George Marti dead at 95

George Marti died over the weekend. He was 95 years old. Those that have worked in the broadcast industry best know him as the inventor of the Remote Pickup Unit (aka Marti unit) and refiner of the radio studio to transmitter link (between them, in use by an estimated 80% of all AM/FM broadcast stations worldwide when he sold his company to Broadcast Electronics in 1994.

Radio innovator, former Cleburne mayor dead at 95

In my earlier years, I worked as a radio DJ. Every station I worked at (Wichita, Montgomery, Auburn, Opelika and Columbus, GA) that did remote broadcasts (sports, store promotions, etc.) used a Marti unit. Always worked like a charm.

Wow, Marti made remote pickup and STL very cost effective. A real help for folks in smaller markets who could not buy the high end STL systems back in the 60's and later.

One bad thing about the Marti STL receivers at the TX site.......they had barn door front ends. In 1998 when we started building out 940 MHz ReFLEX systems, if you were at a site with a Marti STL, you had to use a bandpass cavity on the STL before the receiver. A few locations I had to help with grid dish realignments as the original implementations did not have enough link budget after a cavity was used inline.

Craig

I am quite familiar with the Marti System. Used to see WNOR, and several others use one all the time at remote broadcasts. I chuckle any time I hear a remote broadcast on any station here on the Outer Banks. They use cell phones for remote broadcast... I'm almost embarrassed for them.

I used to carry around our Marti RPU unit to do all kinds of broadcasts from community meetings back in the mid 1970s. Radio worked flawlessly and always gave us a good, strong signal on our VHF frequencies. Working at KTAN in Sierra Vista, AZ (call letters have since changed with an ownership change), we did at least four news remotes a week, plus a few conducted by the sales department. The only odd part of the radio was its 27 Hz CTCSS, a tone that seems to have been unique to the Marti radios.

John Pilger K6PIO

MARTI was always a crap shoot... when it worked, it was still a PITA transport and setup... you always knew you had a 'green' intern with you when they had no fear of grabbing the yagi antenna while we were on air.. ouchies..

then when MARTI failed, it was always hit or miss. one Friday night we had local high school basketball game to air, and as luck would have it the reception at the studio end was horrible.. we were broadcasting from an enclosed high school gymnasium, below grade. tried stringing together as much coax as we had, and still no go..

it was either use some creativity to get on the air, or lose the game and the advertisers. I had just started working for this station, and my PD had taken notice that I had several radios in my car, including hand held business band radios, CB's scanners and a 10m ham rig.

time was getting tight before the game, and the engineering brain trust had already given up on the MARTI.. so, I made a suggestion to my boss... it was of the wall but It worked..

we used a business band HT on a power supply at courtside to do the play by play.. then used the scanner in the car, crossbanded to the dual band Yaesu rig, on a business frequency the radio station had a licence for.. then back at the radio station, they used another police scanner in the news room patched into the board in the AM studio, and we were on the air..

my car sat in the loading dock of the high school locked with the engine running most of the night to keep the battery up, and the mobile rig was keyed up but ran cool. and the best part was we got the game on the air, the spots ran as scheduled, and I was a hero to my boss. the sound quality was every bit as good as it would've been via MARTI and no one outside the station was ever the wiser that we had ever had a problem that night.

73 for now,

MP

Used one Marti or another at several stations over several years at least 75 times and never had a problem. Never touched the antenna, though.

My condolences to his family and friends. It's always hard to loose someone.

Van

RIP George.

Is Marti RF equipment still popular?

No disrespect to Marti Systems or its founder, I wonder if RF based RPUs are still used in broadcast radio. Companies like Telos systems (who hasn't heard of the Zephyr?) have been selling Internet and phone line Codecs for years, that provide broadcast quality audio on the fly, without needing to set up base-to-remote UHF radios.
Seems like Marti systems were great before the Internet, but may have become obsolete?