About TRE

The Early Years

Michael P. Stinemetze Sr. AKA: Tony Raven got his start in the broadcasting business as a junior in high school when he built is first radio station KULY 1420 in Ulysses, Kansas. Mike (as he was known then) always wanted to be a rock and roll disc jockey, and during his freshmen and sophomore years of high school worked after school and weekends at the local TV repair shop, Ulysses Communications INC., owned by his mentor Bob Grimes. They also sold two-way and CB radios, all the rage back then. (That's a big 10-4 good buddy!) Great for talking from the tractor back to the house when the water jug was getting low. And for calling from the combine for an empty truck to pull up beside so it could drop its load.

The TV shop was just across the alley from the local Western Auto store where Mike would sometimes go to buy tubes when the shop was out of stock of a particular one. When Sam Elliott came to town with the goal of raising enough money to build a radio station in Ulysses, he took a job at that Western Auto store to support his family during his fund raising efforts. Sam's dad was a major share holder in KGNO in Dodge City, Kansas and KTVC Channel-6 in Ensign, Kansas.

Sam had been brought up in a broadcasting family, and the broadcasting business was in his blood. He had just graduated from a major Kansas university with a degree in broadcasting, and business, and was ready to talk some of the local wheat farmers, and local businessmen into investing into his vision. That was a harder goal than he first thought, but Sam was persistent and eventually came up with about $50,000.00. Sounds like a lot of money, but when everything was taken into consideration including buying the land for the transmitter/studio site, it really meant the station would have to be built on a shoe string budget. Mike met Sam at the Western Auto one day, on a trip to buy tubes, and a friendship was struck up that resulted in Mike and another high school buddy, Alan Rouse, working with Sam to build the station. The station was located one mile outside of Ulysses on a small hill. Southwest Kansas is known for being mostly flat, you see nothing but wheat fields. Mike had told Sam about a station he had heard while he and his family were passing through St. Louis Missouri, on vacation, called KXOK which was broadcasting from "radio park". Mike thought KULY should also broadcast from someplace like that, and Sam immediately quipped "then we'll broadcast from sandbur hill"! Maybe not as classy as radio park, but definitely more in line with south west Kansas reality.

Mike and Alan built the 1000/500 watt transmitter from a Fritz Bauer kit, one of the frugal cost saving measures necessary to get the station on the air at the time. About the size of a large refrigerator freezer it took the two of them two to three weeks after school and weekends to assemble the device and move it into place. Many more kits were in the offing in the process of building KULY, including a volt ohm-meter, a tube checker, a tone generator, and a distortion analyzer. The brand names Heath Kit, and Knight Kit (Allied Radio Corporation) were well known around KULY at the time.

The Disc Jockey Years

Mike went on to become one of the first disc jockeys on the station and this started his 1st career as an on-air personality that was to last for the next 18 years with interruptions for school at Fort Hays Kansas State University, The University of Denver, and the Radio Engineering Institute. That stop over at Radio Engineering Institute was where Mike received the training to pass both his FCC Second class radio telephone operators license, and his FCC First class radio telephone operators license, with ships radar endorsement.

The FCC first class radio telephone operators license was known at the time by a couple of other names: "The 1st Phone", and The "1st Class Ticket". The name ticket was used because having that license was considered a ticket to employment at directional AM radio stations, AM stations with power levels of 10KW and higher, and at TV stations who all had high power transmitters. Mike was definitely ticked off, in later years, when the FCC decided to do away with the first class radio telephone operators licenses, and replace them with a General Radio operators license! The FCC also did away with the necessity for people with these licenses to operate transmitters at broadcast stations, thus the corporate bean counters were able to hire less qualified and consequently less expensive operators. At the very least the wage scales went down even for the most qualified of operators.

The air name Tony Raven finally stuck in San Antonio and more people know him by that name than by his legal name, although there has really been no attempt to hide the fact that it is not his real name. His wife Dot prefers to call him Tony and has done so for over 30 years of marriage.

The Technical Years

Throughout all of the years as an air personality Tony always kept his hand in the technical side of the business, all be it not as heavily as now in his 2nd career where he spends most all of his time thoroughly immersed in technical issues. Most of this started when his pastor "John Hagee" asked him, while still at KTSA/KTFM, to help with his radio program.

Tony started with the Pastor doing this radio show in the production facilities at KTSA/KTFM but ended up helping the church purchase its own equipment. Tony continued by helping the church throughout the years build new facilities including P.A. systems, recording facilities, and even a television facility.

At one point the church had applied for a license for full power UHF Channel-35 and went through the process of looking for a tower site which involved high profile city council meetings as they were asking to use the city owned "Tower of The America's" as a potential site. Controversy was never far from this project as many in the city didn't want the church to get the license.

Even a small microwave tower, the church erected to feed the local cable company, became embroiled in controversy when a Castle Hills City manager (where the church building was actually located) suddenly managed to forget that he had verbally approved its construction as part of a approved building plan, when well to do neighbors across the alley complained to the city council.

The matter was eventually resolved, but it did entail the church having to move the microwave transmitter to a cross at the front of the church property and removing the tower at quite a bit of expense.

Tony's video experience continued with eight years at KENS-TV in San Antonio where he was originally hired because of his audio expertise. Tony was somewhat frustrated one day when the Chief Engineer, Jerry Nordseik, said to him: You are an audio guy, I wish you could do something about this crappy intercom. Intercom Tony replied, that's not real audio that's just telephone.

Nevertheless, he was tasked with making the old antiquated intercom into something that people didn't have to scream in to be heard. The audio quality was acceptable, and they actually had IFB that worked.

Thus started what ended up being a loved sideline in intercommunications that still blossoms today. Other than Jesus Christ, Jerry Nordseik, is one of the individuals Tony has always considered to be a major mentor of influence in his professional life.

While still working at KENS TV Tony started Tony Raven Enterprises, on days off, and during non work hours. Many shifts at KENS were nighttime leaving daytime hours open. Under the TRE banner he would do projects for customers including building audio and video studio's at the local Air Force bases, installing satellite data systems, and working at Shook Electronics USA installing audio and video equipment in mobile broadcast vehicles.

Tony had met Ed Shook, the owner of Shook Electronics USA while working at KENS. He was one of the engineers in charge of the KENS mobile production truck which had been purchased from Shook a couple of years previously. While Shook did not install the equipment in the KENS vehicle, Tony had worked with Ed to get the cutout in the production console for the production switcher control panel and audio mixer.

Tony and Ed became friends and this lead to Ed asking Tony to come work for him on these types of projects, and eventually in December of 1989 Ed asked Tony to come work for him full time as Director of Engineering. Jerry Nordseik had left KENS by then, and Tony didn't feel as welcome at KENS, as in Jerry's days, so he quickly agreed, came to terms with Ed Shook, and so began 21 years of what became SR. VP and Director of Broadcast Engineering at Shook Electronics USA.

Later when sold and purchased by the Heaney brothers, Shook became known as Shook Mobile Technology LLP. Ed Shook is another man that Tony will always look back on as being one of the main mentors ever to influence his life!

In April of 2010 Tony was asked to leave Shook Mobile Technology LLC.

The official terminology was "laid off for an indefinite period" due to the deteriorating financial restraints the company was under. Several other longtime Shook employees also left the firm around the same time, Ed Shook had been officially retired for at least a year and was no longer involved, or consulted, in actual company business for longer than that. Tony had seen the writing on the wall for some time and was just waiting for the shoe to drop.

The Rebirth of Tony Raven Enterprises, Inc.

In late April 2010 Tony Raven Enterprises Inc. was reborn with the new mission of doing audio, video, intercom, satellite, radio broadcast, television broadcast, cablevision broadcast, internet broadcast systems, as well as re-introducing his voice work to the V/O marketplace.

As part of that mission there was the hope to someday build an internet radio station (hobby really) "Tonyradio2047.com" where he could play at radio like the old days and maybe even make a buck. But that project would have to be put on hold for awhile because the funds that were at hand needed to be spent building a business and feeding a family.

Tony's daughter and grandson were at home living with him and his wife, so he needed to pay attention to the families priorities. Luckily his youngest son, David was working with a company that would furnish him a very inexpensive website and his son had promised to keep it up and maintained for him, and it came with e-mail privileges for the company. Thus there is a http//www.tonyravenenterprises.com. website and [email protected] is his personal e-mail address.

Since its inception Tony Raven Enterprises has done projects for:

Tony has designed and built technical audio, video, satellite, systems for some of the biggest,
and smallest companies in the world:

If you are not comfortable reading about Christian values, then you should stop reading at this point and not continue further in this dialog! However; it must be said that as the story of Michael P. Stinemetze Sr. AKA Tony Raven is told leaving out his Christian values would not be possible!

While the Tony Raven Enterprises story is far from being completely written, and much more is expected in the future, it is fair to be said that Tony has his full trust in the Lord God almighty who IS and WAS and IS TO COME! There is no way that Tony, or anyone one else on this pea in space that we call a planet, will ever make it on his or her own volition.

Not one of us is capable of comprehending what is completely right in our own lives' let alone the lives of everyone around us. That's why our trust must always remain in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and not in a President, or a Government! As perfect as we would want any of these people to be they are mere mortals. No matter how educated they are, or think they are, they are still as dumb as a blade of grass compared to the wisdom of our God!

But that being said it is the duty of every godly man and woman, who is legally able to vote in this country to do so, and to vote those godly values not the humanistic values of Baal that are freely taught as the subjugated "American Dream" by the socialist progressive left in the political parties, and universities of this country.

This is Tony's Prayer for Our Nation