** U S A. There has been much discussion of a couple of domestic SW stations in the US amongst club members, and this bears sharing with everyone else, I feel!
This started with MARE Jack Amelar mentioning a local station in Maine had an item about WBCQ:
https://tinyurl.com/WBCQ-expansion
Also see the MARE Tipsheet # 991 from 5/18 for details on who is funding it (a 'flat earther' church who talks about spreading the word across the globe! -- You just can't make this stuff up!)
That report led MARE Don Hosmer to comment that despite the transmitter fire that destroyed one of the kickers in Maine. Don commented that although there was a 'gofundme' campaign for people to donate money to Al Wiener, "he got a free xmtr from Jeff White of WRMI. Jeff told me (DH) he donated the old WRUL vintage xmtr (Radio New York Intl) from the 60's.
[that was the WNYW era --- Worldwide, not International; RNI was AW`s pirate thing --- gh]
WYFR bought that New York station years ago and moved the old xmtr down to Florida (from Scituate MA). Jeff White was cleaning house early this spring and gave it to Alan who hauled it north when he returned from his winter in Florida."
Don continues "I saw that xmtr a couple of years ago and it is an antique, but knowing Alan's love of "tinkering", he'll get it on the air eventually. WBCQ's current xmtrs are converted medium wave units and this will be his first actual SW xmtr."
This however, is not the transmitter that World's Last Chance will be using. THAT one is not going to be 'owned' by 'BCQ, but they'll just install and operate it for WLC (Ken Zichi, MARE Tipsheet Aug 24 via DXLD) Continued at USA: WMLK
** U S A. And speaking of Ampegon, that led MARE Larry Russell to riff off memories of WMLK which is buying a new Ampegon transmitter:
https://ampegon.com/news/?id=91
THAT led MARE Lorraine Kulbacka to run off on a discussion of Continental Transmitters (which is what most of WRMI's are in Okechobee) and their general good reputation.
That 'reliability' talk led Larry R to comment about the Ampegon press release concerning WMLK
https://tinyurl.com/WMLK-burns
which suggested the old Ampegon kicker was 'reliable' until it burned, which WMLK's various comments suggest is not the case.
Lastly MARE Paul Dobosz has the 'last word' here and suggests that Ampegon is unlikely to be the problem in Brother Meyer's world:
"A good part of WMLK's problems stemmed from lack of engineering expertise and poor construction practices. They purchased the BBC (Ampegon's prior name was BBC [Brown Boveri Co.]) transmitter in Europe configured for European power distribution voltages. It was old and largely obsolete at the time of purchase. That meant a lot of adaptation to make it function. Adding to their woes was a lack of money to cover the expenses of installation and engineering personnel with limited ability and knowledge of the specifics of the transmitter. The technical documentation for the transmitter was all written in German so they had to pay a translator to translate the books into English."
Paul continues, "The actual fire was caused by the aluminum open wire transmission line to the antenna overheating and burning their transmitter building down. This is the second insurance claim they have had in the past few years as an ice storm brought down their previous curtain/dipole array. They were able to erect a more robust antenna with the insurance money; they are now also getting a modern transmitter and building thanks to insurance money. I'm not sure I'd want to insure them after two major claims of that size within a couple of years, but I'll leave that to the bean counters and
underwriters."
Paul concludes with the observation that "Ampegon has gotten a bunch of business from the NE United States in the past year --- This despite everybody including most of the government broadcasters pulling out of shortwave." (Ken Zichi, MARE Tipsheet Aug 24 via DXLD)
