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Author Topic: some ancient history about the Raytheon (ex N3WWL and a host of others)  (Read 3487 times)
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N3DRB The Derb
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« on: February 15, 2010, 05:37:20 AM »

I found this tidbit from the Mishkind broadcast mail reflector. from fybushcom:

Quote
Sorry about the grain on this week's picture, but we had to do a little digital enhancement to bring out the important element of this interesting image from September, 2001.

You're looking at Rockwell Science Hall on the campus of Grove City College in Grove City, Pennsylvania, a sleepy little burg about 90 minutes north of Pittsburgh and south of Erie. Today, Grove City is probably best known to drivers on I-79 as the home of a big outlet mall - but for radio history buffs, it deserves mention for a different reason: WSAJ radio.

The calls alone (part of an early run of sequentially-assigned ones) should serve as an indication that this station dates back to the very earliest days of radio licensing, 1921 to be exact (and even then, it was the successor to an amateur station, 8CO.) If that's not enough, check out that longwire "cage"-type antenna! Yes, that's the mighty WSAJ(AM) on 1340, still carrying on its 80-plus year legacy of broadcasting, a few hours a week at least.

WSAJ, you see, is the remnant of an ancient share-time arrangement with what's now WOYL on 1340 in Oil City, 40 or so miles to the northeast. WOYL used to be WKRZ, and it would sign off for a few hours on Sunday mornings and two nights a week when WSAJ took the air for an hour or so with its broadcasts from Grove City, running all of 100 watts into that wire.

The share-time is long since gone, with both sides agreeing that 100 watts from Grove City really wasn't interfering with 250 (and later 1000) watts in Oil City. (And that, friends, is why WOYL is one of a handful of directional graveyard-channel AM signals...) But WSAJ continued to be only an occasional voice on the AM dial, especially after the debut a decade or so ago of WSAJ-FM on 91.1, transmitting full-time from those two bays behind the old wire cage antenna.

When we took this picture a little more than a year ago, WSAJ(AM) was completely silent and had been for a while, since the demise of its antiquated (installed in 1950, and not necessarily brand-new even then) GE transmitter. While a new LPB transmitter was already in place inside Rockwell Science Hall at that point, the resumption of broadcasts on the AM side awaited repairs to that old antenna, which were finally completed in the spring of 2002. So WSAJ carries on, and if you're close to the campus on the right Sunday morning or weekday evening, you too can tune in to the continuation of this very long-running bit of Pennsylvania radio history.

So, the RA-250 was WKRZ's primary until they got a power increase to a KW, whereupon the RA-250 went back up or became expendable. 

WSAJ's AM license was surrendered back to the FCC in 1996.  Sad  The article describes a old GE transmitter that went belly up and had been installed since 1950 - I'd bet that transmitter was a BT 20A since it had a switchable low power 100 watt setting.

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WA3VJB
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« Reply #1 on: February 15, 2010, 08:38:57 AM »

And of course you ALSO have had a BT-20A as I recall. Would have been bizarre if both those came from the same station, eh?  The "AM" emblem that you're using as your avatar is from the front door of the GE.

But the GE, a 1946, came from the Armstrong Transmitter Emporium in 1992, and originally was from a station in New Jersey.

I moved the GE along within a few months of dragging it back to Maryland, when I got the Collins 300-G from WYRE Annapolis.



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k4kyv
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Don
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« Reply #2 on: February 15, 2010, 10:02:12 AM »

Does the article carry a link to the photos  mentioned in the text?
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Don, K4KYV                                       AMI#5
Licensed since 1959 and not happy to be back on AM...    Never got off AM in the first place.

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flintstone mop
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« Reply #3 on: February 15, 2010, 11:33:39 AM »

AND soon to be ex-KC4MOP...........ha! Well, not HA!! that is going to be a project to move that big heavy box!!

Phred
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Fred KC4MOP
N3DRB The Derb
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« Reply #4 on: February 15, 2010, 05:44:35 PM »

here's the link to the story wih the one picture kinda showing the cage antenna. I doctored it an it shows much better but I dont think fybush would like me posting it here.

http://www.fybush.com/site-021024.html

I made a inquiry and found out that the General Electric TX used in the article has been traded away to another station 3 years ago. So it might not be in a landfill yet. I may make an attempt to track it down at some point after the current transfer is under control. 
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k4kyv
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« Reply #5 on: February 15, 2010, 06:11:46 PM »

So the demise of the station in L.A. was not the last of the surviving AM broadcast wire antennas, after all.

http://www.fybush.com/sites/2009/site-091030.html
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Don, K4KYV                                       AMI#5
Licensed since 1959 and not happy to be back on AM...    Never got off AM in the first place.

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N3DRB The Derb
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« Reply #6 on: February 15, 2010, 06:40:52 PM »

well, I think the WSAZ was profiled in 2002, and the other one in LA was in 2006. so that one in LA was the last one. Grove City was a cage and the one out west was a flat-top.  What killed me was that this cage antenna seems to have had been installed when the station came on air in 1922 and used continuously with repair intervals in between until 2004 when it when dark.

That antenna, or later patched together versions of it, was installed on that building for 82 years.  Shocked

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