The AM Forum

We were talking about the WLW 500KW transmitter on 2 meters tonight. I looked at the history and it looks like they still have all of their various transmitter since 1922 including the 500KW monster from the 1930's. Does anyone know if they have tours of the site either public or privately arranged? 

There is mention of other 500KW transmitters being made at the time although none made it to the air. One ended up in the UK. Are there any other examples still existing?

This site is not that far from Dayton.

Remember Eimac's very large tube ads (60's, '70's?) anticipating a select few megawatt AM  stations across the country?

Wonder what happened to the proposals and the back story?

Here's one.


klc

Very interesting history from the 500kw days. There were so many RFI issues local to the station and complaints from Canada and Mexico that the FCC ruled that 50KW was the max for AM Bcast.
Jim Hawkinds does nice stuff and here is a link to some pics

http://hawkins.pair.com/wlw.shtml

You can see youtube vids of the present day station and the transmitter building. The water cooling pond and the sleeping 500kw transmitter in another room. Seems a little dismantled or parts scrounged from it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaaRRGi-jRM&playnext=1&list=PL95B0AB9C8BEAE4D7&feature=results_main

Powerhouses abound, in the past and today.  Megawatt jobs are on commercial longwave throughout the world, mostly in Europe.

There are probably still a few on SW, though the programming is more delivered by streaming today due to power costs and RFR issues. 

SWLing has declined, but is it because of lack of listeners or lack of stations to listen to?  Chicken & egg.

What made the "Half a million in Mason" special is it was on MW.  AM BC was a fertile 'payground' in the 30's, and Crosley thought it a good idea to be able to sell time in any and every market with just one station.

BTW, a special sale price on a Western Electric 50kW in 1939 was only $92,700...

73DG

I used to live about 2 miles from the WLW transmitter site which is on Tylersville Rd in Mason, OH.  

The old VOA site, which had about 60 towers & 40 acres of curtain arrays, used to be about 1/2 mile down the way on Tylersville Rd.

Lots of RF was generated from that short stretch of real estate near Cincinnati.

Back in 1975 and early 1976 in the Ford administration, there was talk of allowing 10 or 12 of the clear-channel AM staions the permission to run 750 kW. There are a few places in the continental U.S. where no broadcast stations could be heard at night. Yellowstone National Park was one such location. I remember reading the NTIA wanted to be able to communicate everywhere in the U.S. if need be, and the 750 kW idea was their best idea at the time.

My wife, km8q and I had the chance to spend an afternoon at the WLW transmitter site a few months ago.

It was great experience seeing all the historic tools of the trade.

I don't think there are tours anymore, but you could try calling the station.

If there's interest, I'll post some pics.

Ken

Have tried listening to them in the car on the way home several nights this week, not much luck.  Can hear them fairly strong here in SE CT, but they are being strapped by digital broadband hash, is that coming off WOR on 710 in NYC?

The Eimac X2159 became the 8974 tetrode. They sold them for longwave and to the Saudi's where a megawatt medium wave rig was popular. When Harris expanded the DX solid state line to a megawatt, it was the end for the tube. I have a couple of them at work, left over from when someone were running them at ~50 Mhz with single pulses. Big red fat fire hydrants....

No stateside radio transmitters used them for broadcast.

Yes, WOR's digital sidebands kind of wipe out WLW in the northeast. So much for clear channel! It is not too bad in Philly most of the time. I would have expected a better signal here thought. Some of the Canadian stations (900khz) are much stronger.

IMHO digital broadcasting has ruined DX listening on the BCB.  When it was only permitted during daylight hours there was hope, but with it on the air at night --- its a horrible mess!

US stations maybe not, but Canadian yes but I guess it had to be U.S.

When I was in the Air Force in the early 1970's I was stationed at Minot AFB, Minot North Dakota.  I remember listening to CKCK Moosejaw/Regina Saskatchewan.  Although Yellowstone would be farther from Regina I would guess that it would come in o.k. there.

My 8 months of technical schooling was at Chanute AFB, downstate Illinois.  After going to Minot it was comforting to still be able to listen well to WLS and WBBM at night.  That made the transition smoother.  I remember a Utah or Nevada station came in well also.

I can also hear the WOR digital hash down on 690 and up on 730, although some of that might be due to a broad IF in the car radio...how wide are they allowed to be? No such thing as nighttime clear channel reception anymore...

I used to be able to listen to KYW 1060 Philadelphia daytime quite a ways west of Bloomsburg on I-80  while traveling to and from Ohio but on our latest trip they were wiped out in that region by adjacent channel sidebands.

It was because of Arthur C. Clarke: his 1945 article, entitled "Extra-Terrestrial Relays — Can Rocket Stations Give Worldwide Radio Coverage?"¹, published in Wireless World magazine, was the first widespread discussion of geostationary satellites.

Shortwave was popular when I was young, although it was forbidden to actually listen to any opinion that didn't conform to Joe McCarthy's list of approved thoughts: rabble rouser that I am, I always enjoyed the knee-jerk reactions I could get from the local yokels by mentioning something that I heard on Radio Moscow. Alas, time moves on. Back then, multi-megawatt transmitters cranked out the party line from the Ural mountains or Alaska or wherever. Now, anyone who wants to watches CNN or Aljazeera or Nile TV or ATV News or the BBC just by changing channels on their TV.

You know, when I was a kid, I didn't understand why someone would try to broadcast to people half a world away. It was fun to listen to, of course, but I didn't get the reason that anyone would spend time to reach me. Even now, it seems like it was all an exercise in vanity, and I wonder if Radio Moscow or Radio Liberia or Radio <wherever> ever changed anyone's mind about anything. I have grown up, and old, and there's no magic in the airwaves anymore: no "London calling", or someone talking in French like my grandmother used to, or any sense that there was a wider world than the one I was in.

FWIW. YMMV.

Bill, W1AC

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geostationary_orbit)

It wasn't satellites that killed SW BC, it was the Internet. No RF involved.