Am transmitter site – Page 7 – Engineering Radio

Copper Thieves

If you are the type of person that drives around to transmitter sites and steals things; fuck you. You have no idea the problems you are causing to get a few extra dollars worth of scrap copper.

I have a feeling that most of these copper thefts can be attributed to out-of-town tower contractors removing old cellular equipment from towers. Notice, only the buss bar and copper ground wire is missing. They did not try to cut the transmission lines. In other words, they seemed to know what they were doing. I have noticed around here that when a particular contractor, employed by an unnamed large company that rhymes with glint, would work at a site, things would be missing afterward.

Perhaps it is just a coincidence. I have never been able to catch anyone pinching things. However, if this is you, and I catch you, you can rest assured that I will block you in with my car, then walk down the road and call the police.

Cleaning up

We removed this old Harris BC5HA transmitter recently:

It was installed new in 1974 when the station moved to this site from another one a few miles up the road. It functioned as a main transmitter until the BE AM5E was installed in late 2001. The BE transmitter, other than a power supply issue, has been a solid, reliable unit. Truth be told, the last time the BC5HA ran was in 2006. After that, the unit refused to run, and a bad modulation transformer was suspected. It was deemed not worth it to repair, thus, out the door it goes. We ended up giving it to a local contractor who scrapped the metal in lieu of payment for his labor. The only thing he could not take was the aforementioned modulation transformer, which is full of PCBs. That will have to be hauled away by a licensed disposal company.

Broadcast Electronics AM5E, WROW Albany, NY

We may be getting a second hand Nautel transmitter from another station as a backup transmitter. If that comes to fruition, then a couple of racks can be added to the end of the Phasor/transmitter/transmitter row and the wiring for the remote control and STL can be simplified and neatened up.

GE BT-25 Mystery transmitter site

Update: Thank you, Jim. The mystery site is KFIG (formerly KFRE) in Fresno, CA. This is what the transmitter building looks like from the outside today:

In the previously mentioned rescued file cabinet and along with the WFLY transmitter site construction information, I also found these interesting photographs:

I do not know what transmitter site this is. From the photo, it has a two-tower (guyed) directional antenna. It looks to me to be somewhere out west. The transmitter is a General Electric BTA-25 or BT-25, the same as the former WPTR and WCKY transmitter. I know this back hallway well:

Mystery AM transmitter site, back hallway of GE BT-25. Plate 9300

This is the transformer vault:

Mystery AM transmitter site, transformer vault. Plate 9297

Modulation transformer and three-pot plate transformer:

Mystery AM transmitter site, GE BT-25 modulation transformer. Plate 9299

I would say that these may be promotional photos, because of the spotlessly clean installation and the plate numbers on each print. Unfortunately, there are no pictures of the front of the transmitter, including the operator console.

Does anybody know where this is?

Bucket Trucks and Landing Craft

Hopefully, that title is descriptive enough:

ATT bucket trucks, , mobilized via landing craft to Pleasure Beach

We loaded a couple of ATT bucket trucks on a landing craft and waged an assault on Pleasure Beach. This is to finalize the repair work from Hurricane Sandy last year. The other factor is the construction taking place on the Island. The City of Bridgeport is constructing a park, which involves extensive repairs and renovations to the buildings. Construction vehicles driving under the old lines have ripped them down several times, thus repairing the lines on the new utility poles was necessary.

ATT is the LEC for the Bridgeport area, something they don’t do in most other parts of the country, from what I am told.

It took approximately four hours to complete this work and reload the trucks back on the landing craft. The boat itself looks like a slightly modified LCM (Landing Craft, Mechanized), which was produced from 1943 onward. This is an LCM-8.

WICC towers almost in line, I was about one second too late with this shot. This would be “down the bore” of the daytime pattern into downtown Bridgeport.

Another shot of the WICC towers. These were designed to hold up a horizontal T top wire antenna strung between the two of them. At some point in the early thirties, somebody realized that the tower itself could be excited as a vertical radiator and the antenna configuration was changed. Up until the mid-1970s there was a horizontal wire which supported a third wire element hanging between the two towers, making it a three-tower directional array. This was removed and it was then that the current phasor and two-tower DA-2 system was installed.

All in a day’s work.