Friday, May 3, 2019

Repairing a 4 Tower AM Radio Station Transmission Site and its challenges

One of the stations I take care of WCNS 1480 AM /97.3 FM  In Latrobe  Pa. recently had an issue where it would not transfer from Night power to Day Power
due to an issue in one of the towers transmitter huts.

Seems one of the relays was stuck on the old C.S.P. tower controller that was made in Doylestown Pa. in the mid 80s for the station .

After some troubleshooting I determined a Relay which transfers the towers from 500 watts Omni-directional  pattern to 1000 watts north- south directional  had blown itself apart in Tower 1#
and this gear looks like something out of Frankenstein laboratory.


damaged unit

good unit

inside a transmitter hut

4 tower controller
OK no problem call C.S.P.  well they are no more they where purchased by a company called Phasetek I found out .
So I called up and talked to a nice gentleman named Kurt who told me the relays where still available . So I sent him a picture what I needed and my customer sent them $750.00 and we where in business in couple days in mean time locked the station in low power .
Unfortunately they shipped wrong voltage coils as voltages have changed over time from 120 VAC  I was using to 230 volts  but they sent correct ones out immediately and got it corrected

The other unfortunate part is over the years all manuals etc got lost at WCNS and the same happened with the manufacturer so its a case of having to reverse engineer all the wiring and controls to fix it when it goes down but thats part of the fun of my job and why I love doing what I do troubleshooting and re-engineering  equipment and keeping it running.

Looking for a rewarding Career Look into Broadcast Engineering