Installing another couple of these stations recently in the New York/Canadian border region. In this case, WTKJ-LD now transmitting from Cape Vincent, NY. This is owned by Sagamore Hill broadcasting and is retransmitting the NBC affiliate from Watertown, NY.
This is a pretty simple set up; BE 600 Watt UHF TV transmitter, Pro Television Exciter, 6 pole Dielectric Filter, and an 5 panel UHF antenna.
The shelter was made by Broadcast Electronics, it is somewhat small, but serviceable.
The LG window unit works well enough to keep the shelter cool. The transmitter runs at about 35% efficiency. The TPO is 470 watts, thus the transmitter puts out about 300 watts of heat into the room continuously.
The local cord cutters can get the following channels:
| 19.1 | 1080i | DD5.1  | WVNC-NBC | |
| 19-2 | 480i (w) | DD2.0 | Antenna TV | |
| 19-3 | 480i (w) | DD2.0 | ION | |
| 19-4 | 480p (w) | DD2.0 | Grit | |
| 19-5 | 480p (w) | DD2.0 | Bounce TV | |
| 19-6 | 480p (w) | DD2.0 | Court TV | |
| 19-7 | 480i (w) | DD2.0 | QVC | |
| 19-8 | 480i (w) | DD2.0 | SonLife | |
The weather up here is great! Cape Vincent is a nice small village with some decent local businesses. Unfortunately, summer is their main focus and many of them have closed down for the season. Still, there is a decent cup of coffee and the local market has a deli section that makes good sandwiches.
That is a very neat and tidy transmitter room. I hope I’m wrong in your case, but window AC units with longevity seem to be a thing of the past.
Are they retransmitting the OTA signal of the Watertown station?
I really like that area of NY. I was up not far from there in Ogdensburg about three years ago during the summer. The people are friendly, it’s a scenic, and just an enjoyable part of NY.
Barry;
…window AC units with longevity seem to be a thing of the past.
The same can be said for almost all appliances these days. The program feed comes to the site on fiber, so no OTA.
Mike, it is really nice here right now. I was here last February, and it was less hospitable. Ogdensburg is a pleasant small city, I recommend the Sherman Inn if you are feeling nostalgic for some elementary school memories.
“Longevity” is a relative term. I’ve had Midea “U-shaped” MAW08U1QWT 8000BTU window unit A/C’s in my house for a while now. Some for three years, one for four, each year they’re usually in the windows from April until Sept/Oct. They get moldy if you don’t change out the drum fan every season but a less-dusty environment might be more kind in that realm. These are inverter-style so they work reasonably well in cool-but-not-cold ambient temp situations, too.
But generally speaking (mutters “the client is always right”) I wouldn’t put a window unit AC into service at a transmitter site without two conditions:
1. It’s dirt simple / tool-free to replace it. And I’d buy like four of the damn things once I found a model I liked and store them on-site for easy changeout.
2. Have a dual-hose (closed loop) portable HVAC on-site as well. Something in the approx 14000 BTU range. That way if/when your window unit ices up, you still have SOME cooling that won’t be negatively affected by chilly ambient outdoor temps.
Obviously, of course, it’s better to have a proper split-unit HVAC that has a low-ambient kit and, ideally, can provide heat as well as cooling. But it’s *possible* to make a window-unit approach work reasonably well for several years and for considerably less money.
At a station I worked for (in the South) HVAC maintenance was as big an item as everything else. The studio lights didn’t help either. I keep hearing that song “Hot Summer Nights” in the back of my head.
300W in a space that small will heat up fast if the wall unit dies.
Will the client consider an over-temp alarm of some sort, maybe connected to an app to wake up the station engineer at an inconvenient hour? 😉
Aaron; Everything you said is correct. They may end up with a split unit if this window unit does not do the job. I think it will be okay for at least a year or two. I am actually a little concerned with the site not staying warm enough in the winter, given it’s location. If it gets too cold, the exciter will unlock and shut the transmitter down.
Lou; I think HVAC maintenance will consist of vacuuming out the indoor air filter every so often and going to the Home Depot to buy a new window unit when this one fails.
Geoff; there is a web based monitoring system that will issue alarms for over and under temperature, power failure, open shelter door, loss of transport stream, etc. Fortunately, I am not included in those who will be awakened.
I’ve been watching the debate over ATSC 3.0 and specifically the DRM bit and I had this idea in the back of my head that the broadcasters simply were OK with ditching the nerd variety of cord cutters who want DVR functionality, the ability to integrate OTA media into their media server, and so forth OR that the OTA audience overall was too small for them to care about (they are pushing for a rapid shutdown of 1.0), so seeing that there’s investment going on in LPTV repeaters makes me feel a little hope for the future of “true” broadcast TV (encrypted and requiring the internet to function is not “true” broadcast, IMO).
Anyhow, it’s neat to see how tiny the whole setup is. This kind of reminds me of how DAB is going over in the UK. I wonder if we’ll see people making “multichannel in a shed” systems that would allow all regional stations to just share common resources for their LPTV repeaters?
I also wish the US adopted DAB, it seems like such a wonderland of interesting content where that won out over totally proprietary systems.
Oh, total minor nitpick on the site – if you ever go WP theme shopping, I would love to see one that lets me see the full-size image w/o having to right-click and “open in new window”. Those of us that are just bystanders to the profession are a nosy lot, you know…
CSS; I think the cord cutting OTA gang is growing as cable companies continue to ramp up their service fees. ATSC 3 had some real promise; there are very good technical reasons to move from 8VSB to COFDM modulation, replace horizontally polarized antennas with circular or elliptical polarization, etc. Unfortunately, the wide spread roll out of DRM is mind boggling. Excessive greed, it seems, has turned the entire system into a steaming pile of dog poo…
Also, I genuinely appreciate the input on the WP theme. This is the default theme that comes with the package, but I will keep my eye open for something better.