Radio KKUP: the city's 'lost' voice

Second of four parts (see part one)

By Jon Hoornstra

"Radio was fun for us," Dana Jang said last week as he reflected on how a half-dozen young men started radio station KKUP-91.5 FM 30 years ago. "Our vision was to start a station for the youth of the community, to be diverse, and not play the music commercial stations were playing."

KKUP today is a robust 200-watt voice of alternative programming that enjoys the freedom that goes with financial support solely from listeners.

But life was lean in the beginning. Kevin McCaffrey worked with Jang at Pinewood Elementary in Los Altos in 1969 when the school gave up the FCC license KKUP would seek. Today, McCaffrey is a veteran at EMI, the marketing arm of recording industry giant Capitol & Virgin Records. But in 1969 he lived on a typical De Anza College student's budget.

"Our idea was to make the station open and available to the community and start a tradition of community radio in the South Bay," he recalled.

With nothing but opportunity at hand, they wasted no time. The two enlisted the help of Dave Hurd and Tom Levenhagen, both radio enthusiasts and active in area rock bands with a network of like-minded friends.

They incorporated the Radio Club of Cupertino with strong backing from leaders in Cupertino. The FCC license application included declarations of support from Cupertino's Jaycees, the city itself, Monta Vista High School's first principal, Dale Deselms, and his counterpart at Cupertino High School, George Fernandez, among others.

Levenhagen, with a natural ability to put toasters and TV sets together as well as take them apart, worked with another volunteer, Mike Emery, to prepare the FCC application. Emery was an FCC-licensed engineer.

"It required almost 100 pages of detailed information that we had to submit in triplicate," Levenhagen recalled. "We had to provide aerial photos of the broadcast area and transmitter site, plus engineering details of our equipment and sketches of the studio." The FCC also required a list of all frequencies used by transmitters within a 50-mile radius.

"Commercial radio and TV frequencies were easy to identify," Levenhagen said. "But getting military installations to disclose their frequencies was another matter." When asked how they got them, he would only smile.

The future broadcasters were on a roll. By September the FCC application had been sent to Washington. Cupertino had offered them two choices for a studio location. Jang, McCaffrey and Levenhagen toured an old farm house on the exact spot where Cupertino's senior center now stands. John Parham, head of the parks and recreation department, offered a small bedroom. But it was much too small.

Instead, they chose an old house on Pasadena Avenue once used by Monta Vista's water department. That choice also made them personally liable for $10,000, the cost to Pacific Bell to run phone lines to the transmitter on Mount Umunhum. That was more money than some of their parents earned in a year.

Mount Umunhum, where the legendary Loren McQueen ruled, was good to KKUP, cost-wise. The McQueen family had owned mountain property since the early 1900s and, according to people with business on the mountain, McQueen often patrolled his property in a jeep with a racked rifle or shotgun.

"McQueen liked to practice the art of intimidation," Jang recalled, "but he generously offered us a place for $1 a year, and we were grateful." KKUP would share space with other transmitters, including a powerful U.S. Air Force radar.

But the outlook for KKUP suddenly turned grim. The FCC returned the application, ruling they didn't qualify because the Radio Club of Cupertino was not an educational organization.

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Next week: experienced men with clout in Washington save KKUP and McQueen orders a "hippie" off his mountain forever.

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