Re: The Colonial Network-- what I found

[Donna Halper <dlh@donnahalper.com>]

Back in the summer of 2001, my husband and I found the exact neighbourhood 
in Squantum where the transmitter stood.  I posted this message at that time:

"SO it turns out the remnants of the WNAC transmitter are all over one 
neighbourhood in Quincy, and I have the pictures to prove it.  The shack 
still stands, as do various cement blocks, and whatever you call those 
things that held the guy wires-- wow, what a massive installation that must 
have been.  Lucky for me, when the tower was torn down and new homes built, 
the people who moved into them are still there, and were very amused that I 
wanted to traipse through their back yards with my husband to take pictures 
of something from the "good old days."  State of the art in 1931, obsolete 
by the late 40s, yet there were remants in FIVE different people's back 
yards!!!  I gotta say it's bizarre to see a flower garden in a neighbour's 
yard and in the midst of it are cement blocks from what used to be a 
transmitter site... talk about creative use of space and working around a 
problem!   One lady has the concrete base and the moorings for guy wires 
occupying a corner of her driveway-- and again, if you didn't know what the 
thing was, it now has flowers and shrubbery growing around it... "

And the other post about it from 2001 was this press release, written in 
1931by Shepard's publicity dept:

22 August 1931, from the files of Shepard Broadcasting Services

"WAAB's vertical half-wave radiator at Squantum, Mass is the first antenna 
of this type in the world to be used by a broadcasting station.  The whole 
tower is the antenna and rests on a porcelain insulator tested to a 
compression of 1,000,000 pounds.  The four guy wires, each of which carries 
a strain of 50,000 pounds, hold the tower in place.  The steel giant is 430 
feet high and weighs 30 tons.  A 75 foot pole at the top can be raised or 
lowered in tuning the antenna.  Six insulators in each guy wire weigh 450 
pounds each.  Guy wires are moored to four anchors, each of which contains 
50 tons of cement.  The tower is 18 feet square where the guy wires are 
attached and one foot square at the base.  The cromium ball at the top of 
the mast is twice the size of a man's head.  An aviation beacon of 2,000 
watts power will flash from the top-most part of the fabricated structure 
which will also carry stationary aviation lights.  WAAB alternates with 
WNAC as key station of the Yankee Network."