Transmitter building destroyed

[rzeis]

Thought some on this board may be interested in this. It is from the news section on Radio-Info.com

Pennsylvania station on reduced power after vandals destroy the transmitter building
The only good news here is that the vandals who took a log skidder for a joyride didn't get electrocuted. Police in Williamsport, Pennsylvania say the bad guys crashed a large, commercial vehicle used for logging into a building housing the transmitter for WILQ-FM (105,1) during the overnight hours on Thursday. "Country 105," a 9,200-watt Class B station, is now broadcasting at one-tenth power, and it may have to stay that way for a month until repairs are completed. You can see the damage caused by the vandals in this WNEP-TV news report by clicking here. http://www.wnep.com/global/video/fl...chPageAdTag=News&activePane=info&rnd=96145014

 

[kenglish]

"Kids will be Kids"............
Thanks, Beavis and Butthead, for showing millions of brats that this stuff is cool. And, funny!

 

[DaleGriffin]

Must of missed that Beavis and Butthead...

Get off my lawn, you damn kids.

 

[ChiefEngineer]

Footage is cool.

I don't see a Harris transmitter being worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars" when it was made in 1980. Looks like a K series. Has an MX15 exciter. Marti STL receiver (the old beige unit). Showed the engineer taking stuff out of the rack and requesting "justice."

Given the economy and bean counters who run this business I suggest this is not as bad as it seems. Actually a wonderful "act of God".

If it takes a drunk guy and logging truck to upgrade from tube to solid state and analog to digital I say "congratulations". Now you need to also replace the stl, the feedline, the processor. (And don't use an Omnia 1, go for the 6) "I bet the antenna will never be right after this!" Surge suppression should also receive the once over. 100 amp panel needs to be replaced with at least 200 amp service.

Line was connected to the tower. Structural.

Let me give you the address to all the sites in Indiana I know have adequate insurance....

"Justice" is spending the weekend working in a building that hadn't had the yard mowed in ten years and getting a fat check from (your insurance company). What I meant to say was, "overtime". Not in the contract engineer package. Insurance eats the bill on this right?

Or in the words of a commercial:

1980 transmitter....can't sell it on ebay.

Replacement after the drunk and a logging truck...$200,000.

Look on the owners face....Priceless.

Had a similar event in Indiana with "Satanic Radio" who stole their equipment from remote sites. And if they hadn't broken into a co-locate with the Indiana State Police they might have gotten away with it.

Everything they couldn't steal in 10 minutes they hit with a hammer.

 

[TVJunkie12]

The comment about 'hundreds of thousands' in damages could be considered to include lost revenues while broadcasting at flea power as well as equipment and building damage. While I know that as an anonymous voice here I have no real credibility, the engineer interviewed in the clip is one of the best in the business. A real pro and a professional mentor to more than one of us. That is not just my opinion, but the opinion of a national trade magazine (the exact one escapes at this late hour) a few years ago when he was named the 13th (or 12th) most respected radio engineer in America. He is also the engineer who set up the audio processing at Jack FM in Jackson, Mississippi that has been praised several times on this board. The condition of the grounds of the building also wouldn't be under his direct supervision. Having been through a tower collapse that included the destruction of a transmitter building fairly recently, I know that the thoughts you convey at first are sometimes made more accurate after a second look.

 

[greg.hahn]

Footage is cool.

I don't see a Harris transmitter being worth "hundreds of thousands of dollars" when it was made in 1980. Looks like a K series. Has an MX15 exciter. Marti STL receiver (the old beige unit). Showed the engineer taking stuff out of the rack and requesting "justice."

A little harsh, Chuck. That's not a K series transmitter. That's an HT-10, in current production. My bet is the exciter is TheOne. It could be like my 1995 HT-10, with the old exciter still mounted in the cabinet it came in, but feeding the transmitter with an Fxi-60 exciter in an adjacent rack.

And by the way, that's not an STL-10 you see either. That's a CR-10 RPU receiver. And STL-10 looks like this: http://www.mooretronix.com/includes/image.asp?strProductID=322

Ya know, Williamsport, PA isn't a very big market, and this building doesn't seem unreasonably ill-equipped for that market size from what I can see. Maybe you should cut these guys some slack.

 

[oldiesstation]

DITTO on that greg.hahn.Replacement cost including labor and lost air time can be very significant.tvjunkie12 and i have talked about that Omnia 5ex on Jack FM that Tom Atkins set up.Pretty darn amazing ,lots of folks have throw processors at it to beat it,but haven't yet.I'd love to have that pre.Never met Tom,but i can tell by his work he is FIRST CLASS all the way.

 

[OttoM]

Given the economy and bean counters who run this business I suggest this is not as bad as it seems. Actually a wonderful "act of God".

If it takes a drunk guy and logging truck to upgrade from tube to solid state and analog to digital I say "congratulations".

Let me give you the address to all the sites in Indiana I know have adequate insurance....

Wow - after reading these comments I guess you've never heard of a little thing called "karma". Yes, the plant was old but calling this kind of destruction an "act of God" is absurd.

DITTO on that greg.hahn.Replacement cost including labor and lost air time can be very significant.tvjunkie12 and i have talked about that Omnia 5ex on Jack FM that Tom Atkins set up.Pretty darn amazing ,lots of folks have throw processors at it to beat it,but haven't yet.I'd love to have that pre.Never met Tom,but i can tell by his work he is FIRST CLASS all the way.

Tom is a class act and besides being a great engineer, he's also a pretty darn good on-air talent.

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Tom Atkins was Director of Engineering for the Sinclair Radio Stations in Buffalo (WBEN, WGR, WWKB, WWWS, WKSE-FM and WTSS-FM) when I was PD/OM of news-talk WGR Buffalo. I've not worked with a Chief who knew as much about RF, Audio, IT, Directional AMs and high-power FMs. His dedication to making procedures and equipment "programming friendly" was unequaled. He was always ready to roll up his sleeves and dig into things with the rest of the crew. I helped him and his staff of engineers tear down an entire full service news-talk AM studio and newsroom and successfully move it within a 24 hour period in the summer of '95.

There's not a PD in America who wouldn't benefit in some way by working with Tom because he also was a top notch air talent and PD before becoming Sinclair Radio's Buffalo market DOE. On top of that, he has a wicked sense of humor and a great sense of competition, especially when it comes to working with programming to out-duel the competition. Heh, heh, the stories I could tell about audio processing wars.

I'd bet that Williamsport comes back even stronger under his direction and hard work.

 

[Savage]

I had the distinct pleasure of working with Tom, albeit briefly, at WWKB in 1986 just before I put my little AM on the air. He not only generously trucked 70 miles from Buffalo with his OIB and RF generator to tweak the new Kintronic ATU, Tom also helped us recover from a disastrous 1993 fire. Ditto on the previous comments about his rare combination of professional qualities - not only a terrific and innovative engineer but a talented on-air performer as well, who could outpace many a garden-variety announcer who had no technical skills.

I think it's callous to dismiss a technical disaster of this magnitude as somehow being an "opportunity to upgrade." Anyone who has lived through unexpected destruction like this knows that recovery and rebuilding is a zero-sum game. I have no doubt that superhuman efforts will be required to restore the station to proper operation, involving Tom's hard work and that of many others, and that the actual out-of-pocket unremunerated costs will be considerable.

My condolences and best wishes to the station crew and to Tom and this team. Good luck to all!