Re: WSPR

[mwaters@mail.wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

>Michael Fitzpatrick wrote:
>According to today's West Springfield Record, A company called "Tower
>Ventures LLC" wants to construct a new 211' tower on Palmer Ave in West
>Springfield, MA. Part of the project involves, removing "Two all ready
>exsisting towers".  Well that means that they would be removing the 1939
>vintage self supporting WSPR towers! Yet I see no application to change
>WSPR's facilities. Could this mean the historic towers are illegally going
>away? Could WSPR be going off the air again?

        As you say, there's no application showing on the FCC database. My
amateur math shows the existing 100-degree towers are 215 feet. Maybe
they're putting up two new towers and somehow there's an error somewhere? I
have no idea how WSPR is doing financially, but, IMO, it's unlikely the
station would just go dark in the current market.

        If they do put in a new ground system with new towers, I'll be
curious to see if my theory is correct and their signal gets much better.
One of the existing towers was picked up and moved (either closer or
farther, I forget) to change the pattern when they went up to 5 kW days,
but the ground system was left just as it was. (I'm not making this up.)
And knowing the family ownership that had the station from the '30s until
the late '70s, my guess is that there are neat little rows of 1939 copper
dust out there now.