How do you move a 3,000 lb transmitter anyway??

0Josh • 14th Jul 2005 • blog entries, nome., station life

Its only Thursday morning but I’m already ready for the weekend to begin on Friday afternoon. Its been a busy time here at KICY for the past few days as we have had a few large projects that relate to moving our transmitter. You might have picked up on whats going on from various call letter articles and blog entries, but I thought I’d break it down for you.

Currently our 1.5 ton transmitter is sitting in a building at the base of our main tower, it was built and placed there about four years ago when we went to 50,000 watts. Since that time the RF radiation from the antenna has been so strong that its been melting the frozen tundra under the transmitter building. Half of the transmitter building has been falling into the ground and has required frequent piles of gravel. Its been estimated that we’ve lost over 6 feet of ground over the past few years. This problem can only be solved by moving the transmitter from its current location to a spot a few hundred feet away. The new spot has a 45 year old foundation that was originally used for a KICY fuel tank that kept the old generators going. Once the transmitter is moved to its new location the ground will still melt, however without the weight of the 3,000 piece of equipment it shouldn’t be a problem like it was before.

In May a team came up from Arizona to build the building, a team came up from Florida a few weeks later and installed the electricity, and a group of high schoolers from California painted the building. This past week we rolled out the transmission line that will go from the tower, back to the new building. This extremely thick coax cable runs at about $16 a foot. After we got that all laid out we then had a crew of guys from a nearby social service facility help us put the thick, long cable in 6 inch conduit. Because of all this work I’ve been pulling almost 11 hour days getting to work at 6:45 for the morning show, and then going out to the work site. We’ve been returning around 3 or 4 and I still have my regular evening shift to prepare for. I’ve been heading home around 6:20 or so after recording “The Edge”. Whew!….. good thing its not always like this. I’ve also been continuing to fish every night for a few hours, normally coming home with about 8 or 9 pink salmon.

We will be moving the transmitter tomorrow morning around 10:00am and will most likely be off the air for a week or so as we move it and all the electrical equipment over and get it all hooked back up.

I’ll post a photo or two tomorrow of what we’ve accomplished so far.