• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Richland Towers

O

Olfarht

For those who are tenants on Richland Towers, I would like to hear your thoughts and opinions. How many shutdowns do you typically experience in a year? What kind of problems have you experienced? How happy, overall, are you with the sites management?
 
They have very nice towers and buildings, etc. In OKC, here's some wierdness I have heard about them though. First, they build their tower with no temporary lights during construction. The thing was litterly dark for a long time. They decided to strobe the thing instead of going with paint and normal lights. Where it is in the tower farm, they could have went conventional lighting with a LOT less problems. Their strobe system is a constant issue to keep running. Appearently sometimes getting a responsible party within their group can be challenging at times. They had some cutbacks, so it made it a bit messy for a while from what I have heard. Power-downs have happened for the FMs on the tower. If you go on one of their sticks you better make sure you have some form of backup antenna written into the lease further down the tower. I don't think that's unique to Richland. Any co-locate is going to have some of those issues. I'd at least have a 2 bay or something down about 3/4 to 1/2 way down the tower. If it gets cost prohibitive to do that because of the rent, walk. It's just that simple. You must have a way of staying on when someone else is jacking with their antenna near your main antenna.
 
It's been several years... but Richland was no worse than any of them, and better than most. They made an effort to keep the facility nice, and it was well built.

On >any< tower where there are TV and FM systems (read, any leased tower) both types of tenant need reliable backups. Remember, TV guys want to turn off NOT during prime time, FM guys want to turn off NOT during drive times. This means maintenance after midnight, and als leads to grief when maintenance has to be doine during daylight. This is not limited only to Richland, it's true of all multiuse towers.

Have your friendly lawyer read their friendly lawyer's contract. Since Richland is privately owned, it's marginally easier to negotiate with them.
 
Well, we down here were satisfied customers with inexpensive rent on a room and tower space on the WTVJ tower in Princeton, FL. WTVJ gave us such a deal, being a noncommercial educational station. It was all great until WTVJ sold off the tower to Dickland--- er, Richland. We waited forever to find out what terms would be different if any, and then mom got scared, and said, "You're movin' with your auntie and uncle in Bel-Air."...

Sorry. Any of you who posted before, you got in before Bel-Air.

So yes, then Dickland finally told us, coming out of enormous budget cuts which killed entire departments at the university, that it's time for us to pay double rent, with a yearly 5% increase in perpetuity.

Meanwhile...

The Dade Radio Club of Miami had a really nice repeater station up there, 147.000 / 442.350 and an APRS digipeater. They were working just fine until the last hurricane, when the power circuit leading up the tower to them was damaged. The repeaters now don't have power, and Dickland refuses to allow anyone to access the site as WTVJ used to. We lost the best wide-area coverage repeater in south florida, which had previously served us well through many events, emergencies, and hurricanes.

Also, there was a period of several months in which Dickland did not perform any maintenance at the site. This was in the period after the sale. I came down there and found it nearly impossible to walk around back to our a/c unit due to knee-high weeds that kept scraping my legs, wasp nests EVERYWHERE, and a strange concrete pit of unknown depth out back which had once been covered was now open and hidden in high weeds, creating a major hazard. Old discarded equipment littered the hallways, and old cables/feedline were dribbled everywhere. The water pump that feeds the spigots and restroom on site had tripped its breaker some time ago for unknown reasons, and the panel was locked, without the key being left there. Yuck.

The last time I was down there, the water was back on, and the lawn was mowed, but the death pit was still open in back, and Dickland still wanted to drain our budget in a flash.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom