I graduated in June 1975 after serving as Program Director in '75-'75 and Music Director in '73-'74. My wife, Jan, was Music Director in '72-'73. The station was on the air during my entire time at VT...'71 to '75. The higher power applications and new transmitter (770 watts) went in '74-'75. There were problems after the new transmitter's first year of operations that knocked the staion off the air during or shortly after the summer of '75. The restart date with a replacement transmitter may have been the fall of '75.

The story of the boost from 10 watts in '74-'75 is an interesting story of VT politics. As always, the station was student-run and received next to no funding from the University, just space at Squires. I believe we had acquired a used transmitter, but we didn't know how we would come up with the money for the telemetry required to go beyond 10 watts. We decided to apply to the FCC anyway. Meanwhile, the Roanoke educational station (WVWR at the time) applied to go 100kW. Oops, their frequency (90.1) was too close to WUVT's. And since we had a prior application pending, WUVT could no longer be treated as a 10-watt station and be told to move.

The University decided to make a power play to try to take over the Roanoke station. One problem...we didn't have the money to buy the monitoring equipment to boost the power. So, to keep our application legit, the University paid the price of the new transmitter and the required monitoring equipment. The Roanoke station changed frequencies (to 89.1) rather than cave to VT's takeover attempt. I believe VT managed to take over the station some years later.

Bob Ketcham