Re: Ginsburger meets Collins transmitter

[Dan Strassberg <dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net>]

At 10:09 AM 10/26/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Martin J. Waters wrote:
>>         Now it can be told: That Collins transmitter that Ron has in Fla.
>> was never installed at WMEX as a transmitter. It was used only to cook the
>> Ginsburgers . . . <g>
>
>Well, truth be told, I indeed used to warm my lunch sandwiches on the
>driver side of the transmitter. We don't have a microwave in the
>WYHI/1570 commissary.
>
Did you say that the TX was installed at WYHI in 1982? If so, and if it had
ever actually been installed at WMEX's Squantum facility (as opposed to
having been ordered by WMEX but never delivered), it never made the trip to
Waltham (to what is now the WNRB TX).

I got a tour of that TX building (I think the calls may have been WMRE at
the time) while the station was preparing to return to the air in 1987 after
a period of silence. (The calls after the sign-on were WNRB, the current
calls.) My memory is fuzzy, but I seem to recall seeing two 50 kW TXs in the
building (only one of which was installed) and a 5 kW, which, if memory
serves, was a Collins. The 5 kW TX WAS installed and was the backup.

WITS moved from Squantum to Waltham in 1981. Before the CP was granted to
move the TX, the station had also applied to modify its facilities in
Squantum. They were going to install a separate 50-kW day pattern with
better null fill-in to the southwest, and keep the old 50-kW day pattern as
the CH pattern. In other words, WITS would have been one of those relatively
rare stations that operated DA-3. But the night signal had become so bad in
most of the market as a result of the construction of the State St South
office complex just to the west of the Squantum site, that a move--at least
of the night site--was mandatory.

My guess at the chronology of the TXs at the WNRB Waltham site is that the
50 kW main was new (or new to the station) at the time of the move. The 5 kW
was the old main night TX and was moved to Waltham shortly after Squantum
signed off. It was installed in Waltham and became the auxilliary. The old
main day made the move to Waltham but, unless Communicom actually installed
it, it may be sitting there, unconnected, even as we speak. The Waltham TX
building was flooded in either 1995 or 1996 at just about this time of year.
If that 50 kW TX was there and had not been installed, it probably suffered
serious water damage that most likely was never repaired. 

- -------------------------------
Dan Strassberg (Note: Address is CASE SENSITIVE!)
ALL _LOWER_ CASE!!!--> dan.strassberg@worldnet.att.net
(617) 558-4205; Fax (617) 928-4205

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