Radio WREK

WREK ("Wreck", from the Rambling Wreck) is the radio station staffed by the students of the Georgia Institute of Technology. It is located at 91.1 MHz and on channel 17 on the Georgia Tech cable TV network, GTCN. Starting as a 10-watt class D, it now broadcasts a 40,000 Watts ERP signal throughout metropolitan Atlanta, making it among the ten highest-power college radio stations in the United States.This section requires expansion with:additional administrative and programming-related history.Georgia Tech was the home of early radio station WGST AM (Georgia School of Technology) from 1924 to 1930 thanks to Clark Howell.WREK first signed on the air on March 25, 1968, broadcasting at 10 Watts from a donated tower atop the Van Leer Electrical Engineering building on Georgia Tech's campus. The studio was located in the top floor of that building and consisted of donated equipment from WSM-FM Nashville. Chief Engineer and then-student Geoff Mendenhall designed and built a 425W power amplifier which, once type certified by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in August 1968, brought WREK to 3,400W ERP. Mendenhall has since moved on to build transmitters at Harris Corporation.In 1978 WREK's tower and studio were relocated. A new, 300 foot tower was built on the western edge of the Georgia Tech campus, and the studio moved to the annex of the Alexander Memorial Coliseum, where it would remain until 2004. That facility was home to 920 AM WGST (from Georgia School of Technology, GT's earlier name) from 1956 until 1975, when that station's license was sold against the school's will as "surplus property" by the Georgia Board of Regents. Visitors to WREK's Coliseum studios were often startled by its walls, which were covered by thick layers of posters, set lists, and other music memorabilia, as well as the giant electromechanical broadcast automation machines and other large racks of monitoring and control equipment. WREK's studios relocated to the Student Center Commons (formerly the Georgia Tech Bookstore building) in August 2004.WREK began streaming its compressed (8-bit uLaw) broadcast over the Internet on November 7 of 1994, making it one of the first Internet radio stations. The station now streams in MP3 format and features a two-week-long running archive of its broadcast on the schedule page of its website.