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TOWER CONTRACTOR KILLED IN WGMF COLLAPSE

S

Savage

It's a close call as to whether this could go in the Syracuse or Rochester board. But on Monday (14) a tower worker trying to inspect and retension the WGMF tower in Watkins-Montour was killed when the tower collapsed while he was belted to it.

As of this posting the name of the victim was being withheld pending notification of relatives. I have been able to confirm it was NOT any member of Rodney Gifford's crew (Alpha Antenna of Manlius.)

WGMF's tower was built in early 1968; the station started operations in June '68. I recall driving to Ithaca College down Route 96 south of Geneva shortly after graduation from high school - also on the way to my new weekend gig at WENE - when I discovered a new signal at 1500 kHz. WGMF's jock was discussing tests of their new Marti remote system and playing MOR music. The station had an excellent signal at first, with only 250 watts at 1500 (it much later moved to 1490 for fulltime operation.)

Sources tell us the WGMF tower had become dangerously rusted over the nearly 40 years it was up.
 
From Inside Radio 12/15/09

Tower accident kills one. A tower crew was working on the 400-foot tower of Backyard Broadcasting’s WRCE, Watkins Glen, NY (1490) Monday when the 40-year-old structure collapsed. One unidentified worker was killed in the collapse. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration and local police are investigating what caused the tower to come crashing down.
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Indeed, sad news and my condolences to the family of the man who lost his life. A knowledgeable source told me the tower was in good condition, well-lighted and maintained, painted only four years ago and sat atop a newly reconstructed concrete base. At the time of the accident, the crews on site were replacing the tower guy wires. Interesting that an AM on 1490 radiated from a tower in excess of 400 feet. I'd guestimate that to be at least half wavelength. These days, you're more likely to see radiators at that frequency in the 150 foot range.
 
Very sad to hear this and condolences to the family and friends of this worker. Dangerous work indeed, but I wonder what might have caused a tower to collapse just like that? Perhaps it wasn't as in good condition as believed.
 
There seem to be varying opinions on the condition of the tower. Either way, it's a tragedy. One might expect a professional tower company to be able to evaluate a tower's condition before sending a climber up to replace guy wires.
 
Re: TOWER CONTRACTOR KILLED IN WRCE COLLAPSE

One might expect a professional tower company to be able to evaluate a tower's condition before sending a climber up to replace guy wires.
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It's not necessarily that simple. Sometimes you can have a "perfect storm" of forces that can take down a tower that might be otherwise "sturdy enough". Temperature, wind speed (especially at different heights), long-term weather pattern changes causing an unexpected surge of corrosion over a shorter-than-expected amount of time...who knows? If it was painted recently, maybe there was something wrong with the paint? Or something wrong with how it was applied. We don't even know for sure that the gentleman's weight on the tower is what caused, directly or even indirectly, the failure. It could've just be spectacularly bad luck that something happened to happen while the dude was on there. This sort of forensic work can take months, if not years, and you still don't always know for sure.

All we know for sure is that Backyard Broadcasting has already filed with the FCC for an STA to remain silent. They don't say when they expect to have WRCE (formerly WGMF) back on the air, but it must be more than 30 days otherwise they would've have asked for an STA. I would assume that they plan to be off for at least the winter, just because the weather's mighty unpleasant to be building a tower in. Depending on the legal liability implications and/or the local zoning board, it could be much longer...beyond even the 12-month silent limit since you could get a tolling letter if there's a legal/permit issue blocking you from executing your return to the airwaves.

As for why such a tall tower, that's an excellent question. According to Scott Fybush's "tower visit" page from 2008 on the subject, WGMF started as a daytime-only 250w station on 1500 in 1968...they moved to 1490 to add night power...so it's not a case of having a vastly different frequency or something like that. Beats me. Maybe someone thought they could get an FM, too, back in 1968 and built the tower with an eye towards putting an FM up on top?
 
WGMF started out with 250 watts on 1500 back in '68. The near half-wave tower design was to keep the angle of radiation low, to get maximum efficiency out of the radiator. The 1500 iteration of the station had to fight considerable critical-hours skywave from 50kw WTOP Washington, DC plus another 50kw co-channel in Detroit. In addition the reduced high-angle lobe using the taller tower kept WGMF's delivered interference to WTOP down considerably. Back in '68 this was likely necessary to comport with the rules.
 
If they were indeed replacing the guys, that's always a dangerous job. When a crew was doing that at a tower site I was involved with, they wouldn't let anyone near the premises while they were doing the work.
 
Good points from many in this thread. Fybush's WRCE tower shot is haunting. The beauty of the hills and trees coated with snow contrasts with the thought of the tower crumbling, putting the picture in a different perspective. Savage's points on the taller tower are informative. Could be the tower was constructed taller so that the transmitter could be operated at a lower power, allowing the tower and ground system do the work to generate the required field strength for a 250 watt non-DA daytimer on 1500 and a fultimer on 1490 that operated with 400 watts. As to the cause, aaronread's observations are salient. Nobody here really knows. Tensioning a new guy wire is a work of art and science. Climbing a tower requires skill and acute attentiveness. Wind, weather, ground conditions, tower conditions, operator procedures and other variables could have caused or contributed to the collapse. I'd like to read the OSHA report if it's published. That a life was lost is a tragedy, especially sad given the holiday season.
 
There was some question on were this belongs....as the 1490 studio are in Elmira Heights this likely belongs in Binghamton-Elmira. By the way....I remember the tower actually being 390 some feet tall when I was CE there. It was always amazing how this 1490 was stuffed between WNBT in Wellsboro and WOLF in Syracuse....certainly measured radials there! The ground conductivity between Watkins-Glen and Wellsboro is awful (0.5 to 1.0 in many areas).

KF
 
WGMF started out with 250 watts on 1500 back in '68. The near half-wave tower design was to keep the angle of radiation low, to get maximum efficiency out of the radiator. The 1500 iteration of the station had to fight considerable critical-hours skywave from 50kw WTOP Washington, DC plus another 50kw co-channel in Detroit. In addition the reduced high-angle lobe using the taller tower kept WGMF's delivered interference to WTOP down considerably. Back in '68 this was likely necessary to comport with the rules.
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That makes sense.

BTW, since I don't know AM engineering as well as I'd like...is the half-wave design also the reason why WRCE is often referred to as a 1000 watt signal but why Radio-Locator says it's just 400 watts? Is the higher height translating into higher efficiency of the tower, and thus fewer watts are needed to achieve the same effective signal power?
 
It's not so much an issue of "efficiency" as it is simultaneous distribution of the radiated power in several planes. Every vertical radiator (or AM antenna) radiates, if you look at a ground-elevation cross-section of the radiation pattern, two separate lobes: a high-angle lobe and one that hugs the ground.

The traditional 1/4-wave or 90-degree tower (frequency and wavelength being in inverse proportion) creates a medium-sized ground-level lobe and a considerable high-angle lobe. A half-waver has a considerably reduced higher-angle radiation, creating less skywave and distributing more power to the ground lobe. The tall tower was probably necessary in 1968 to prevent objectionable critical-hours skywave delivery to WTOP.
A nice side benefit would be very good regional coverage with only 250 watts. The fresh ground system doubtless contributed to WGMF's excellent coverage back in the beginning.

I would assume the very tall radiator also accounts for WRCE's limit to 400 watts operating Class D (or IV) on 1490. When the tower is rebuilt I would bet they replace the 390-footer with a traditional quarter-wave stick which at 1490 would be short enough it wouldn't need to be painted and lit.
 
In the 70s (IIRC~ :-\) Buffalo's WYSL AM 1400 moved its stick from atop the Larkin Warehouse building to a new, taller radiator that hosted WPHD-FM at Fillmore & Kensington astride the Kensington Expressway. So efficient was the new tower that WYSL was forced to reduce daytime power to 790 watts and nighttime power to 178 watts. The tower may have been much more efficient, but the ground conductivity was minimal. The tower sits atop solid rock, layers of shale which can be seen driving into the city as the Expressway was carved deep into the ground.
 
I think we can safely delete 1490 Watkins Glen from the records. Given the cost of constructing a new tower, and all the potential red tape that would have to be cleard before said tower could be built, and considering WRCE was nothing more than a simulcast of an Elmira FM station, it probably wouldn't be worth it to Backyard to bring the station back to the air. I will be very surprised if it comes back.
 
I'd be very surprised if it doesn't come back. 1490 wasn't a total simulcast of WPGI-FM - it broke away on weekends for NASCAR and for racing from the Glen. If it wasn't making at least a little money for Backyard, they wouldn't have been replacing the guy wires in the first place.

Tom Atkins, Backyard's corporate CE, is as good as they come in this business. He'll find a way to get something rebuilt there, even if it's not a direct replacement for the downed 400-footer.
 
JimPastrick said:
In the 70s (IIRC~ :-\) Buffalo's WYSL AM 1400 moved its stick from atop the Larkin Warehouse building to a new, taller radiator that hosted WPHD-FM at Fillmore & Kensington astride the Kensington Expressway. So efficient was the new tower that WYSL was forced to reduce daytime power to 790 watts and nighttime power to 178 watts. The tower may have been much more efficient, but the ground conductivity was minimal. The tower sits atop solid rock, layers of shale which can be seen driving into the city as the Expressway was carved deep into the ground.
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I must say that the old WYSL tower on the Larkin Warehouse with the WYSL call letters on it always LOOKED really cool!!
 
Mike Sheridan said:
JimPastrick said:
In the 70s (IIRC~ :-\) Buffalo's WYSL AM 1400 moved its stick from atop the Larkin Warehouse building to a new, taller radiator that hosted WPHD-FM at Fillmore & Kensington astride the Kensington Expressway. So efficient was the new tower that WYSL was forced to reduce daytime power to 790 watts and nighttime power to 178 watts. The tower may have been much more efficient, but the ground conductivity was minimal. The tower sits atop solid rock, layers of shale which can be seen driving into the city as the Expressway was carved deep into the ground.
Click to expand...

I must say that the old WYSL tower on the Larkin Warehouse with the WYSL call letters on it always LOOKED really cool!!
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It sure did, Mike. Although those days were before my time, there's not a Teen DJ in Buffalo who doesn't remember the sequential "W-Y-S-L," followed by a full flash of the entire "WYSL" call sign. Jim Moran was the CE at WYSL in the "Toy Bulldog" era. I briefly worked with him years later at KB and told him how cool that tower looked. He wasn't a fan. "Those damn letters were a pain in the ass!" He described how each letter had to be isolated from the tower and power was individually supplied to them from a special lighting circuit and mechanical sequencing device. And there were times when the isocouplers for the letters failed or shorted, which screwed up the tower impedance and wreaked havoc on the transmitter. Not only was it an AM radiator, the tower hosted five or six bays for the FM. And getting to the transmitter site and the roof of the Larkin wasn't a walk in the park either. I'll bet Ken Kiedrowski has a story or two to tell about those days. Oh, and Savage would no doubt love to light up one of the sticks in the present WYSL 1040 array with flashing call letters. ;)

As to the future of WRCE, I'd concur with Scott's post.
 
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