tech stuff – Page 21 – Engineering Radio

WROW

WROW 590 KHz, Albany, NY is another one of those successful AM stations. They have a music format, which I would characterize as a blend between nostalgia and oldies. They do well in the Albany book and most importantly; make money. The Wikipedia entry is a little dated, as they have had a music format for over four years now. The low dial position helps, as I can get the station up near the Canadian border and most of the way down to Poughkeepsie during the daytime pattern operation, which is better than across-town WGY, 50,000 watts non-directional.

Here are a few pictures of the transmitter site:

Broadcast Electronics AM5E, WROW, Albany, NY

WROW main transmitter

WROW transmitter room; main and backup transmitters, phasor, equipment rack, etc.

The former backup transmitter for WROW-AM. This was moved from the original transmitter site, located a few miles north of the current transmitter site in Glenmont, NY. The current transmitter site was constructed in 1974.

Backup power

WROW antenna array. The station transmits with 5,000 watts daytime and 760 watts night time. The towers are slightly tall at 105 electrical degrees. It is hard to do tall towers at the low end of the dial because the towers get very tall. These are 149 meters (488 feet) tall.

Nautel V-10 repair

Not exactly sure how it happened, but one of our Nautel transmitters malfunctioned! It is a pretty rare event, so I thought the exclamation point was needed. One of the PA pallets went bad and the transmitter lost 1/2 a PA module. Since the TPO for this particular station is 7 KW, they remained on the air at full power. In the interest of staying on top of things, we fixed it anyway.

Diagnostics were simple:

Fault lights on the front of the transmitter observed
Press the status button to find out faults, which were Module D failed
To to module sub-menu, find Module D and discover Q1 disabled, and Q3 shutdown.
The problem is with Q3, order a new pallet from the manufacture

Upon removing the module, I did not see the damage at first:

Nautel V series FM transmitter PA module

It is board A3, which for this particular flavor transmitter is a Nautel Part number NAPA16-B. Once I replaced the defective module with a new one, I discovered what looks like a symptom of the greater problem:

Over to the left-middle-lower section of the board, R10 and R8 are burned open. These are surface mount 2-watt, 20-ohm resistors. A glance at the schematic shows that these are part of the bias supply. A quick set of measurements with a DVM shows that Q1 seems to be intact and not shorted. Interesting…

The question is: Is it worth trying to fix this board or should I just trash it an buy a new spare?

Update: Schematic diagram as requested:

Middle Aged Iron: Cetec/Bauer 701B transmitter

In service as a backup unit at WALL 1340 KHz in Middletown, NY:

WALL 1340 KHz, Middletown NY AM1A on air, 701B into test load

I believe the Cetec transmitter is from the early 70s. I wouldn’t really call it old, we have much older units in the field that are still in backup service. WALL itself has been on the air since 1942 from this site. The tower out back was replaced in the mid ’90s and is 147 degrees tall. It broadcasts the “True Oldies Channel” and is currently owned by Cumulus, soon to be Townsquare.

The site is also home to sister station WRRV (92.7 MHz) which has a side mounted antenna near the top of the WALL tower. We are currently reconnecting the CCA transmitter as the backup for WRRV. That unit is also from the early 1970’s.

WRRV WALL transmitter site, Middletown, NY

WRRV WALL transmitting tower, Middletown, NY

Computer guys…

Some guy posted this picture on Reddit:

In the comments, he gets blasted for being too neat and using wire ties. I know a lot of IT guys that are not very neat with their work and document nothing. This is a big problem in the industry and does not, contrary to popular belief, promote job security. I have walked into some very messy situations in wiring closets and rack rooms over the years. My solution is always the same; run some temporary wires for critical machines/functions, then get out the big wire cutters and start chopping.