...and speaking of anniversaries...

[Dan.Strassberg]

Wasn't WCDB on Channel 29 in the Mohawk Valley, near Amsterdam? Didn't
it go off the air when Channel 10, WTEN, went on the air from the
1350' tower in Vail Mills, just south of the Sacondaga Reservoir west
of Amsterdam or Gloversville? CapCities got the FCC to drop in Channel
10 there because the spot was just 170 miles from Rochester,
Providence, and either Ottawa or Montreal (wherever the Canadian
channel 10 was). Channel 10 later moved to the Helderbergs when the
FCC granted applications for short-spaced VHFs. If CapCities had
realized the Channel 10 possibility when they built Channel 29 (I
don't think they did), they could have built only one tower--the one
in Vail Mills--and they could have put the Channel 10 antenna on the
Channel 29 tower. I don't think it worked that way, though.

-----
Dan Strassberg (dan.strassberg@att.net)
eFax 1-707-215-6367

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Matthew Osborne" <mattosborne1976@yahoo.com>
To: "Scott Fybush" <scott@fybush.com>; "Dave Doherty"
<dave@skywaves.net>
Cc: <boston-radio-interest@bostonradio.org>
Sent: Thursday, June 11, 2009 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: ...and speaking of anniversaries...


>
> Just a couple clarifications from a local...
>
> WTRY did indeed have an FM partner again well before the 1990s.
> Although I don't know the exact date, WTRY-FM 106.5 signed on the
> air sometime in the 1960s or 70s, probably from the same Helderberg
> Mountain transmit site.  If anyone here is more clear on this
> history, please correct me - it started out as mainly a simulcast of
> the AM, until the FCC cracked down on this.  They then gradually
> became a Beautiful Music - Easy Listening station in the 70s,
> changing call letters to WHSH (personal side note - one of my first
> clear memories of hearing anything on the radio was of my
> grandfather listening to WHSH, and hearing an announcer give those
> call letters).  This lasted until 1980, when they switched to rock
> and became WPYX (PYX 106).  Until just the last couple years, their
> studios were still at the AM 980 transmitter site on WTRY Rd just
> off Route 7 in Niskayuna (known by some as 'the bunker').
>
> Dave, I am originally from Broadalbin, and have always wondered
> exactly where the old WCDB tower was located (nobody I ever talked
> to there even knew what I was talking about when I would ask them
> about it).  Would you be able to tell me where exactly that was?
>
>                                           Matt Osborne
>                                           Schenectady, NY
>
>
> --- On Wed, 6/10/09, Dave Doherty <dave@skywaves.net> wrote:
>
>> My Dad worked for a short time in the late 40's at WTRI-FM,
>> which was co-owned with WTRY (980, now WOFX)) and spawned
>> WTRI-TV, which I think was a UHF that eventually morphed
>> into channel 13. WTRI-FM went off the air in the early 50's,
>> and AFAIK WTRY didn't have an FM partner again until the
>> consolidation movement in the 90's. In the late 1950's, I
>> went to the WTRI-FM site on Heldeberg Mountain with my Dad,
>> and I recall the tower sections stacked on the ground with
>> the weeds growing up over them.
>>
>
>
>