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WWVA towers on the ground

True, there were (are?) many self-supporting regular blaw knox towers. Especially in western PA, Northern WV. Many were not maintained and are probably down.

frankberry said:
Not all Blaw-Knox towers are of the diamond cantilever design. 620, WSUN in
Tampa Bay had two Blaw-Knox towers up until a couple of years ago.
They were standard, self-supporting towers about 450' or so in height.
You can see a photo of the old towers here: http://www.radioyears.com/other/photo_details.cfm?photo=1698&id=13
Click to expand...
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
I don't believe WWVA was using Klaw-Knox towers. The photos look to me like the standard 300 foot self-supporters. You can confirm they were such by the Google map of the tower site:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=40.10194,+-80.86722+(WWVA-AM)&om=1
Click to expand...
I wish there was a way to determine what the date & time of those Google satellite images is. The length of the shadows could be used to calculate the height of the tower. Or just ask someone who knows. <g>
 
Looks like the base of at least one of the towers is intact, with spark gap undamaged. From a wide angle, the bases of all three towers look like they survived. No telling how much of the ground systen is damaged as a result of three towers cratering in at full force. Meteorologist Rob Carolan (who posts on my Facebook page) says the winds clocked at 80 mph! Any guess as to how long it might take to get at least one stick constructed to go Temporary? And if so, at what day/night power?
 
They might be able to run a longwire between what's left of two of the towers and use it as a temporary antenna.
I did that many, many years ago.
If the tower orientation is right, it will even produce a figure-eight pattern similar to their licensed pattern.
Not very efficient but much better than nothing (or 1 kilowatt at 1400).
 
When I saw the photos (before I looked at this thread) my first thought was Blaw Knox. They look very much like the freestander at WSTP in Salisbury, NC. WSTP's tower is a grounded shunt fed setup so it does not have base insulators. Other than that they look the same...

Test123
 
What's left of the towers certainly look like Blau-Knox towers.

Used to take care of WERE1300 site back in the day, and they have four of them inline.

http://www.cgould.com/WERE_1300.JPG

THAT was a fun array to tune....NOT!!!!

:D

This pic was taken long after I left, and the station under a different ownership. Tower #2 (third from the left) was modified to hold a pylon on top. The former co-owned FM (WNCX) had a backup antenna on that tower.

-C
 
Schroedingers Cat said:
I was shocked to discover that the legacy WERE call letters are now on 1490 and the WJMO call letters are now on 1300.
Click to expand...

I know!

My mind won't let me "go there". 1300AM will always be WERE in my head. LOL.

-C
 
Towers are Blaw-Knox. Had similar, but smaller ones at WSPD. Incidentally, towers were just painted, at a cost of around $60K! Using inverted L from the remaining 50' of one of the towers, with 5 kw.
 
frankberry said:
I looked at the FCC information. The towers were 445' in height.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but a quote from an engineer working at the WWVA site said 400'. According to CDBS, the towers were 171.3 degrees. By my calculation, 171.3 degrees at 1170 kHz is a little more than 399.92'. CDBS gives the inverse-distance field of the single tower used ND during the daytime as a little more than 370 mV/m/kW @ 1 km, which is quite consistent with an antenna height of 171 degrees. So I'm inclined to believe the 400' number. Now, I think that number excludes the height above ground of the tower footings and the base insulator, which could add another 5' give or take.

445' would yield an electrical height of ~200 degrees. 200 degrees typically yields an ID field of a little more than 400 mV/m/kW @ 1 km. Could you have inadvertently substituted the height of KFAQ's towers? Sounds as if that's what happened.
 
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