[BC] And Eugene, too: 50kw KPNW 1120 Off The Air - FIRE!

[RichardBJohnson at comcast.net]

When I was in the broadcasting business, even before I worked at a transmitter manufacturer, I helped two radio stations get back on the air after major outages. In the basement of WACE, I maintained a BC-610 transmitter, which was used as a 250-watt emergency rig. I had modified the modulator, using a UTC "Poly-pedence" modulation transformer and some AF feedback so it had excellent audio, plus added sockets for about any kind of broadcast-transmitter crystal you could think of.

When WHIL in Boston went down, I put it in the back of my station wagon, drove to the site, grabbed their spare RCA-oven crystal, tuned it up, and fed it out to the tower. They used this while they awaited the arrival of a new Collins 20V-3. Their old RCA rig had expired in a burst of flames, fed by poly-chlorinated-biphenyls.

When the station in Southbridge (WSRO?) when under water, I did the same thing, running the transmitter from a trailer (a.k.a tractor-trailer container), set up on blocks out of the water. Of course, all the stations had full-time engineers and we all knew each other's telephone numbers. We shared emergency help, had a good time, and never accepted any pay for our help because our employers were paying us anyway.

Earl Hewingson, Chief Engineer of WTYM in East Longmeadow, had even built their 5 kW transmitter so he was like the "Professor Emeritus" for radio in the area. He knew everyone and helped synchronize emergency activities. Even Nathan Hallenstein, the FCC engineer in charge of the radio district, the guy who signed my first FCC first-ticket, was involved in helping to keep stations on-the-air. I remember him helping to make a temporary shunt-feed to a station in Greenfield, MA (no longer exists) that had a cracked base insulator which was arcing.

This all changed when the NAB convinced the FCC that radio was a stable technology that did not require any engineers playing nursemaid. This then led to the accountants dismissing all technical people and starting what is called "on condition maintenance" where one uses the otherwise-wasted insurance to replace the equipment that burns up, goes downstream, or is stolen. They are trying this in aviation as I write. The idea is to use the insurance that all air-carriers carry so that it is not wasted. This requires a few hundred-million-dollar payouts now and again as airplanes fall out of the sky and relatives sue. 

Cheers,
Richard B. Johnson
Book: http://www.AbominableFirebug.com/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Cason" <scott at lagrange-com.com>

I don't understand why it's taking them so long to get back on the air.