[BC] RE: KFYR

[Davis, Jack L. KTXL]

Message: 5
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2005 19:14:11 -0600
From: "Dave" <mrfixit at min.midco.net>
Subject: Re: [BC] KFYR
To: "Broadcast Radio Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Message-ID: <004201c5de81$914d8010$0200a8c0 at cd2176218a>
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You are correct in the ID of the tower. And, I'd like to hear more of the
history of the station if you'd care to elaborate.

Dave



The long time Chief Engineer was not one to throw anything away and there
used to be tons of stuff around that was really interesting.  I left there
in 86 and the stations have all been sold off and the Old Chief retired so I
don't know what may be left.  There were logs back to the 1920's and a copy
of the Federal still license for the still used to distill water for the old
RCA 5B water cooled transmitter.  The old 5B was run with a bunch of motor
generator sets for filament, screen, bias and plate voltage.  There were
pictures of the basement of the old building showing all the MG sets on
concrete piers.  There were also a lot of transcription disks that were used
over the years, but some of them were cut up for the aluminum disks to make
chassis.  At one time they mad a lot of their own equipment, either a copy
or a local design.  The open wire transmission line was just replaced
sometime in the 90's but for the most part everything was frozen in time.
The studio at 4th and Broadway was the same location the company started in
back in 1898, but it had been remodeled a number of times over the years.
At one time there were a number of 892R transmitter tubes lying around but I
suspect the copper scroungers got them now.  The old antenna was a flat top
array suspended between wooden poles.  It was a series of wires spaced with
a single conductor dropped to the tuning unit.  It was replaced in 1939 with
the self supporting towers.  Sometime in the early 80's one of the Lapp
insulators failed on the 768 foot tall main tower and it was removed and
rebuilt at the factory.  They used a couple of house moving jacks to take
the pressure off the insulator and pulled it out.  They them used large
blocks of wood that had been soaked in glyptal varnish to support the leg
for several months while Lapp re-coned the insulator. There were a series of
pictures showing the process.  They used a couple of large chains to put
pressure on the blocks to keep the tower from falling over.  It looked very
precarious but it worked.  The other two Lapp insulators held up during the
process and are still working today.  

Jack Davis
K6YC