Hello,
I recently found this site. I was in Engineering with Beasley in Goldsboro, NC when they purchased WSAV and WKBX in Savannah. I travelled back and forth on I-95 to Savannah and supervised moving the WSAV studios from the WSAV TV site on Victory Boulevard and moving the WSGF equipment from the basement location in downtown Savannah. Forgot the street name. Good people at both stations. Unfortunately we had to let go some transmitter engineers at the 630 AM site. Beasley built the new studio site at the WSAV transmitter site on Oatland Island with the possibiliy of moving the WSGF FM transmitter to the same site. That did not happen during my tenure as the "95SGF" transmitter was co-located at the same site with the WSGA AM transmitter.
Those huge self-supporting AM towers with the overhead open line transmission feed lines were fairly high maintenance. Just keeping all of that grass mowed took a lot of time. WSAV radio became WKBX, "63KBX" with Doug Weldon brought in from Allentown/Philly as PD. Ron Winders was the original Beasley manager, later replaced by Gary Morris. Added "Easy Ed" Hartey with a night-time talk show. There are some stories about our primitive efforts to use home grown tape delay on the talk programming.
I was told that Byron Strong, former WSAV AM-TV engineer used to keep his airplane at the Oatland Island site and would regulary take off and land at the land parallel to the three tower antenna array.
I used to drive my car out to the towers to take the daily base current readings in bad weather. Those 3 self-supporting towers were quite lovely to a radio geek. I recently read where the towers are now gone. There was a huge amount of large diameter copper wire in the ground system, I was told this copper wire was removed from the old Tybee Trolley System that once ran from Savannah to Savannah Beach. The trolley was shut down in the late 1940s, about the same time WSAV went to 630 and 5 kW DA. I also worked at WSAV/WZAT before leaving the Coastal Empire in late 1978. I have some Savannah airchecks. Is this something anyone in interested in me sharing? Thanks for the memories!
"Bill Wood"
I recently found this site. I was in Engineering with Beasley in Goldsboro, NC when they purchased WSAV and WKBX in Savannah. I travelled back and forth on I-95 to Savannah and supervised moving the WSAV studios from the WSAV TV site on Victory Boulevard and moving the WSGF equipment from the basement location in downtown Savannah. Forgot the street name. Good people at both stations. Unfortunately we had to let go some transmitter engineers at the 630 AM site. Beasley built the new studio site at the WSAV transmitter site on Oatland Island with the possibiliy of moving the WSGF FM transmitter to the same site. That did not happen during my tenure as the "95SGF" transmitter was co-located at the same site with the WSGA AM transmitter.
Those huge self-supporting AM towers with the overhead open line transmission feed lines were fairly high maintenance. Just keeping all of that grass mowed took a lot of time. WSAV radio became WKBX, "63KBX" with Doug Weldon brought in from Allentown/Philly as PD. Ron Winders was the original Beasley manager, later replaced by Gary Morris. Added "Easy Ed" Hartey with a night-time talk show. There are some stories about our primitive efforts to use home grown tape delay on the talk programming.
I was told that Byron Strong, former WSAV AM-TV engineer used to keep his airplane at the Oatland Island site and would regulary take off and land at the land parallel to the three tower antenna array.
I used to drive my car out to the towers to take the daily base current readings in bad weather. Those 3 self-supporting towers were quite lovely to a radio geek. I recently read where the towers are now gone. There was a huge amount of large diameter copper wire in the ground system, I was told this copper wire was removed from the old Tybee Trolley System that once ran from Savannah to Savannah Beach. The trolley was shut down in the late 1940s, about the same time WSAV went to 630 and 5 kW DA. I also worked at WSAV/WZAT before leaving the Coastal Empire in late 1978. I have some Savannah airchecks. Is this something anyone in interested in me sharing? Thanks for the memories!
"Bill Wood"
