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A transmitter site that can float!

No, the coordinates were true at one point....When the station signed on (as WRIZ) in the 60s, they advertised as "10,000 Salt Water Watts" in Broadcasting Yearbooks. But yes, the array was on Biscayne Bay, in the water.

The towers were pretty much leveled by Andrew, but were in use until then. Whatever was left when the hurricane hit was cleaned off. I can't remember now if the bases are still there.

Insofar as "hard to reach transmitter", I work with people who worked at WRHC in the 80s, and yes, they had to use a boat (docked near the Seaquarium), to access the TX site. At one point, there was someone who was actually "camped out" at the site.
 
Its so weird, growing up in Miami and seeing their logo on all the yellow taxi cabs. Too bad we no longer see their logo and their call letters appear in the ratings.
 
I babysat the place back in the early nineteen eighties, and then again toward the end of that decade. It did not float!
Manned 24/7, every Saturday morning and Tuesday afternoon, a small boat would take one guy out there and bring the other one back to dry land. When evacuated during hurricanes, the station remained off the air. We were powered with either of two 60Kw Detroit Diesel (GM) generators in the day and a 21.5Kw diesel generator at night. STL in those pre-cellular days happened at 900Mhz. Two telephones were in use, a UHF fixed point to point (like rural radio service) unit with unlimited time plus a VHF IMTS unit for emergency use only. We brought all our own food and water on the boat. Choppy in the late afternoon, the early morning water looked like a solid mirror.

A four tower, in line, end-fire array pointing northwesterly was fed with 10.5Kw days and 51 watts pre-sunrise from 0600 local time to the local sunrise of the month. A deep null protected the Bahamas Islands. The dominant station on 1540 was and remains the 10Kw omnidirectional full time ZNS, Nassau. Dual audio chains were fed in parallel, each normally going to its dedicated transmitter (10Kw or 1Kw at greatly reduced power) but could be patched in any configuration plus a standby tape was always ready. Phase and current readings varied a bit with the rising and falling tides, but the effect was minimized by having two ground radial systems, one under water at the lowest tide, and the other above water at the highest tide.

Pelican poop and salt corrosion abounded.

They came on the air in the late 1960's with an MOR format.
Who remembers the jingle with Vic Damone singing, "WRIZ, Rise to the Right side of your dial"?
 
One of the engineers who put that site on the air for Mission Broadcasting lives here, Ted Bryan. He's retired but still takes care of some things at WBT when they need a hand.

I remember the night when Mission swapped 1550 for 1260. They played part of the song "Western Union" by the 5 Americans and said listen for this on 1260.
 
WBT?
I remember when WAME (Wami in Miami) switched call letters with WWOK, Charlotte.
 
ai4i said:
WBT?
I remember when WAME (Wami in Miami) switched call letters with WWOK, Charlotte.
Click to expand...

Yep it was WAME 1460 when we got to Charlotte but the country format was long gone. It had been sold to the Swaggert people so it was religion. The signal is awful for a 5KW station. Today it's WGFY, kinda Goofy. Bet you can guess the format!
 
Looks like they almost beam right into the market; the towers should be just a tad west.
Just a bit more night power than day power?
 
ai4i said:
Looks like they almost beam right into the market; the towers should be just a tad west.
Just a bit more night power than day power?
Click to expand...

It's a really puny signal. The towers are down in a hole. I don't know if that makes a difference for AM. It might also be our awful ground conductivity. Most of the area around here is a "2".
 
Used to be 1480 in Charlotte used to make it into Miami in the late 80s/early 90s...Think the format was Southern Gospel at the time.....Around the time the 1480 in Marco Island was dark.

ai4i, glad to meet "the person" that was camped out at Stiltsville!!! btw, do you know if the CP that existed in the 80s for WRHC at 1560 would have made use of the in-water array, or would that have required the building of a new set of towers on dry land??
 
Incredible. I don't know unique such an arrangement is/was but I like it! It must have been what lighthouse keepers felt like.
 
radiosanchez said:
...do you know if the CP that existed in the 80s for WRHC at 1560 would have...required the building of a new set of towers on dry land??
Click to expand...
From the movie, Waterworld..."Dry land is real, I have seen it".
WRHC was on 1560 for a brief time from some towers near Coral Way & the Pametto Expressway, at least one of which blew down in a hurricane, maybe Hurricane Andrew? Shortly before I left the second time, we actually switched sites at dawn and dusk, but I believe both sites used 1550. The whole purpose of QSY'ing to 1560 would have been to get away from ZNS. I don't know how they do it now, maybe a treaty modification with the Bahamas government. One station that we suffered from on both 1550 and 1560 was a 10Kw station on 1555 in the Cayman Islands. The Caymans also had a less powerful station on 705 KHz. Both Cayman stations existed before digital tuners became fashionable.
 
ARRGH! My first attempt to reply got eaten by a browser crash!

Anyway... a little history and background...

Stiltsville is a group of houses/structures out in a flat area of Biscayne Bay. The bay bottom there is pretty much all sediment and a grass bed over ancient fossilized coral, probably left over from the last Ice Age.

The buildings are (and were) all wood. There were originally 12, now there are 7 left standing. Hurricane Andrew blew away the rest with its powerful winds and storm surge, which were strong enough that it moved REEFS around the bay!! The structures are anchored with pilings that are more or less dolphins - see http://www.tpub.com/content/construction/14045/css/14045_271.htm for what I'm talking about.

This area is more or less an aquatic sports field. It's a really big flat grassbed, with water depths between 1/2 and 2 fathoms*. Boaters have been known to run aground here when they're not being careful, damaging the grassbed and royally teeing off the state department of environmental protection!

Some residents originally believed that WRHC was a secret CIA installation, which gave it an air of mystery, intrigue, FUD, etc.

Stiltsville has been featured in a few movies. It's a really unique location. As of 1999, the leases for the bay bottom land given by the state expired, and the structures were supposed to have been demolished. However, there is an effort to get them onto the National Register of Historic Places. This has been thwarted at times by the surviving structures not yet being 50 years old... however, by the time the fight is over, it'll probably just end with the 50 year threshold kicking in. Whack!

As for the current site, I've driven past there a number of times and can't remember seeing any particularly nice towers there. What kind of antenna system is in use now?

There used to be a tall smokestack attached to an incinerator at this site, which the City of Coral Gables was once considering as an antenna site for their "I'm a consumer whore!" trunked radio system** around 1999. (Conventional got, uh, too RELIABLE for them?) I guess the plan fell through, as the incinerator and stack were demo'd in about 2001. I guess they had the idea of using it as a reinforced ferroconcrete tower, similar to the neat Y-profile freestanding one in front of the /\/\otorola plant in Sunrise. I do remember the durability of the 40+ year old ladder loops going up the tower being a concern; that might be what scuttled the plan.

* Fathom: 6 feet. Most sailboats draw around one fathom; small powerboats draw less.

** I do not trust any trunked radio system any further than I can throw it. Since I throw like a girl (max velocity = 20 mph), this is not very far.

Also, if you live down in Miami-Dade and want a good example of the Y-shaped freestanding ferroconcrete tower, go to Dadeland Mall and look at the tower with the big D on it. That tower has undoubtedly withstood more hurricanes than I have fingers and toes. Whether or not the Dadeland tower design... "inspired"... the Motorola tower, I don't know. Either way, it seems like a very practical design for relatively short but 'cane-proof installations.
 
vxo said:
Y-shaped freestanding...tower...seems like a very practical design for relatively short but 'cane-proof installations.
Click to expand...
I am not sure if, by Y-shaped towers, you are talking about those sticks that were popular with gasoline stations with spinning signs a few years back, but if you are, check this baby out.
 
 
Interesting and unusual TV towers abound on the web and we could have a nice thread on them.
One of my favorites is this one in Prague.
 
Closer to home, a really neat tower exists up in Palm Beach (right by the old Jai Alai and behind the Mangonia Park Tri Rail station). Think at one point it used to house 94.3 before it moved to Hobe Sound and also has I believe the 107.1 WJFP/Ft. Pierce translator. If you ever get a chance to see it, it obviously derives its' design inspiration from the Eiffel Tower and is probably as nice as it's gonna get down here (besides the old self-supporting and now almost decrepit former WQAM tower next to the Herald).
 
I believe 'QAM still keeps it as a backup site.

At least they did when I worked there in the early 90s.
 
I remember the sticks in the water when I was a kid living down there.

Bt the way, ZNS on 1540 is 50 kW now (currently running around 40). A new transmitter was installed last summer.
 
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