"…Val is the oldest WQXR employee. He was hired even before the station came into existence.  (On March 26, 1929, the license was granted for W2XR; two days later, its first programs were on the air).  Val built every transmitter and piece of equipment WQXR ever had, from its earliest 50 watt job to the present 10,000 watt transmitter, including Mr. Hogan's earliest television transmitter (1929)...

"Val always uses his ingenuity for building the equipment he wants, and he uses whatever materials come to hand. The change-over switch, used to put the station on its auxilliary transmitters in the event of a failure of its regular transmitter, is a case in point. Entirely automatic, it is designed and built by Val, who, in building it, needed a little metal here and there. He pulled four dimes out of his pocket, soldered them in, and now tells visitors his little invention cost forty cents.

It is an axiom of FM broadcasting that a short transmission line to carry the ultra-high frequency current is desirable. Val uses a long one…and he made it work. The line he rigged, for FM station W2XQR, is about 180 feet long, going from the second floor of Mr. Hogan's lab in Long Island City, to the tower of the building next door. 'We couldn't move the station up on top of the tower,' Mr. Hogan says, 'so Val rigged a long line which would work.  All the things he builds work, 'even when everybody else says they're impossible.' "

Source: Unpublished excerpts from "Notes to Mr. Kennedy regarding Russell D. Valentine," October 23, 1941,  WQXR Engineering files. (WQXR Archives Collection).

Note: W2XQR was the first incarnation of WQXR-FM broadcasting at 43.2 megacycles.
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