WCVT (101.7 Stowe, VT)

[Cohasset / Hippisley]

On Dec 13, 2011, at 6:52 AM, Dan.Strassberg wrote:

> I don't know whether the FCC yet
> allowed remote-controlled operation of AM transmitting facilities but
> it did not appear that there was a soul around. Maybe the little Class
> IVs (then maxed out at 250W-U and all ND-U) were allowed remote
> control before more powerful stations--many of them directional at
> least part of the time--were granted the privilege.

Wasn't the timing of the change-over to allowing remote control dependent on whether the station was non-directional?  In the mid-50s I believe the sole AM station (then WMBO, now apparently WWLF, ND1-U) in my hometown (Auburn, NY) may have been remote controlled.   At the time it ran 1000 watts daytime and 250 watts nightime — from a single tower at its present site.   But WHEN (620 kHz, 5000 ND-day and 1000 D-night)) with four towers in the Syracuse suburb of Liverpool required a transmitter engineer until 1960.  When I was a summer replacement engineer for them in 1960 they had just switched over to having the transmitter metering read by the studio control room engineer in downtown Syracuse, where I was assigned.  In fact, I had to go to the Boston FCC office in the spring of 1960 while at college to take my FCC 1st Phone license exam as a prerequisite for actually taking the job that summer.

Bud Hippisley