BC-DX 789 05 Jan 2007 Private Verwendung der Meldun

The Continental 420A 500-kW and the General Electric 4BT250A 250-kW
transmitters destined to be installed were instead stored (unassembled) in
the agency warehouse, Brooklyn, New York.
By the time the political situation stabilized at VOA HQ, the warranty had
expired for the transmitters. The GE 4BT250As are straight-forward class B
modulated, and no problem to tune; but the Continental 420As used
Dougherty linear modulation and were always problematic.
Continental sent engineers to provide some guidance and assistance in
setting up the transmitters, but the real work of getting them to work
fell to the staff of VOA technicians.
Tuning the old 420As at 500 kW required up to 20 minutes. And they never
achieved a full 500 kW. I believe the best power achieved was about
350 kW.
And at that level, a 420A drew about 1.2 megawatts from the 115-kV mains!
VOA never achieved any common sense in a technical way. All the power that
has been wasted running the old Continental 420As at nominal 250 kW could
have paid for new transmitters long ago.
When President Reagan got Congress to appropriate a large amount for VOA
to buy new transmitters for Greenville; the technical HQ staff wanted to
try four, new, dissimilar trans- mitters at the two Greenville sites, and
chose the most disirable.
In doing so, it wasted so much time that Congress removed most of the
appropriation. That ended Greenville's "modernization."
IF IBB were to design a missile, it would probably collapse before it were
put on the launching pad.
(later) Word just in from the folks at IBB Greenville (NC) Transmitting
Plant: Site A ("Beargrass") closed down permanently on April 1, 2006y.
The site can be revived, but at very considerable expense and effort.
Equipment at Site A is being "cannibalized" to support Site B.
(Charles Taylor-NC-USA, SW tx site Apr 10)
Charles, Thanks for the interesting information on VOA Dixon. The hosts
countries labor rate explains a lot along with the older equipment. I will
be in the Dixon area in May and will take some pictures of the site. Last
time I was out there AT&T had some kind of transmitting site near VOA.
(Dennis, Vancouver, WA, ibid.)
Ian, I have heard that there is an AT&T site near the old VOA Delano.
Don't know anything more.
(Charles A. Taylor, NC, ibid.)
Dennis, Go here for more info and pix on VOA Dixon:
If you go past there, please check to see if the substation still has the
high tension lines running into it, or if there even is a substation
there. That much substation indicates they're running a lot of juice into
the plant: much more than needed if they are just running a few 100 kW
just to power some commo transmitters.
(Charles A Taylor, WD4INP, NC-USA dxld Apr 7)
Great photos of VOA site, Senor El Gato. I well remember driving past the
antenna farm of Radio Veritas in Pampanga (Philippines). I now wish I'd
stopped in and asked for a tour. Too late smart and too soon old. Same