[BC] AM tower 9 feet of snow

[Chuck Lakaytis]

Every year the base of the antenna at KBRW-AM in Barrow gets covered with 
about six to ten feet of snow.

The VSWR changes hardly at all.  When spring arrives in June we just dig out 
the balls gap.


Chuck Lakaytis
Director of Engineering
Alaska Public Broadcasting, Inc.
135 Cordova Street
Anchorage, AK 99501
907 277 6300
907 277 6359 FAX
907 301 4339 Cell
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Rob Atkinson" <ranchorobbo at hotmail.com>
To: <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Monday, February 12, 2007 9:11 AM
Subject: Re: [BC] AM tower 9 feet of snow


> thanks mark; i guess snow isn't the problem I thought it might be.
>
> rob atkinson
>
>
> From: "Mark Humphrey" <mark3xy at gmail.com>
> Reply-To: Broadcasters' Mailing List <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
> Subject: Re: [BC] AM tower 9 feet of snow
> Date: Mon, 12 Feb 2007 12:03:49 -0500
>
> On 2/12/07, Rob Atkinson <ranchorobbo at hotmail.com> wrote:
>>What do you do at an AM in upper N.Y. state when the snow is 9 feet deep?
>>Anything at all?
>
> I lived in that area 25 years ago (the snow belt north of Syracuse)
> but don't recall any antenna problems that were simply caused by snow.
> However, at the AM station I took care of during college, we had
> trouble with ice forming around the tower base and pushing the
> "lightning gap" together, shorting out the tower.  Until we had a
> chance to improve drainage, I had to improvise an insulated spacer to
> hold the two sides of the gap apart.
>
> There was once an FM station located at the highest point of the Tug
> Hill Plateau, due east of Lake Ontario in the area that has been
> getting so much recent snowfall, but it only operated for three years
> before the owner gave up.  At that time, the site wasn't served by
> utility power; they had two Diesel generators on site and needed
> a12,000 gal fuel tank to make it through the winter.  I recently wrote
> the Wikipedia article about this "ghost station":
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WVBN
>
> Mark
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