General – Page 16 – Engineering Radio

Transmitter site re-hab

One of the reasons for the recent lack of posts; I have been busy rehabilitating several transmitter sites for various broadcasting companies. These are mostly FM transmitter sites and vary in power from one kilowatt to twenty-six kilowatts ERP. I enjoy project work, but I have been driving hither and yon, racking up 27,000 miles on my new car since last August.

Subaru Crosstrek XV at remote transmitter site, somewhere in rural New York

So, here is one transmitter site that I just finished; WFLY, Albany, New York. Removed Collins 831F2 transmitter which was functioning as a backup and installed new Broadcast Electronics FM20S. The Continental 816R2 is becoming a little bit long in the tooth for a main transmitter, being new in 1986. Thus, it was time to install a new unit, and I like the Broadcast Electronics solid state and tube designs. With the BE AM and FM solid-state units, their simplicity is their beauty. We service many BE transmitters, some are thirty years old and are still supported by the manufacturer.

WFLY transmitter building, New Scotland, NY

The BE FM20S transmitter is actually two FM10S cabinets combined with one controller. Each cabinet requires a 100 amp three-phase mains connection. This station’s TPO is 11.5 KW, so there is plenty of headroom in case the owners ever want to install HD Radio or replace the three-bay antenna with a two-bay unit.

WFLY main transmitter, Broadcast Electronics FM20S

In transmitter cabinet two, above the exciter is room for HD equipment.

I also reworked the coax switches to provide an easier implementation of the backup transmitter. Basically, the main transmitter is on the main antenna, and the backup transmitter is on the backup antenna. We can move the second coax switch to test the backup into the dummy load. We can move the first coax switch to change antenna feeds.

Pretty standard setup.

We moved the Collins 831F2 from Albany to here to replace another, dead Collins unit at WKXZ in Norwich, New York. This transmitter is forty years old but still runs reliably. Of course, doing this work in the dead of winter added a degree of difficulty to the job, as the roads to both the WFLY and the WKXZ transmitter sites needed work to make them passable for a moving truck. In the end, we used a skid steer with forks on it to get the transmitter up the final hill and into the small WKXZ transmitter building.

Collins 831F2 transmitter, WKXZ, Norwich NY

The WKXZ transmitter building interior is floor space challenged. It is located next to a former TELCO microwave site which has a guyed tower.

Drone footage of tower demolition

Watching a tower drop from a different perspective:

Looks like a World Tower Utility 80.

Brother, could you help a pirate out?

It is not news that the FCC has its hands full with the FM pirates in the NYC area, particularly Brooklyn. On any given night, as many as thirty unlicensed signals can be heard, jammed between the commercial and non-commercial broadcasters in the FM band.

I am quite sure that other parts of the country have similar pirate problems. I do not see the FCC getting much more funding for enforcement purposes.

John Anderson asks; perhaps a pragmatic approach?

For most engineers, this will be a non-starter. Engineers (and other technical people) tend to see things in binary; on/off, right/wrong, black/white, legal/illegal, working/broken, etc. It is the nature of logic and dealing everyday operating status’ of technical equipment. A transmitter that is halfway working is broken. There is very little grey area in the interpretation of these things, nor is there very much human element. One cannot reason with a broken piece of equipment; it is to be either repaired or replaced.

Helping a person engaged in what is ostensibly an illegal activity, no matter how pragmatic such help might be, or how just or helpful the illegal activity may be to the community, would not be something that most radio engineers that I know would want to take part in.

Truth be told, some good might come from helping pirate broadcasters clean up their act. Over modulation, spurious emissions, and poor quality transmitters all create bigger problems for everyone else. The moral dilemma is what type of help to offer and can this or any technical advice then be used to make bigger and better pirates.

I don’t know, but it may be time to start thinking about things like this…

Well, crap

Radio Shack Store, Courtesy of Wikipedia

Radio Shack (AKA, RadioShack, The Shack, Tandy Corporation, Realistic, Optimus, etc) appears to be filing for Bankruptcy if the Wall Street Journal and Reuters is to be believed. I see the words “private equity firm” in the article, that does not bode well.

Radio Shack of late has become a glorified cell phone store. It used to be one could get some emergency repair parts, an FM antenna, or a CB radio as the need arose. As a young lad, it was fun to poke around and look at the various radio kits and other assorted fun things. My first shortwave radio was a kit from Radio Shack; assembly finished just in time to hear the Vatican Radio’s announcement that Pope Paul IV had died.

What happened to Radio Shack is fairly typical; what was once a niche market for hobbyists and experimenters tried to go mainstream and lost their core customers. There are still plenty of electronics hobbyists out there, look at the Amateur Radio community as an example. Yet, that market was abandoned for the more lucrative general consumer electronics market. Unfortunately, Radio Shack never produced high-quality stuff, so their reputation in the consumer electronics market was not that great. Thus, not being known for anything, they slowly slipped into irrelevance.