WLW AM Transmitter Tour 1997

[SUPERDAVIDLEVINE]

very intereting I would like to see the old tranmiter n a mssuim kuje the Smithsoniian for few people will ever e a transmiter of this power oh I hate thse odl ahm operators who wanted make it very hard to get intothere little furternady for who needs mors code or tests like how to build a tranmiter going back to the l920, I as disapointed athe meda for nto asking whyafter sommercial broadcssting was deregulated to bad more could not enjoy there little hobby

[truemetalist89]

i noticed a few weeks back driving down tylersville that the owner finally cut down all the brush surrounding the cooling pond. also about a week ago another fence was built around the transmitter. probably to reduce interference

[Arabhacks]

The tower is of the classic Blaw Knox design, it is NOT 2 towers put together.

[rocketman221projects]

Wow those are the largest tubes Ive ever seen.

What would it take to fire up that transmitter again?

[coldwar1952]

Sorry - ....*862 final tube....CW

[coldwar1952]

Your great vid made me recall, find and read again the brief WLW history in The Old Timer's Bulletin by W.L. Schwesinger W8TCO°, 9-1983. Notes one 862 rect tube was given to AWA museum by WLW eng Jack Gray W8JDV. I wonder if any of the still pictures have survived of the 500KW RF sustaining lightning arcs across guy wire insulators as mentioned in the article, would love to see one. There is a pic in the article of Powell standing next to 50 ton mod transformer, are those in the basement?

[Erzahler]

It's been 14 years now since this video was made. Does any of that old behemoth still remain?

[powertube5671]

@Erzahler Yes, it does. I was recently in contact with someone out there.

[ThisIsSATA]

It looks like when it was operational it wanted to explode like a Nuclear Plant ;)

[Edjard1]

From what I recall in a 1980's video on the WLW transmitter, the shape of the tower came from the inverted stacking of TWO free-standing towers. The lower section of the tower is from a free-standing tower being FLIPPED, where the tip of that tower is actually the tower base. Then halfway up the tower is where a second free-standing tower is stacked on top of the lower section of the tower. I hope the 1980's video of WLW is around for posting on YouTube, it is a good production.

[powertube5671]

@Edjard1 I'd love to see the video. If you find it, you may post the link here in another comment. Thanks!

[egn83b]

This is a walk back in tesla time. Awsome

[hoverbotscpstuff]

Thanks for posting such an interesting video Jim.

A facinating look at the hugely powerful and complicated AM transmitters of old.

[5BGVO4]

I worked at WFEA in Manchester NH which also has a Blaw-Knox diamond shaped tower although not as tall. the Chief Engineer told me once that the design has something to do with less wind resistance and that in the event of structural failure, the tower was designed to "implode" straight down rather than fall over horizontally. I don't know how accurate this is but that was the story I heard.

[RadioHamGuy]

That was great to see, thanks. I love looking at transmitter sites and old radio equipment.

[KC9SYJ]

@RadioHamGuy I hear ya,...I enjoyed this video and his five part series on the VOA site!

Same goes for old ham gear!

[patrick9648]

Is that old 500kw still functional? I would have thought I would have been scrapped for parts or junk years ago. It would be fun to see if someone could fire that bad boy up just to see what it would do. if you lived near the tower you'd get it over the toaster the micowave, pace maker, who Lord knows what else.

[powertube5671]

@patrick9648 It's just there for display. Most of the transmitter is missing, including a special substation that used to be outside the facility.

The vast cooling system is completely non-functional. The video starts out showing the water cooling pond which is crumbling. There are broadcast transmitters in this world running 2 MILLION watts. Voice of America has equipment that is capable of 500KW, but they are running only 250 KW.

See my five part VOA visit video.

[therealk8io]

Hi Jim, Paul Jellison here. K8IO (Formerly Wd8kmx) I can answer a few questions. The towers shape was an attempt to minimize the base coupling capacitance to ground. NEC modeling of the tower shows it actually acts different that a uniform section tower. This tower recently got a new set of guys. I no longer live on site nor have anything to do with WLW. I left for Colorado in 2003 to oversee technical ops for the Rocky region with Clear Channel. Site was cleaned up shortly after this vid. 73

[powertube5671]

@therealk8io Hi Paul,

Thanks for the info on the tower. It's not easy to find.

Send me an e-mail sometime using the website e-mail address and

let me know how you are doing.

73,

J-

[ve2so]

@patrick9648 No it was for test purpuses and it wasn't worth the cost , 50 kw was suitable.

[hubzcaps]

60 thousand watts hehe if a bird flew near the tower..it would be cookd b4 it hit the ground hehe

[sirwitchback]

I have 3 of these transmitters in my basement.

[k9rzz]

Why does the transmitting tower have the shape that it does?

[powertube5671]

@k9rzz I'll be dead honest with you and say I really don't know. Other than the fact that only one set of guy wires is used, it's not a design that lasted, so I would have to say that there are more disadvantages than advantages.

I would welcome anyone reading this to chime in and enlighten us.

[BigBananaMan]

@powertube5671 The theory is that you treat this like two structures. The guy wires hold the base of the top tower as if it were on the ground. It only needs to resist perpendicular force of the wind like a short tower. The lower half must provide a large enough plane for the top tower and only needs to resist gravity pushing downward, hence the upside down pyramid. A truncated pyramid would be wasteful and holding a straight tower in the center would allow it to resonate in the wind with th

[BigBananaMan]

@powertube5671 Looks like youtube won't let me type the whole explanation but it balances the ability to resist resonating in the wind inherent to a pyramid, and the lower material and space cost of a standard mast. They probably stopped making them when they realized you could just use a straight mast and support it in multiple locations or perhaps they just made it by recycling two smaller towers? Either way it's structurally sound but an odd choice.

[MillBelater]

Get more than a few years at any station, and the engineering dept. returns to its natural state of decay.

[powertube5671]

@MillBelater

?

[MillBelater]

@powertube5671 Example: 55 years in our building, the Engineering Dept was a flea market. Parts from obsolete equipment saved for the one "useful" IC chip, Turntables!, EBS Envelopes, Logs from 1983, manual for Harris "yard", etc. Building burned, new one built. Day one Engineering--organized, neat, no clutter. 5 years later--IO cards that don't work on bench, network routers, etc. Coroplast signs for stations (100 total, including metal stands for in ground never used). Starguides, etc.

[powertube5671]

@MillBelater I agree, it was a mess, but, if you watch the video carefully at 5:28,I had added an annotation quite awhile ago that the mess was completely cleaned up since I visited. It was cleaned up many years ago. The video is now 13 years old.

I can't swear that it has stayed that way, but I can't swear it hasn't.

[acoustics101]

I visited this site myself during the late 1970s. I was amazed at the huge scale of everything associated with the 500 kW transmitter. I remember my dad telling me a story of him visiting it when the 500 kW transmitter was still up and running. He said you could use your key to draw an arc off the fence surrounding the tower. The arc would talk and play music. He also said there was so much RF energy in the area that the lights in some nearby homes would still glow dimly after being turned off.

[truemetalist89]

I live directly behind the WLW tower in Mason. My neighborhood used to be farm land before they began building it in ’99.

[megawatts1066]

Great to see the site. I last saw it on Aircheck Factory, Vuolo Vuolo Video, around 1977????

[RICHARDDAVISMCLEOD]

WLW 700 AM was known as the Nations Station for years. The legacy of the Crosley brothers, in just putting these call letters on the dials of all the radios they sold, will keep the history of this very famous radio station long in the annals of Radio History. This makes for a most collectible Radio with generally very unusual designs rivaling any major radio manufacturer of the time

[notsignedup]

Being an ET, I can appreciate the technology. That thing is a beast. Where does one go to school at to repair a 500KW Xmtr? Xmtr's R US? Thanks for the tour, it was quite interesting. Water cooling of pc's is quite the rage now a days, back then it was essential to maintain output. What year was the equipment newly installed? The trimmer coils looked like a cage. thanks for posting.

[charliepc56]

Man, That's awesome! Thanks for posting the video.

[crimthann86]

what a great tour of such a historic station.. thanks

[BullfrogFM]

Thanks for posting this video. I have seen Jim's radio pages and it is great to see a video of the old RCA 500KW transmitter. I read his comments about the frogs in the cooling pond and after hearing the audio, I can identify the species as a Rana Clamitans or green frog. It sounded like a juvenile as well.

Tks for posting

The Frogman

[VenusFlyDuck]

By cleaned up does that mean that no part of the 500kw unit survives?

[powertube5671]

No. It means that all the scattered clutter has been removed. The 500KW unit remains.

[VenusFlyDuck]

Whew, I was worried. How about those various older 50kw units? It always saddens me to see complicated equipment junked. I've been looking to adopt an old xmitr myself, perhaps for AM fone use. Did you know that there are only a couple IBM System 360 computers left in the world, none working?

[powertube5671]

I used to submit jobs (programs) to IBM 360s and IBM 370s back in the mid 70s. They were extremely expensive to use. I think I saw one at the Smithsonian Museum in D.C. a few years ago.

In the very same workplace we were designing microprocessors and the IBM was helping us do it.

[KatSteeleandRinehart]

nice!

[4olivia1]

Kind of erie hearing Joe Nuxhall broadcasting a reds game in the background

[powertube5671]

Not being from the area, I was not aware of who the announcer was, but when you used the word "erie" I sensed something. I searched for Joe Nuxhall and, sure enough, he passed away on 11/15/2007, according to Wikipedia. May he rest in peace. I'm glad I caught him in the background.

[poweredbyibm]

Apparently today's engineers and technicians, are afraid or unaware of the science of the tubes, but it is certainly the best, but many would bother, thanks friend for the video again as this by the United States, I would visit the station WLW.

Thanks

[poweredbyibm]

Hi thanks for the video, I'm loving the tubes, much like to have lived in the time it was operating the 500-kw transmitter so you can see in action, I feel sorry to see that is not well cared for, I would feel happy if was preserved, I am manufacturer of TV transmitters in Argentina and in my transmitter, I use klystrons in the final stages and success, I have a very strong testimony that there is no purer than a transmitter tube.

[burningdust]

Very interesting, Water cooling pond? wow.

[pipeorganistken]

I would hope that the historical preservationists at WLW go to some work to clean up and display this piece of radio transmission history to the public. We take the transmission of radio and television signals for granted these days. Few know how much is actually involved in getting that voice or music to exit a speaker or that video signal to a television screen. I would probably drive a tour guide crazy with questions about this monster. This transmitter is a valuable treasure.

[powertube5671]

The mess was cleaned up many years ago when Harris used WLW as a beta site for their 3DX-50 transmitter.

Remember, the video is now 12 years old.

[KC9SYJ]

@pipeorganistken I have to agree with you that this huge transmitter is valuable treasure,...along with a piece of history. And WLW historians need to clean all that stuff up and properly display this beast of a transmitter to the public,...if they have not already done so. Jim's WOWO page is really nice,too! I would love to see "George" up close and personal. Now there is a machine well kept and cared for even if it's not in regular use.

[hellsmaw84]

hey, my favorite AM station to catch the Cincinnati Reds and Cincinnati Bengals games. speaking of Reds games... didnt 700 WLW AM move to Cincy?? and i sure would love some of those computer/transmitter parts. and it looks like a lot of those are still in use.

[ve2so]

The difference between 500 kw and 50 kw gave only 10 db and that was a lot of power consuming. Today they are at 50 kw.

[Erzahler]

Any way to go there again and get another video of the place? It would be interesting to see how the place has changed in 12 years. I understand the Blaw-Knox was torn down and replaced with a more conventional tower. I visit your WLW website frequency and it always amazes me just how big this thing was, and what a huge headache it must have been to operate!!

[degasmonet]

Erzahler, The Blaw-Knox tower was not torn down. (As of last week when I drove past. :-) )

The site looks pretty much the same. The cooling ponds get over grown and trimmed back every few years. Externally it looks pretty much the same as in this video.

[Erzahler]

Degasmonet, thanks for the clarification there on the Blaw-Knox. I must have been thinking about another site then. Good to know that Blaw-Knox tower is still there!

[drradio2003]

what a great vid. cool im dirrector of engineering for magnum communications in WI. lots of am-fm-tv stations, its a challange. but what fun! wow I wish I had an antique to play with , id fire it up, and see what happens. don't tell the FCC just do it!

[billmossII]

What a great video. I did a google image search of Blawnox and a picture of the tower came up. One link lead to another and here is WLW, the radio station I listen to several nights a week. I listen to "America's Trucking Network" with Steve Sommers. I'm usually asleep after an hour or so but it's great entertainment. The 500 kW transmitter is truely a monster. Is that K9DOG's doghouse? Ha ha. There is a lot of old stuff piled up but would be interesting to look over. Thanks for the tour.

[crusher19860138]

I have not heard of a site called aspidistra,i believe Droitwich transmitting station used originally marconi units,but i suspect may now use harris units.

[Erzahler]

Crusher, I found some info on the Aspidistra transmitter; it was used in England during WWII for Nazi propaganda broadcasts. Basically it was an improved version of the original WLW design and also had a max RF power of 500 kW. It was located in Sussex and used three, ~400-ft. towers to direct transmissions into Germany.

[Erzahler]

Thanks for the tour, Jim. I've seen the pictures on your website, but to see an actual walking tour of the "Whole Lotta Watts" station is just amazing, short of actually being there. If only that old 500-kW behemoth could be made operational once again...

73 de NØJAA (with my skinny, ol' Yaesu FT-840 and all 0.1 kW of it!)

[hellsmaw84]

could you imagine the electrical bill running it at 500 KW once again? if they wanted to do that, they would have to MASSIVELY overhaul all the cooling leads, transformers and everything that drove it.

[poweredbyibm]

Que lindo transmisor, que pena que ya no pueden utilizar 500Kwatts, seria muy lindo, que vuelvan a utilizar ese transmisor, ver funcionar las valvulas, las pisinas de refrigeración, amo los transmisores valvulares, nada puede reemplazar el sonido que tienen los equipos valvulares...

Gracias amigo por este video que permite ver ese enorme transmisor...

[kcscarecrow]

Thats great powertube.

One of these days if Im in Cincinnati I would like to visit there transmitter site if I can.

[kcscarecrow]

Thanks for the great tour of WLW.

The transmitter facility needs a little TLC.

More than I realized.

I am of the belief that a clean well organized facility is a safe and efficient facility.

You can find parts easier and not fall over, or have stuff falling on you.

The old 500,000 watt transmitter is a historic part of radio history. And there's junk stored all over the place on and in front of it. An old door leans up against the back.

Other than those observations. A good video.

[powertube5671]

All the junk was cleaned up some years ago.

[uploadJ]

Thanks for the tour; I've been to your website in the past, but it's still nice to have a narrated video!

[crusher19860138]

Shame your 1/2 million watt TX is non operational anymore!I live in England, approx. 10 miles from a 1/2 million watt TX at Droitwich,Worcestershire,on 198 khz LW.

[powertube5671]

That's cool. I've seen some videos and web sites showing some of the cool sites on the other side of the pool.

I really love the London Eye. Not radio, but a very cool machine!

[Erzahler]

That one crusher mentioned in England, is that the one that used to be called the Aspidistra (or however it's spelled)? I know that the GE/WE/Westinghouse cooperative built a second 500-kW transmitter I believe was originally contracted to a New York radio station, that instead went to somewhere in Europe around the same time as the WLW beast.