• 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

roadless transmitter sites?

J

joebtsflk1

There's a CP in my neighborhood that's in pretty mountainous territory. Licensed to small, small county seat town (the whole county is less than 5k pop.) So, it needs to cover a more populous adjacent county, even if it's just theoretical coverage to allow fill-in translator.

Problem is there are very few sites available that can do both. Either power is nearby, but site is too low to get into C.O.L., or site is plenty high, but it's too remote, power is over two miles away and BLM folks have informally told me it's no go.

Have talked to a landowner who's property is w/in 1/3 mile of power, and is high enough. His big objection is that he doesn't want a road, to avoid the maintenance problems. There would be areas with steep grades that would turn into wash out mess.

So...Anyone have experience with walk-in, horseback or ATV only transmitter sites? Tower would top out at 100', TPO would probably be 3 kW or less. Suppose there would be a few trucks initially to get power and concrete up there, but afterwards I'd think the walk-in/horseback approach could work for regular maintenance.

Is this workable, or do I have too many rocks in noggin?
 
I did such a site last year.

It's an off-air relay for FM - and runs on solar and wind power. The EIRP is only 1 watt so it wasn't economic to even consider running power up there.

There was a 'track' already cut through the bush up to the site. At parts it is a 1 : 1 gradient, in other parts it levels off. The distance would be 800 metres from the bottom of the hill to the top where the site is.

The ground is soft clay, and in the winter after a lot of rain it turns to a sticky mess which is impossible to navigate using anything but a very large John Deere tractor with dual rear wheels and 4 wheel drive.

When the track is reasonably dry, it's quite navigable, and I used a quad bike to get up there.

We had a few teething troubles after the initial installation, but now it only requires periodic visits.

I guess the main issue is: If something goes wrong at the site, how quickly do you need to get there?
If it's a one hour walk up the hill, this may not be practical - and you'll be stuffed by the time you get up there.
This means you'll need something at the bottom - be it horse, quad bike, tractor or otherwise that can be relied on to get you there no matter what the state of the access track is like.

If the landowner doesn't want anything disturbed, you can chopper your supplies in - and cut a narrow track through the bush (with minimal destruction to the land or flora) for a quad bike to allow routine access.
 
Hawaii. Volcano. Power is run to the volcano but no road. $600 to T.C. of Magnum P.I. helicopter fame every trip...one way. Telephone pole tower.

Buying an ATV is much cheaper. Get a big basket attachement. Your 3 kw tpo with a multi bay antenna needs to consider a 1 kw or so transmitter that would fitr in the basket.

Buy 3 so you have a backup. Don't even think of a tube rig. Power in Indiana is so unreliable we have the Sine System cycling the plate voltage on at our Class B site every 30 seconds. 3 phase.

Why haul concrete? Most remote work involves 4 x 4 "footers" with multiple bags of sackcrete poured into the hole and moisture sets well if it is packed tightly. The telephone pole mentioned above is set with dirt. Seems the power company is somewhat helpful when this remote site is concerned.

One site in Elletsville had a road at one time. You drive half a mile on what is left of it, go through a cow gate onto a cowpath. Even in dry times it is horrible. Next quarter mile is washed out gravel.Owner refuses to maintain the road. CHEAP. If a vehicle was stuck that would be too bad, deal with it. No tow truck will drive into a field with no road either. Insurance doesn't cover off road accidents I am told.

Height really matters. Work on the site that gives you the most. Make sure it doesn't become your problem if you can't get there.
 
I would also get the plastic “covers” for the bays if the tower can stand the wind load. Heaters take power, and if the antenna ices (almost always after midnight) up you could have issues with the reflected power. Do not forget the first aid kit, extra water and tell some one when you are going up alone!
 
If it is out on usual cell phone range, might experiment with some kind of outside antenna to see if this will get you cell service. May come in handy.
 
Those plastic covers (actually fiberglass) are called Radomes.
Radomes can create quite an extra load on the tower when they are covered with ice.
You'll need a hefty tower to support the additional weight and wind load.
While de-icers are an additional cost and maintenance headache, they're a better solution than Radomes unless the tower is designed to support the expected (and sometimes unexpected) load.
I've seen severe icing which destroyed a Radome or two.
 
An antenna that is not very "pointy" (like an ERI) plus a modern transmitter that will fall back when VSWR gets high may be the more practical solution than de-icers or radomes. Unless, of course, it's a site that gets three feet of snow every year--and stays frozen for 6 months of the year.
 
I have a silly question for you. Could you make a long coax run down to where you could more easily service the station? If there is a good way to route the coax, it might be worth investing in several hundred feet of coax and a more powerful transmitter to make up for the losses just so you don't have a nightmare site to deal with. Just a thought....
 
I had a site where the building was placed on the highest accessible spot for a road and the tower was up the mountain a bit. It was feed by about two runs of 1500' of buried Heliax. No problem with doing that if it substantially improves transmitter accessibility, but it does increase required TPO.
 
You all have some great tips! Fortunately the top of the hill isn't too far from a relatively level lane, if you call 12% avg. level. The one problem is that the level area close to top of hill appears to be on a tract owned by someone else. Maybe we can negotiate a temporary easement w/ that neighbor just to get things up to the top, then just walk in on the main landlord's side once everything's in.

Glad to hear a "tread lightly" approach is doable.
 
Sorry that I have no input... Just wanted to say this was a very interesting and odd topic to read about. I hope you will come back at the conclusion of the project and post what you ultimately did.
 
This looks like a non-com window the FCC opened near by. The class C minimum and the the seconds adjacent restrictions put the only transmitter site many miles away from no-where. Dont's see any power lines within miles either. Probably be expensive to build & operate.
 
This may be the extreme however I have a Class "A" directional FM on top of a mountain in Western Mass where access is very, very limited ... it's literally a 40 minute hike, I mean load up a backpack & hike to the transmitter site.

If it's raining, forget it ... snow/ice? See you in the Spring!

Luckliy we have a small backup site at a different location that puts 85 watts over the city of license to keep us on the air ... but 85 watts is 85 watts!

In case of a catastrophic equipment failure a helicopter is necessary to bring the equipment down for repair. We had a roof leak that took out the exciter and because the terrain is so rough it couldn't be packed down off the mountain without killing me, the exciter or both of us! :)

PLAN AHEAD is my only advice! Make sure if you put the thing in a rather tough spot that you have backup plans, etc.
 
Good point. A nice Fibrebond or similar prefab building would be the right thing to have at a site like the one you're proposing. Dual solid state transmitters phased together and two exciters and two stls with the automatic switch over for each would be the right thing to have.
 
Les Brown, the engineer for KNOM/Nome, AK had something similar to what OKCRadioGuy said. KNOM employed him as a contractor (no full time eng), and it was a several hour plane trip from his home to Nome. I believe he had everything set up to be controlled through the ARC-16.

Fybush's page (http://www.fybush.com/site-030501.html) shows only one transmitter, but I believe there is an older tube-type model that serves as backup.
 
Just received word today that preferred mountain top is off-limits.

This brings me to a tangent. That's having a transmitter site on the slope of the hill, about 100' down from preferred mountain top. (Even though it's above 9000' asl, the mountain top is only about 200' above the average countryside...thus it's a hill :))

It isn't terribly steep, as the 100' drop occurs over a 600' lateral distance.

It sits on an adjacent property owner's land.

It puts the site 600' closer to juice. (at least it isn't as isolated or ice-loated as some of the other sites that you all have talked about)

It still has clear LOS to city of license, plus the hill would provide some terrain shielding in the direction of the primary population node. So, while the theoretical coverage in that direction would be little affected, there would be less signal leaking through the saddleback down into the valley. Better for an on-channel booster.

Big question though is would this make too much multipath? FWIW, the area has some trees, so it isn't total baldy top.

Thanks in advance...
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Les Brown, the engineer for KNOM/Nome, AK had something similar to what OKCRadioGuy said. KNOM employed him as a contractor (no full time eng), and it was a several hour plane trip from his home to Nome. I believe he had everything set up to be controlled through the ARC-16.

Fybush's page (http://www.fybush.com/site-030501.html) shows only one transmitter, but I believe there is an older tube-type model that serves as backup.
Click to expand...

I'm familiar with the operation firsthand and would like to add some info:

1. Les Brown and Tom Busch were sharing the engineering for KNOM from their homes on the other side of the state - 90 minutes in a 737 to Nome. Tom died this week and Les is getting old and not able to do nearly as much as formerly. Tom was a full-time employee of KNOM, mostly fund-raising for the non-profit. Les has been retired for over 15 years and has done the work over there pro-bono but does not do any other work for any station these days.

2. The ARC-16 is set up with the voice option and it has been possible to diagnose and deal with some failures using it. But that's because there are dual exciters and dual CRL limiters which are switchable by 'phone. Also, many times the problem is icing and it's possible to change power levels and even adjust levels the same way.

3. There is NO backup transmitter. The Nautel ND-25 is all there is but it's maintained so there has been zero transmitter-caused downtime with 24 hour operation since 1996! The previous transmitter was an earlier generation Nautel 10 kW rig that was sold when the ND-25 was installed. I believe it's in service in or near Seattle. Prior to that there was a tube-type Collins that was sold many years before. KNOM also runs a 1 kW FM (96.1) (current generation Nautel) from a a separate tower at the studio site in downtown Nome. There is a 100 Watt Continental backup for that and a 10 Watt Armstrong with a portable antenna for extreme emergencies. What sort of emergency? Nome is in a flood-plain and there is always the slight chance of a tsunami wiping out the whole thing. There's plenty of warning facilities so the idea of the 10-Watt is to scoot up the road to Anvil Mountain and provide basic emergency service to the immediate area should the worst happen.

Given the current engineering situation, there's a pretty good chance they'll be looking for an engineer before long and, if so, I'll try to post more information on this board.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom