If one considers paradise an FM35A. Going through another iteration of blown transmitter fuses for WEBE, Bridgeport, CT. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon examining the transmitter and found several interesting things:
Fresh arc tracks on the PA cavity and PA loading capacitor
The shoes and bars in the high-voltage contactor were severely pitted
One of the mains phases (middle) in the high voltage supply appears to be heating up, likely due to a loose connection.
Discolored wire on buss bar
I checked and re-tightened all of the mains connections. Apparently, this is an old problem, as the Allen screw was tight. Interestingly, the fuse that was blown was on the red phase, which is different from what it was last time.
I spent the afternoon filing and sanding off the arc track marks in the PA cavity. It is very important to file flat all sharp points that were the result of arcing. Any sharp points will induce corona. I also filed down all of the contacts in a high voltage contactor, which took a fair amount of time. These are soft copper shoes and bars that had so much pitting and carbon I wonder how they didn’t catch on fire. I filed them flat. We were back on the 35A transmitter at full power by 4:30 pm.
If this happens again, I will bring my megger out and check the insulation on the wire between the disconnect switch and the HV power supply.
When I left the site at 5:30, I felt like we did some good work.
We have received somewhere between 5-6 inches of rain in the last four days. That, coupled with the deep snowpack and the still-frozen ground has led to some flooding. The WLNA antenna array is located along the Peekskill Hollow Creek in northern Westchester County, NY. Back in 1980, it might have seemed like a good idea to locate an AM station in a tidal swamp along the Hudson River. I am sure the land was not that expensive and from an engineering standpoint, having a continually wet, partially brackish ground system may have seemed like a slam dunk.
Unfortunately, the idea never really panned out in the application. First of all, the neighbors had other ideas, fighting the radio station owners all the way to the NY State Supreme Court. Secondly, technically, it never lived up to expectations. The original non-directional antenna on 1430 was a 1/2 wave tower which by all accounts, worked very well. It did not, however, allow for nighttime service, which is why the new sight and array were sought. By the time the system was built, AM was already in steep decline and I doubt the owners ever recouped their investment.
Fast forward to today. All five base insulators are under water and the transmitter is off the air. These are pictures from last Wednesday after the first flood waters receded from the Monday/Tuesday storm. I imagine it looks worse this morning, although I don’t own a boat and won’t be wading out there to look.
Base insulator, tower 2 WLNA array, Peekskill, NY
This is tower two of the daytime antenna array. Clearly, it spent some time underwater. We cleaned off all the debris from all the tower bases. A far worse prospect is the ATU’s:
WLNA tower 1 ATU, Peekskill, NY
This is the Antenna Tuning Unit for tower 1, which is the reference tower for both the day and night arrays. The E.F. Johnson contactor in the bottom of the cabinet was fully submerged for an undetermined amount of time. The bottom of the unit is covered in fine silt. The high water mark is visible on the right side of the aluminum cabinet.
The contactor is going to need to be replaced, or at least rebuilt. The ATU cabinet will need to be washed out. There are two other ATUs that suffered the same fate.
WLNA antenna array, towers 3 and 5
This is the end of the catwalk next to the Peekskill Hollow Creek looking west towards the Hudson River. The water level reached the bottom of the catwalks and had receded about 4 feet when this picture was taken.
WLNA antenna array, tower 5, Peekskill, NY
Lookup east, upstream at tower 5.
WLNA antenna array looking north, Peekskill, NY
This is the antenna array looking north, with my back facing the creek. Tower one is the center tower, tower two is on the right and tower four is on the left. The daytime array consists of towers 1, 2, and 3 bearing 300 degrees. The night time array consists of towers 1, 4, and 5 bearing 335 degrees, so the array makes a big X in the swamp. More from the FCC database.
It is going to take a lot of work to clean out all these ATUs and repair the damage. Clean water is at least 1000 feet away. My question is; why bother? Once upon a time, this station was viable, well thought of in the community, etc. Now, I doubt anyone knows it is off the air. The current ownership over the last thirteen years did, what I’d like to call, a controlled flight into the ground. Axing staff, cutting maintenance, and generally neglecting the station. Why not take it dark for a while and figure out what to do with it? Likely somebody would buy it, even if for the land it sits on. Anyway, the grind continues…
Back many, many years ago, in a city far away, I was driving down the road and I flipped one of “my” stations on the air. The end of this song was playing:
The ending sounds an awful lot like a Moseley MRC-16 transmitter remote control’s return telemetry. When I heard that on the air, my first response was “HOLY SH*T! The telemetry is on the main channel!” A little voice in the back of my head said “That is not possible. How is that possible?” I grabbed the gigantic, then state-of-the-art Motorola bag phone and dialed the studio hotline, just before I hit the “send” button, the song faded out and the announcer came on back selling “Karma Police by Radiohead“
Wow. Radiohead? Karma Police? WTF?
I almost had a coronary. When I got home, I tried explaining this all to my then-girlfriend, who didn’t get it. Few do. At the time, making such an error would be very bad form indeed and likely open the unfortunate party to all sorts of snickering and finger-pointing at the next SBE meeting.
