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Show KPCW's volunteer air Force builds new studios i ;'. if" " V KPCWs Mike Phillips interviews the Unknown DJ at Fundraiser. Portland Gray's year of riding the rails have taught him many things: "I've become a connoisseur, really, of the canned bean Ranch Style is certainly the best." Gray Frierson Haertig, affectionately affec-tionately known as "Portland Gray," is a hobo. He also is a crack radio engineer. For the second time in his four years Portland Gray and his buddy Pue (Robert Bruce Roger) have come to the rescue of the local community radio station, KPCW. When the radio station first went on the air in 1980, Gray and Pue hopped an open freight to Portland and journeyed to Utah to help Blair Fuelner put his little station on the air. Pue had met Fuelner at a convention con-vention of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters in Olympia, Wash., Just months before. Pue was impressed with what Fuelner had done to get his station ready for community broadcast, pretty much as a one-man one-man operation at that point. Pue and Gray discovered for all Fuelner's talent with FCC paperwork, paper-work, the guy was in desparate need of technical assistance. "Besides'winks Pue. "we were , ready for an adventure." , : them daily news and weather updates. up-dates. The programming ranged from the police chief spinning his favorite Joan Baez discs to high school students playing their tren-dier tren-dier commentary. "We began with an $8,000 investment," invest-ment," said station master Fuelner. "Gray really had to rebuild the entire en-tire thing to make it operable. All our equipment, when we started up, was out of the junk boxes of the other Salt Lake stations. It would be nearly impossible to estimate the kind of donation those guys made and the hundreds of hours they spent here." The radio's first full year of operation opera-tion was with a budget of just $36,000. Today, the station has a budget of just over $100,000 and this month plans to expand to information in-formation television, as well. "By mid-December we hope to be on the air with an information channel. We plan to run the television televi-sion station the same way we have run the radio with a lot of volunteers," said Fuelner. In the past four years, Fuelner estimates the station has had more than 300 volunteers, and of course, Pue and Gray . Also, Gray's experience in allowing allow-ing railroads to donate their services ser-vices inkind and,, unbeknownst to them to the project, helped to keep the costs of their trip idown. His many years of . hopping freights has not gone unrecorded either. At the annual convention of hobos, the International Association Associa-tion of Tourists and Hobos, Gray was named Grand Duke. His story appeared in such publications as T.W.A. Inflight Magazine, National Geographic, and Penthouse, where the rather portly Portland was featured in a two-page spread. Both Pue and Gray are freelance radio artists when it comes to electronics. elec-tronics. When they do hire out for what to them are distasteful AM radio jobs and cash, they charge upwards of $80 an hour. But, for Fuelner and Park City their services were free. "The guy needed us," said Gray simply. KPCW went on the air in July, 1980, and was an instant success with the community. In a town that has only a weekly paper, residents began to rely on the radio to give |