old WBUR tower torn down

[Aaron Read]

There are, well WERE, two towers on the BU campus.  One is the Law 
School tower on top of the actual LAW building (that's the proper 
capitalization in BU parlance), which is at the west end of Bay State 
Road, next to Marsh Chapel and the Library...also right next to Storrow 
Drive.  There's a six bay antenna up there on an actual tower-tower on 
the roof, it's notable for it's remarkably small guy-wire footprint (out 
of necessity) given the height.  I've talked to Mike LeClair (WBUR CE) 
about this tower a fair bit over the years, and I remember watching the 
crew renovate the tower (mostly replacing fittings and whatnot) while 
working at WBUR's current studios (890 Comm Ave) back in 1998.  There's 
a reason there's no radomes on that array (or any other antennas, 
really) - the tower couldn't take the windload/weightload...although I'm 
told it's perfectly safe at the level it's at now.

That array is WBUR's old primary, and now aux site.  Has been since they 
moved to Needham/Newton (I think to FM-128 but I always screw those up) 
back in the early 1990's, IIRC.  Maybe the late 1980's.  I remember it 
was standard policy to fire up the aux site once a month to make sure it 
worked properly, and that we had to wait two minutes from startup for 
the filaments to warm up properly.  Mike told me that whenever they'd 
fire up the aux, they'd get calls from downtown listeners asking why the 
signal suddenly got so much better!  :-)  Heh, 50kW ERP of FM from LAW 
certainly covers downtown Boston and Cambridge GREAT, but the Needham 
tower is much better for overall coverage of the region.

Come to think of it, that was before WBUR's HD transmitter went in, so I 
wonder if that old tube beast is still there or if it was finally 
retired?  I know it was used when the HD transmitter was installed a few 
years back, and again when the new DA for WBUR at Needham/Newton was put 
in about 2-3 years ago.

Anyways, the tower that was taken down was on top of the COM building 
(College of Communication...formerly known as the School of Public 
Communication/SPC and before that known as the School of Public & Radio 
Communication/SPRC) at 640 Comm Ave, next door to the three-spired dorm 
Warren Towers at 700 Comm Ave.  That was, WAY back in the day, the 
original tower for WBUR's transmitter - before the LAW tower was built. 
  But it hasn't been used for anything since WBUR moved their studios to 
890 Comm Ave (current home) from 630 Comm Ave (which is technically part 
of 640's building, but had a separate address so the USPS would send 
WBUR's mail straight to WBUR staff instead of running it through BU's 
mail system).  Prior to that move, there was a microwave STL dish up 
there, out to Needham/Newton...and an old two-way whip that I think was 
police or fire, but wasn't in use.

FWIW, the old WBUR studios (and a little of their offices) in the "630" 
part of the third floor are now the campus/web-only station's: WTBU. 
But they use 640 Comm Ave as their address because of the campus mail 
connection.  The whole WTBU-at-640AM-now-in-640-Comm-Ave is a 
coincidence; WTBU used the old 640 AM CONELRAD frequency for its 
carrier-current transmitters long before the COM building was the COM 
building (it used to be a car dealership way back in the day, and until 
1997 had the old automobile lift still in place as a freight elevator). 
   Prior to WTBU being in COM, they were in the basement of the Myles 
Annex dorm (former Graham Jr. College - I know I'm misspelling that), 
and before that in a different place in the main Myles Standish dorm, 
and before that in a now-demolished space in the GSU Student Union where 
the ballroom and pipe organ now are.

-- 

----------------------------------------------------------------
Aaron Read                  |  Finger Lakes Public Radio
friedbagels@gmail.com       |  General Manager (WEOS & WHWS-LP)
Geneva, NY 14456            |  www.weos.org / www.whws.fm