WTNY AM Watertown, NY Tower site-
ICE STORM RECOVERY
This web site documents the repair of WTNY AM and the move of WNER AM as a result of the Ice Storm of 1998. The Watertown group lost a total of 4 AM towers and 1 FM in the 1998 storm. This page was originally posted to enable drilling and tower crews to better understand the construction challenges at the tower location.
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WTNY center tower after collapse
View of main access road heading toward center tower base
swamp next to access road
Center tower island with shack-
the island is 45' diameter centered around tower base (behind shack)
view toward north tower (3 tower inline array- center destroyed by ice storm)
view toward south tower
old center tower foundation before and after new tower foundation construction
The new 262' self-supporting tower arrives
Getting the pieces into the site, stacks of legs, crated insulators... 3 feet tall
Locating 120 damaged radials is a challenge
Tower steel construction is underway
UP WE GO !!!!
Bob Ausfeld Regional VP from Albany and Bob Dakin, GM of Watertown come to take a look. Mike Ring, CE Watertown next to a 3' insulator
Dave Remund, VP Engineering checks out remaining tower sections and gin pole used to install remaining sections.
For lightning protection, make sure your feed line has one of these. Note how the tower light wiring is routed inside the feed line. Also put ferrite chokes on all control lines, telco lines, etc. Radio Shack has split ferrites that are easy to add and work well for me.
Ground system repairs and spider feed for center tower
The largest of three Kintronics diplexing cabinets for WNER (1410 kHz.) and WTNY (790 kHz.) WTNY and WNER will share one of WTNY's DA towers. This cabinet is about 6 feet long and weighed almost 800 lbs. crated. It connects to the output of WNER's transmitter and the output of WTNY's ATU. Its' output bowl feeds the north (#1) tower of the array. The vacuum caps were shipped boxed separately ( the cardboard boxes in the picture).
Britton Construction of Carthage, NY, (315) 493-7902, did a great "need it yesterday" job of building support platforms for the diplexing units. The first 3 pictures show Scott and his crew starting the biggest platform on the north tower shack. The shack needed foundation work to prevent future problems before the diplexing cabinet could be installed. Each pier was hand-dug to avoid radials and control and RF cables, concrete poured, then a 6"X6" pressure treated post set. The 3rd picture also shows the spool with the last few feet of 7/8" coax for WNER's antenna feed. The last picture shows David Jones, my temporary helper, taking a look at the completed south tower diplexing cabinet support platform.
Bob Dakin, Mark Gaines, John Johnson, and Jeff Monaghan helped get the diplexing cabinets in position on the support shelves. Bob, Mark, and Jeff have "saved the day" many times helping with truck unloading, getting welding torches, delivering copper that was dropped off at the studio instead of the transmitter site and generally going extra mile to help get things done.
My daughter, Rebecca, also volunteered many hours to help me tune the ATUs, find ground radials, locate points during our NDA partial proof, and install the diplexing units.
Last updated 8/23/01 @ 2127
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