Pioneer PBS Engineering Blog

Installation of Antenna input

2009-11-24T12:45:00.001-06:00

Yesterday and today the tower crew worked to install the antenna input complex. This consists of many different pieces of transmission line elbows, transformers, reducers etc. Once assembled these will connect the output of the shared line T splitter to the antenna.

With the elbow complex installed it comes down to one last piece of 6" transmission line that is a custom piece. Normaly this would be measured on site and made at the factory but with the Thanksgiving Holiday the factory is closed so we were forced to make the custom length piece our selves in order to keep the project going. Jerry the crew chief prepares the end of the new section and silver solders the flange on. It's criticle to make a good connection that is both a good RF connection and is air tight and strong.

Now that the custom length piece is made and pressure tested, the crew hauls it to the top to install. Once in place we will pressurize the whole system with compressed nitrogen to 5 lbs to make sure there are no leaks in the system.

A big day. The new antenna goes up.

2009-11-23T15:40:00.000-06:00

Friday, Nov. 20th

Today's the big day. The weather is perfect and the crew is ready and the antenna is all prepeared to be lifted to it's new home on top of the 1200' KWCM tower.

The tower finish preparing the antenna by putting on the last of the radome covers and the lightening arestors at the top by the beacon.

Jerry and Jerold prepare the load lines configured in a two part so the antenna will be properly positioned when it gets to the top. 15,000 lbs is not somthing youjust move around once it up there.

As Jerry lifts the antenna up Jerold uses a telescoping forklift to lift the bottom untill its completly off the ground.

The antenna is lifted to the top and set in place. It's position is critical as this antenna has a directional patern to it and if it is rotated the wrong direction our coverage will be much different.

With a a lot of work completed this week, we will prepare for the installation of the antenna input complex. Once complete the test engineer will arrive on site to make sure the whole system is correct before power is applied.

New bury mount gets installed

2009-11-23T15:19:00.000-06:00

Here's some shot of the new bury mount being installed at the tower top. Once in place the tower crew will weld it in place both at the ink well on it bottom and around the top where it enters the cap of the tower.

The bury mount weight aroud 5100 lbs.

New shots of old antenna coming down.

2009-11-20T07:58:00.000-06:00

Here is a montage of photos showing the removal of the analog antenna. This whole process took two days.

The antenna came down in three sections totaling 86' long and 18,000 lbs.

Tower ready for new antenna

2009-11-19T10:21:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was another great day and the tower crew finished up removing the rest of the analgo antenna as well as the old bury mount.

Today they will be working on preparing the tower for the new bury mount. This requries a lot of grinding and cutting away of some of the existing tower mounts. If the weather holds out they should be able to get the bury installed and secured.

Analog Antenna comes down

2009-11-17T16:37:00.000-06:00

Another great day weather wise. The tower crew met with the crew chief to go over safty issues. This is a daily occurance to prepare for the day of work and to make sure everyone is on the same page.

The tower crew spent the morning finalizing the installation of the gin pole and jumped it to its final location to pick the antenna. They decided to make it easier and safer to remove the antenna in two pieces. The section below is about 50' long and weights about 6000 lbs. You can see the top section of the antenna along side the gin pole below.

And half of the antenna is on the ground for the first time in 26 years. Just one more section and the bury mount to go.

Preperation to remove Antenna

2009-11-16T16:33:00.000-06:00

It was a beautiful day in western Minnesota and absolutely no wind which means great time to get some tower work done.

Jerry and Matt discuss the days work.

The crew spent today preparing to remove the old Allan Dick antenna from the top of our 1200' tower. First they moved the gin pole up closer to it final position. It still needs to go up further but it's getting there. This is a very dangerous job and it takes time to move around this very heavy equipment at such heights.

Notice the gin pole is now mounted up higher next to the top antenna.

Once complete they spent some time climbing the old antenna and inspecting how it is mounted and coming up with the best way to dismantle it and set it on the ground safely. This is important since this antenna was installed in 1983 and the documentation is very limited.

The last job for the day is insulating all of the cables and load lines from the winch. Since the cables are steel and they are running through the tower in the vicinity of both our current DTV antenna, which is mounted on the side at 1160', and the KRSU MPR, antenna which is mounted at the same height only on the other leg of the tower, they need to be insulated since the RF from both of these antennas can cause the cables to arc when they touch the grounded tower. For this reason we are running both stations at 50% to reduce the chances of damaging the cables.

Paul rides to the top with the insulating material while Jerry and Matt run the winch.

Hopefully tomorrow we will have another great day and be able to drop some or the entire old antenna

KRSU Work

2009-11-15T08:40:00.002-06:00

Today the tower crew spent there Sunday working on re-routing the transmission line that feeds the KRSU FM antenna to the other face of the tower. The way the line was currently installed was going to cause problems when the Gin Pole gets jumped up to the top of the tower.

KRSU is the classical music station of Minnesota Public Radio.

This work today required both of the stations of MPR as well as Pioneer Public TV to be off the air for some of the day.

Gin Pole is on the tower

2009-11-14T16:17:00.000-06:00

Finaly some OK weather. Still kind of windy but good enough to get the gin pole assembled and on the tower. It will still need to be jumped up to the top but it's a lot closer.

Top of last of three 40' sections of the Gin Pole to go up the tower.

Winch operators guide the last section up into its place.

Last section fo 120' Gin Pole in place at 950' on the tower.

You can see the 91.3 KRSU MPR FM antenna on the left and the KWCM channel 31 DTV antenna on the right with the old channel 10 antenna on the top. This is where the new antenna will go.

Antenna Bolts

2009-11-14T15:50:00.001-06:00

This is one of the 12 bolts that will attache the antenna to the burry mount on the top of the 1200' tower.

Run of Bad Weather

2009-11-14T15:35:00.002-06:00

Friday, Nov. 13th

We had a run of bad weather this week. With the high winds gusting to over 30 mph and rain and fog on today, we were unable to get much more work done. The weather looks good for Saturday, hopefully we will be able to make some progress then.

Plumb and Tensioning the Tower

2009-11-14T15:33:00.001-06:00

Monday Nov. 9th, Tuesday Nov. 10th:

The tower crew spent these days making sure the tower guy wires were properly tensioned and the tower was plumb prior to installing the gin pole.

They use two 25 ton hydraluic rams to measure the tesnison on the guy wires.

Finished rigging the Tower

2009-11-14T12:08:00.001-06:00

Friday Nov. 6th

With the Road to the Tower closed off due to the load and tag lines running across the road to the tower,

the tower crew from PCI finished rigging the tower.

The New Antenna Arrives

2009-11-14T11:55:00.000-06:00

Thursday Nov. 5th

The tower crew works to get the tower rigged at least with the small winch. The new Dielectric channel 10 antenna arrives today, the only problem is that the crew will need to take a break from rigging the tower to off load the antenna. Unfortunatly with having few nice days to work on the tower it all had to happen today.

The semi is over 100' long with the antenna being 75.4' of it.

The tower crew works to off load the antenna weighing over 15000lbs without the burry mount.

Inside of a section of the new Dielectric antenna with the Radome protection removed.

PCI Timberland Winch Arrives

2009-11-14T11:34:00.000-06:00

Tuesday Nov. 3rd

The semi from PCI with the Timberland winch arrived at about 8:00am with the crane arriving at around 10:30am. Both the primary and tag winches were off loaded and placed in position.

Crane arrives from Farg to off load Timberland Winch.

Jerry the crew chief organizes the off loading.

The PCI crew works to set the winch down correctly, the position of the winch is critical.

Its all set to go.

Tower Crew Arrive

2009-11-14T11:14:00.000-06:00

The tower crew from Precision Communications arrive on site and get things going on November 1, 2009.

New Transmitter

2009-11-14T10:56:00.002-06:00

Here are a couple of photos of the new transmitter for channel 10 being installed. Its a Harris Platnium that will operate at 2.8KW. The transmitter it self is capable of 4KW.

It was installed by Jim Stitt and his partner along with the Pioneer engineering crew of Rob Rakow and Todd Johnson.

Kevin Tinklenberg from Valley Electric installs the electrical service for the new transmitter.

Pioneer Antenna Work and Welcome

2009-11-14T10:30:00.001-06:00

Hello

I'm Jon Panzer, Station Manager and Director of Engineering for Pioneer Public Television.

As you may know, Pioneer is in the middle of a major tower project at the KWCM Appleton, MN site and I thought it would be interesting to share the progress and some of the photos of this difficult and exciting project.

This project, once complete will replace the top mount analog channel 10 antenna with a new DTV channel 10 antenna.

Obviously this project will require us to be off the air intermittently along with Minnesota Public Radio do to the proximity of the work to these antennas but we will do the best we can to minimize this.

I'll do my best to keep this up date as the project progresses and answer any questions you might have.

Also if you have any questions about your antenna and what you need to receive Pioneer after the switch give us a call at (800) 726-3178.

Jon
Station Manager
Director of Engineering
Pioneer Public Television
jpanzer@pioneer.org