WBZ/Westinghouse/Springfield, MA

[Cohasset / Hippisley]

-----Original Message-----
From: Dan.Strassberg
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2008 12:58 PM
Subject: Re: WBZ/Westinghouse/Springfield, MA

>I wonder whether the difference between the photo that Dale posted and
the one that Scott posted could be that the WBZ towers were reguyed
maybe half a dozen years ago....It is possible that there were only two sets
of guys on each tower originally....

During the winter of 66-67, while I was working for Bill Hauser and Glenn
Lahman in WBZ-TV's engineering department, an apparent problem developed at
Hull in the middle of a blizzard -- the remote phase monitor in the radio
control room at 1170 SFR started supplying the wrong numbers.  The radio
Chief Engineer (whose name now escapes me) and I had gotten to be friends,
so he invited me to ride out to Hull with him to see what the problem might
be.

While we were there I took the opportunity to go stand underneath the main
tower and look straight up.  I couldn't believe my eyes!  In the winds, the
tower undulated like a snake slithering along the ground.  I had my own rock
solid 40-foot ham tower at the time, so I was totally unprepared for the
amount of sideways motion allowed between the guy stations.  To the best of
my recollection, there were only two guy levels, with a fairly tall (100+
feet?) section above the upper guy bracket.  The CE assured me that the
motion I observed was "normal" for that tower....

Bud Hippisley