sister RMCA station WCM
- Pittsburgh. It had four large roll out bays, one for each frequency.
In each bay the power was 2KW and used four Eimac 450TL tubes in
push-pull. The AM modulator consisted of two 450TL's.
All four antennas at the station were half-wave
dipoles and all were fed by open wire feeders spaced 6 inches apart.
They were supported on telephone poles about 60 feet high.
Here is a
RMCA Advertisement which appeared in the now defunct Waterways
Magazine in November 1951. It shows RMCA Ship-to-Shore radiotelephone services for towboats on the
Mississippi River system. Here's a 1946 RCA
Calendar advertising both CW and radiotelephone service at
WGK. However, Bill Hutchinson reports that by the time he
arrived at the station in 1947 CW was all but dead. This RMCA Advertisement is from the little 1955 Great Lakes Redbook.
William Hutchinson, W7EX, an
operator at WGK from 1947 to 1952, supplied some of the information
above. Bill's
Recollection Page contains interesting additional
material.
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 WGK's new site - 1961 Photo by Saint Louis Post Dispatch |
 New 1961 WGK operating position - Granite City Press Record photo |
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The St. Louis Post Dispatch - 1961-08-20 carried this (edited) article:
Pictured above is a newly completed transmission building and tower for Waterways Radiophone Station WGK owned by radiomarine department of RCA Communications, Inc., An open house was held last Friday as operations were moved from the company's older installation here. The station is headquarters for radiotelephone communication with traffic on the Mississippi and navigable tributaries. Designed by RCA engineers, the station was built by Elmer Neumann of Granite City, general contractor. One-story building, 18 by 48, is stucco finished, has gable roof. Guyed tower is 115 feet tall. Station transmits with 2000 watts power, all new equipment, an increase from previous power of 1000 watts, reaches entire length of waterways system, with "dual operation." A. G. Amerski is manager. Building is on east bank of Chain of Rocks canal, above Chain of Rocks bridge not far from Mitchell, Ill., has a Granite City rural delivery address.
End of Post Dispatch article
The Granite City Press Record - 1960-11-17 carried this (edited) article:
Station Being Built For Marine Radio Calls. New
WGK Building, Tower To Serve Wide Area From Site Near Canal.
Construction has started on a marine communications radio station to be located a mile north of the Chain of Rocks Canal bridge, it was learned today from Radio Communications Inc., a division of the Radio Corporation of America.
WGK is presently operating from the terminal of the Mississippi Valley Barge Line Co., located at the Rutgers street riverfront in St. Louis. Station WGK relays telephone calls to and from vessels traveling rivers within several hundred miles of this area.
John Yost, RCA construction engineer is here from New York to supervise the move. Yost expects the new locatioto have less noise and congestion as well as room for expansion.
The current project involves construction of a one-story 48x18-foot concrete block building; construction of transmitting equipment valued at several hundred thousand dollars; and construction of a 115-foot radio tower. Contractor Elmer Neumann of Granite City is handling the construction, and the foundation already is in place, with work on the walls to follow soon. The location is on a three acre tract, leased from the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, on the east canal bank. Plans call for the station to be transmitting from its new location by the end of January, Yost told the Press-Record.
Plans for the move were made some time ago, and receivers were installed at the site six months ago. They are housed separately from the sending equipment. The station here will have six amplitude modulation (AM) long-range radio frequencies with a range from Houston, Tex., to Minneapolis, Minn., plus one very high frequency with a range from Grafton, Ill., to Crystal City, Mo. It will be operated 24 hours a day, 365 days in the year, by a staff of eight men headed by A. G. Amerski, manager.
Working closely with the Bell Telephone Co., Radio Communications handles all telephone calls radioed to commercial towboats and other river vessels in the Midwest. It was indicated that the communications firm will be listing Granite City as the transfer point for messages handled in a wide section of the United States.
Other stations currently are located at Chicago, Memphis, Tenn., and Pittsburgh, Pa., but are not regarded as competitors of the local facilities.
The local station is described as the "principal station by which contact is made with to boats on the Mississippi, Ohio, Rivers and the Gulf of Mexico, intra-coastal waterway extending from Brownsville, Tex., to the west coast of Florida."
End Press Record Article
Here's another Press Record article about the new WGK facilities.
By the time Ray Gartman
bought WGK from RMCA in 1967 (and also WCM for $90,000 total) it was
located in Granite City, IL as detailed above. No trace of the building or
tower and antenna array show up on current satellite imagery.
Ray's son Mark worked at the station during the 1968-69
summers and his Recollections Page chronicles the Gartman ownership of
three of the rivers stations: WGK, WCM and WJG.
Charlie
Soroka, who had been doing electronic maintenance on the boats,
eventually bought WGK from Gartman. He was the station's last
owner.
Card
courtesy of Jeff Yates
Some of the WGK crew
and their
recollections.
