One of the great side benefits of working at a radio station is the regular availability of free food. I almost don’t want to do a post on this because somehow, some corporate boss is going to read about it and a no-free food edict will result.
Every so often, some local deli or pizza place will drop off something for the air staff. Usually, it is a friend of a friend, and nothing nefarious is going on. When it arrives, the odor of good things to eat wafts through the building. With the smell of blood in the water, the sharks swim out of the sales bullpen and a feeding frenzy develops. Just watch out for your fingers, during the scrum, it is difficult to tell the difference between a digit and a sausage.
It goes fast, when I walked by this table 15 minutes ago, there were five full pizza boxes, just delivered.
radio station food
Now there is one box with two slices of some meat lovers’ heart attack special.
Although not the first station in the area, that honor goes to WGY. In fact, RPI licensed WHAZ in 1923, which makes it the second regional station. Starting on 1430 Khz as WOKO in New York City in 1923, the station made a few stops along the way. One of those was on Mt. Beacon from 1928 until 1930. The original transmitter building is still there, although the tower was taken down in 2005 to make way for the DTV stations that moved in. I always wondered why an FM tower on the top of a mountain had a base insulator.
WDDY towers, Bethlehem, NY
In 1930, WOKO was sold and moved to Albany, NY, becoming the first station licensed to that city. The transmitter site is located off of Kenwood Avenue in the town of Bethlehem, about 4 miles south of downtown Albany. It first signed on with 1 KW, increasing to 5 KW in 1947. This is the original transmitter site, but the towers were redone in the mid-1970s. The towers themselves are 130 electrical degrees (235 feet) tall. Like all AM stations, for years it serviced the community until it was gradually reduced to a satellite repeater, now owned by Disney.
WDDY transmitter site
The original transmitter building is in the back, the front was added in the 1970s when the studios and offices colocated with the transmitter. Prior to that, they were in downtown Albany.
Nautel XR6 medium wave broadcast transmitter
The Harris BC5H transmitter was replaced with a Nautel in 2006. The Harris AM H series transmitter has a pair of transistors on the audio driver board that were unique to that transmitter and no longer manufactured. There are no equivalent replacement parts. Once those transistors fail, the transmitter is done.
I really think that AM could make a comeback, but the following conditions need to be met:
Kill AM HD radio. Kill it dead.
Cut away the dead wood. Those stations that are not making money, have not made money and have no hope of ever turning a profit again. Most of these are owned by large consolidators that cannot yet afford to write off the bad investment. More and more will be spun off and given to MMTC and others. If they can make a go of it, good. If not, then the stations will go dark and eventually surrender their licenses. We have one like that around here that basically turns its transmitter on one day a year to avoid license forfeiture. That should stop, either they use it or lose it.
FM radio will continue to be the investment bank darling, in spite of lower and lower listeners and revenue. This will lead to more and more translators, HD radio, LPFM, and other things being shoehorned into an already crowded band, creating AM-like conditions on the FM band.
Those that can take on the challenge of an AM station should immediately begin looking at reducing maintenance costs. Directional antennas are money holes, if at all possible, get rid of the DA in favor of a single tower closer to town. Duplexing with another AM is a great way to save money and the costs of building a new tower. Using a taller tower, up to 190 electrical degrees, will daytime signal and reduce the radiation angle (vertical) of the tower, thus permitting better PSSA, PSRA, and or nighttime operation.
Local programming. Local sports, local politicians, local bands, local church services, local events, etc. Local.
This is a Bauer FB-5000J transmitter, stashed away in the corner of a transmitter site.
Bauer FB-5000J Medium wave transmitter
Sorry I can’t get a better angle on it, as I said, it is stuck in the corner.
I don’t know what vintage it is, it seems to be from the early 1960s or so as it has a low serial number. It ran as the main transmitter until the Harris Gates BC5H was installed in 1976. The transmitter is in beautiful shape, almost a museum piece. I don’t know if it still has all its original iron, as the modulation transformer may have contained PCBs and been disposed of. Otherwise, it is complete and tuned to 1,460 kHz.
I think the owner might be willing to donate it to a reputable organization, preferably a 501(c)(3).
In the time that I have been working as a broadcast engineer, I have seen some pretty unique transmitter sites. The aforementioned power plant, with the antenna mounted on a smoke stack. The more traditional AM station, is located in a swamp. Other stations both AM and FM combined into one antenna, etc.
WGDJ AM transmitter site
This is WGDJ, 1300 KHz, Albany, NY. It is located in what might be a swamp if we were not experiencing marginal drought conditions this summer. The transmitter is located along route 9J. It is a four-tower directional daytime, 10 KW, and a six-tower directional night time, 5 KW. Nothing spectacular, 90-degree towers, spaced 90 degrees apart. Since they are below 200 feet, they don’t need to be lit or painted, which is nice.
WGDJ directional antenna towers
The building and all the towers are on 20-foot-high steel stilts. The area is right next to the Hudson River and often floods in the springtime.
Back of WGDJ transmitter building
The transmitter site sort of reminds me of something I once saw at coastal radio stations WCC and KPH. They were located along saltwater bays.
Phaors with Nautel XR12 transmitter
The station signed on the air in 1963. Initially, it was a 5 KW daytimer only. They added night operation sometime in the seventies. Around 2006 or so, they went to 10 KW day, 5 KW night. The phasor is gigantic for a 5 KW station, or even a 10 KW station. I’ve seen smaller phasors on 50 KW directionals. It has a “Quakertown, PA” nameplate on it, which may be the forerunner of Phasetek. There is a rare art form to creating a functional, yet space economical phasor. Harris could sometimes pull it off, RCA did well, Kintronics seems to be the one of the top phasor makers today.
The main transmitter is a Nautel XR12, which has a very similar look as the V series FM transmitters. The backup transmitter is a MW5A, which, quite frankly scares me. The site was just recently air-conditioned, which means the MW5A transmitter was sucking swamp air through it for 25 years. I do not want to turn that thing on under any circumstances.
Nautel XR12 medium wave transmitter
All in all, the station has a pretty good signal into the capital city of New York. It nulls to the west, somewhat. Being on 1300, it doesn’t carry as far as some of the other class B AM stations like WROW 590 kHz, but it does alright.
After years of neglect, the station is making a bit of a comeback in the Albany market. They do a lot of local talk radio, which, when the other station is carrying almost all satellite syndicated talk, is making an impression. Being the state capital, there is a lot of fodder.
