AM Ground Systems Company
WBCF Transmitter Site

This site was build in August and September of 1998 by KK Broadcast Engineering and included a new 198 ft Rohn 25 tower with Nott Ltd. Unipole, AGSC Ground System and a Nautel ND1 1kw transmitter with associated feed lines.

This site became necessary when the City of Florence began a huge ($52 million... with an M) expansion project on an adjacent sewer treatment plant in the summer of 1997.  The station was not officially contacted about the upcoming sewer project until construction had actually began.  The City Engineers were a bit frustrated when they learned that it would take approximately 6 months to get a construction permit and that the station couldn't just be "loaded up and moved" like they had planed.  By the time a suitable site was located and construction permit obtained (with plenty of associated FCC red tape) it was August 1998.  By this time the stations old transmitter site was literally an island.  Construction had been on going over the previous year and the only undisturbed dirt within hundreds of feet of the old tx site was the area within the guy wires.  The telephone line was cut at least weekly, the power was knocked off several times and for days at the time the tx site was inaccessible due to the construction.

Somewhere I have about 20 other images of this TX build but they have come up AWOL. Sooner or later I will find them and add them to this page
 

Site work just starting.

Just a few days before, this was a pond.  This area was filled about 15ft.
 


 

My #1 helperat the time, Shelton Barnett, brazes radials to the common ground point.  The ground screen can be seen on the left side of this image.
 

Looking north.
 

Looking south.  The transmitter building was built just off of the ground radials with coaxes ran under ground through a large conduit that surfaces in a cable trough in the transmitter room floor.

The white area in this image is a cover over the well.  The well was steel cased to over 100ft and is a total of about 150 feet deep.

Looking northeast.  Shelton still working on radials.  My rather substantial shadow soon causes him to believe that there is an unscheduled eclipse and he runs home to huddle under a table with his wife and child.
 

The bottom of the Unipole can be seen just above the tuning unit.

Internal view of the Nott Ltd. tuning unit.  Simple enough.  The 7/8 coax enters the cabinet on the bottom left side goes to the series vacuum cap, through a Delta sample transformer and on to the output insulator.  The Delta RF amp meter can be seen in the bottom right.

Another view of the tuning unit, with a Delta OIB-3 sitting in the bottom.  The gravel covering the ground screen can be seen in the background.  One of the fence posts for the soon to be installed chain link fence can also be seen in the background.





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