[BC] Older transmitters in a new age

[Glen Kippel]

While I understand your concerns, I would have to tend to agree with 
Robert.  In 1977 I took over a station that had been running on a 
shoestring with third- and fourth-hand equipment.  Most of it was 
just plain junk.  The transmitter (FM) was a 1947 Westinghouse FM-10 
amplifier driven by a 1-kW RCA rig, operating at full-tilt because 
the Westinghouse driver was supposed to be 3 kW.  I found that the 
through-line wattmeter that was telling me the output power was 10 kW 
was wildly optimistic -- after sending it in for calibration, I found 
we were only making 7 kW.  And this thing was going off the air at 
least once per week.  I replaced it with a new AEL FM-25KE (in 
retrospect, probably not the best of choices) to get 16.3 kW TPO at 
the same AC power consumption as the old pile of junk.  When I built 
KHCS, I insisted on all new equipment.  I didn't have time to spend 
dinking around with stuff just to keep it running.  Second-hand 
equipment can be a false economy, unless your time is worth nothing.

On 2/20/07, Gary Glaenzer 
<<mailto:gglaenzer at todaysbestradio.com>gglaenzer at todaysbestradio.com> wrote:
"There is no good excuse for running  something that old"

Oh, give us a break

While some other party's justifications may not agree with your opinions on
the subject, a blanket statement such as above is nonsense.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Meuser" <<mailto:Robertm at broadcast.net>Robertm at broadcast.net>
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" < 
<mailto:broadcast at radiolists.net>broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 10:05 AM
Subject: Re: [BC] Re:1 5/8 foam coax


 > First it has been proved in the very smallest markets newer TXs save
 > money and pay for them selves. There is no good excuse for running
 > something that old. At the minimum your tubes will continue to be harder
 > to get,  will be of less quality, cost more and have a shorter life. All
 > that and you pay more for power and are not as loud as you could be.
 >
 > That being said, in the specific case given in the thread a  317B was
 > installed in 1992.   That design was replaced in 1966 but a much more
 > efficient design. Since that time newer technologies have replaced that.
 > So more than even age, we are talking about something that is three
 > design cycles old at the time of install. We are talking about something
 > that takes up much more space, uses much more power and requires much
 > more cooling than newer designs. Then after all that it does not
 > modulate nearly as well as newer designs.  Power consumption is a
 > significant cost factor at 50 kw.