[BC] Auxiliary Facility back to Main Facility

[Byrne, John H COE Engineering]

We flew two staff technicians in, one from LA and one from Dallas, who had
experience with tube-based TV transmitters.

The cavity replacement is a testimony to Harris  The transmitter tripped off
at 9:05 PM (prime, prime time), on 9/18, with a burned aural cavity.  Harris
no longer had spare cavities for a then 27-year-old transmitter, but the
next morning they found the original drawings for two cavities for that
transmitter (Mr. Customer, which one do you have?  We don't know - make one
of each.).  The Harris machinists custom fabricated one copy of each of the
two possible cavities, which were delivered to the Quincy Airport by Noon.
The cavities were flown by private jet to Teterboro Airport by 5 PM (regular
airspace operations were still restricted and the flight was held up several
hours awaiting clearance), and were escorted to the Empire State Building.
At 8:50 PM (less than 24 hours after the burnout) the transmitter was back
on the air.  During the 23-3/4 hours that the 25 kW transmitter was down, we
used a solid-state 1 kW back-up, back-up transmitter to maintain air
operations.  Harris handled everything up to the delivery of the cavities to
CBS personnel at the Teterboro Airport.

Harris truly delivered.



-----Original Message-----
From: broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net
[mailto:broadcast-bounces at radiolists.net]On Behalf Of Robert Meuser
Sent: Thursday, November 17, 2005 1:53 PM
To: Broadcast Radio Mailing List
Subject: Re: [BC] Auxiliary Facility back to Main Facility


You skipped the part about the cavity burning up - Harris custom building a 
replacement brought into the city by military escort since Manhattan was
still 
shut down.

R

Bernie Courtney wrote:
> except for the first few days after 9/11when they were running the audio
out
> of phase :x
> 
> and if I'm recalling all the stories I heard about WCBS post 9/11 I think
> they flew in an engineer who'd retired from WCBS and moved down south
> somewhere. Apparently he was the only one who knew that transmitter inside
> and out and they wanted him there to make sure it stayed on the air, since
> at the time I think there was only one ch2 transmitter in that room.
> 
> On 11/17/05, Kevin Tekel <amstereoexp at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
>>Dana Puopolo wrote:
>>
>>>The irony is the way WCBS got an aux on Empire. Seems that their lease
>>>was about to expire on Empire and since they had already moved to WTC,
>>>they had not planned to re[new] it. The person who was in charge of
>>>notifying the Helmsley Group (Empire landlord) forgot to send the
>>
>>letter.
>>
>>>Thus, the lease automatically renewed. That person got fired for their
>>>'incompetance'. THEN...the WTC was bombed (the bomb in the North tower
>>>basement). All the NY television stations were off for over a
>>>day - except for WCBS, who simply switched over to Empire.
>>>
>>>The rest - and 9/11/2001 is history.
>>>
>>>I wonder if that guy ever got rehired and/or given the million dollar
>>>bonus he deserved....
>>
>>Even more of a bonus should've been given to the engineers who kept
>>WCBS-TV's vintage 1966 Harris transmitter at Empire up and running in the
>>wake of 9/11. They had it putting out an excellent color picture with
>>full MTS stereo sound!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>__________________________________
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