For weeks now the 1976 Republican National Convention has shaped up as a tricky challenge to politicians and journalists alike, with the outcome more and more unpredictable. After the almost endless series of ups and downs in the fortunes of the candidates and the increasingly terse infighting, the convention promised to turn into the bitterest G.O.P. battle since the Goldwater right-wing triumph over the moderates in 1964. TIME made careful plans to cover every step of the chancy action in Kansas City, from the expected struggles over the platform to the final vote of the last uncommitted delegate on nomination night. All of the Nation section's editors, writers and reporter-researchers, led by Managing Editor Henry Grunwald, are not only attending the convention--as they have done in the past--but this year are remaining in Kansas City after the fighting is over to write, edit and check the section and, in effect, send it to press from there. On the Kemper Arena floor, in the middle of the convention uproar, and at delegate caucuses as they take place around town, 15 TIME correspondents are covering developments and then heading back to our 2,000-sq.-ft. workroom at the Kansas City Municipal Auditorium, a mile away, to write their files.

Preparations for our Kansas City coverage have been almost a yearlong task. One essential was the setting up of an extensive communications network. A 45-telephone system links staffers at centers of activity around the city; correspondents carry beepers so they can be alerted and, if necessary, rerouted to a fast-breaking event. High-speed facsimile machines are transmitting Nation copy via telephone wires to TIME'S Copy Desk/computer-typesetting center back in New York.

Before leaving for Kansas City, Nation Editors Marshall Loeb and Ronald Kriss worked out editorial plans for this complicated news event, while other members of the Nation staff requisitioned and shipped off everything from typewriters (which Kansas City has run out of) and rubber bands to 15 cartons of files, newspaper clippings, back issues of TIME and a collection of political reference works --indispensable to the research staff. "After packing up all the cartons," Chief Nation Researcher Margaret Boeth recalled, "we realized that we had left out one book--the Bible." So just in case a candidate should prove fond of quoting Scripture, Boeth packed a King James version in her suitcase before she flew west.

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