While In
Dayton Oh at Hamvention
2013 I attended a tour of the
WLW AM broadcast transmitter facility located in
Mason Ohio. WLW has kept a major piece of broadcasting history alive by keeping much of the old high power transmitter intact.
Back in 1932 WLW increased their power from 50,
000 watts to
500,000 watts. They were the only
AM broadcasting station in
America ever to operate at 500,000 watts. Much of the old transmitter still exists. It is really a high power amplifier with a high level modulator (
360,000 watts). The amplifier was driven from their existing 50,000 watt
Western Electric transmitter.
The system used 20
100,000 watts tubes ($1,600 each in 1932) that required water cooling that used a cooling pond located outside the station.
Tons, and tons, of hardware was required to achieve the 10 dB gain.
According to
WIKI: But
Crosley still wasn't satisfied. In 1933 he obtained a construction permit from the
Federal Radio Commission for a 500 kilowatt superstation, and he spent some $500,000 (at least $17 million in
2010 dollars using a
CPI conversion factor of 0.13[9]) building the transmitter and antenna.
Before the 500 KW went on the air, WLW installed a Blaw
Knox vertical radiator, or as we say today a vertical antenna. Back in those days a horizontal wire flat top antenna supported by two towers was common. Photos in the video show the impressive antenna farm at WLW.
The engineering was state of the art pushing the
1930s technology to achieve 500,000 watts. Operating the transmitter required a team of many engineers to bring it to life and control it while it was on the air. A simple ON-OFF switch did not exist!
Enjoy the tour of the facility and the history of this high power station.
Thanks to Jay, Geoff, and Ted of WLW for hosting the tour.
I will soon post another video the covers the collection of 50,000 watt transmitters that are also in the same building.
To learn more about this transmitter's history, please visit these sites.
Randy
RADIOWORLD article about this video
http://www.radioworld.com/article/wlw-and-the-youtube-ham-/220485
WLW
Archive Files
http://www.arizona-am.net/WLW/index
.html
Jim Hawkin's WLW page:
http://hawkins.pair.com/wlw
.shtml
History of WLW,
Cincinnati:
http://jeff560.tripod.com/wlw.html
WLW's
Big Arse
Transmitter:
http://www.ominous-valve.com/wlw.html
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WLW
WLW - A "
Super"
Station Tour:
http://www.oldradio.com/archives/stations/cinc/wlwpix
.htm
Not Just a
Sound: the
Story of WLW:
http://www.broadcasting101.ws/wlw-1.htm
- published: 19 Jul 2013
- views: 117018