Excellent video except the constant giggle/laughing which there was nothing funny to laugh about.

It was good to see some vintage broadcasting gear that still works. I happen to be a retired Broadcast Chief Engineer and your transmitter brought back many memories! I want to point out that I saw you touching some of the tubes with your bare hands, I recommend that you do not do that. I say that due to the oils and other contanaments on your hands can create hot spots on the tube in the area that was touched and cause premature failure. Many of the stations that I took care of had kept their old tube transmitters after going solid-state and kept one tube transmitter as a backup. I am not sure if they have them now, I expect not. I retired in the first week of 2013 and then moved south to Florida. While in retirement I am doing some contract work with several stations here and I do love doing the work, down here 90% of my work is rebuilding Antenna Phasers and Transmitter Finals that suffered Lightning Damage. I will keep doing my contract work for as long as I can, I feel blessed that I have a profession that I love doing and to me it is my play ground and have kept up with all of the technology changes through the decade's.

As a retired TV repair technician, I appreciate the care and craftsmanship put into older equipment. RCA was really RCA and not a name used by a Chinese company.

70 years old and still running wonder if new junk ever last that long ? the old RCA is nice transmitter, nice unit .

this guy giggles vtoo much !

That laugh scares me.

Thanks for that. Very interesting. I really enjoy watching quality old equipment like this still working. Unlike the throw away society today!

Absolute nerd, but he knows his stuff.

botch-up repair!

I have a J1000 Nautel that replaced a Harris MW1 that replaced I think a BC1 that I had wish I had kept and took home. Fun stuff. All my FM is still tube. The MW1 is mostly working after a lightning strike but I wasn't able to get the rest of the parts. The J1000 has something in it that you can hear the audio especially when the gospel singing ladies get loud.

I love that 90% of the exposed circuitry would fry you as surely as a fish stick in a toaster oven

I made a 200w AM broadcast band transmitter for my neighbour and I, we have a huge collection of old am radio, but since there's no station where I live, I made one myself and I run the audio from a tube amplifier connected to my computer with a digital am compressor. It has 2 807 in the final rf amplifier, class C plate modulation. It's a smaller version of this one. It really sounds like a commercial radio. We don't have any neighbour around so I don't have to worry about bothering others people. The antenna is a radial half wave long wire. It runs very well. I used a all tube design because it's easier and I have plenty of parts.

your laff freaks me out

I liked this video alot, very well made it honestly felt like i was getting a tour from someone who really knows and enjoys the place

You´re such a nerd, I love the chirp-i-chirp, that thing is very cool. I very much enjoyed the tour, I hope You keep Your job, they are lucky to have You nerd at this place. In Germany am is dead. As a kid in the 70´s it was awsome, sooo much going on on am and shortwave. Even some number stations. Now it´s clear what they were but then they were just strange to me. I love radio. Have a nice day!

Back in the early 1980’s, I was a DJ on my college radio station. We had these cart decks (if I remember correctly we got a new three cart unit my last quarter on the air back in 1984). We used them to play station ID’s at the top of the hour, public service announcements, station promotions, and transitions between songs. In order to get a passing grade, all DJ’s had to produce three PSAs or promos per quarter which entailed utilizing the station’s production studio to record our spots on reel to reel tape, mixing and then recording final product onto a cart. The station reused the carts, and depending on the length of the cart tape, we could sometimes put multiple copies of the produced recording on a single tape so the tape did not require fast forwarding to beginning of tape. I remember recording my spots onto carts and laying down the cue tone immediately before hitting record. The station personnel who reviewed our carts was a real stickler, and I remember he made me remake a couple of my first products. It was actually a good thing since the spots sounded more refined and professional. I think that person left the station just before the last quarter I was on the air. I remember many of the spots sounded sloppy and somewhat amateurish since the person who took over didn’t seem to care as much. I remember someone had made a jingle utilizing the intro to Safety Dance very similar to the one you had. Our station was KCPR 91.3FM at Cal Poly State University, San Luis Obispo CA. Those were fun days!

sound the tardis dr who dr 1.and 2 from. the. 60s

The one on the right, is that an ink pen cap sticking up?

Thank You For Good video, i Wonder Where The Resistor fuse Goes.

That was cool!

Thanks for this video, absolutely fascinating!

There's a lot of interesting things about these. @9:20 Could there also be an outdoor AC condensing unit for this? At the top on the right just above the blower I thought I might have seen what could be refrigerant lines that could be going outside to an external condensing unit. I've also seen some that have air conditioning compressors and water chillers in them too and also seen some that run on 277/480 volt 3 phase power.

Wow, how many times I slid back the lid on one of those for routine cleaning! It's time to clean the capstan and replace the pinch roller on yours -- gnarly slippage flutter going on there! :-) The Deltas were my favorite. ITC machines were absolutely solid and one of the brands that advanced the cart tape technology to sufficient quality for stations to use them for music playback as well as spots and jingles. That spanned the time between vinyl (no more "cue burn!") and CDs. Most stations had between 3 and 6 cart decks in the control room so the DJ had a busy time swapping carts to run through all the commercials and the jingle at the end of a spot break. One of my stations had three of the triple-deck Delta III units, so that was pretty glorious to have 9 cart slots! The "primary" tone on the cue track is what caused the tape to stop cued up to the beginning ready for the next play. Whoever recorded the cart would press the "secondary" tone button on the recorder at the end of the element and hold it for a moment until all the audio had faded out. That cue tone (some stations used the "tertiary" tone) could be used to automatically trigger the next cart to fire. Then the trailing edge of the secondary tone would cause the deck to go into fast forward mode. The flashing light was a big help to let the DJ know which carts had played. The Deltas also had an option to lock out the play function so you couldn't accidently fire the spot a second time.

Great video! I have this deck and just took it out of basement storage after about 15 years. It ate the first tape I put in after running a head cleaner for a bit. I haven't cracked it open to check the belts and wanted to ask if replacing your belts was difficult. I've seen some comments online about having to break factory soldering to remove the power supply first on other H/K models. I'm trying to decide if it's worth the hassle. Thanks.

OOOOOH MY GOOOOOD... THIS DUUDE IS A GENIUS AND HE TALK LIKE THE N E R D LEWIS SKOLNICK FROM THE MOOWIE NERDS.. I AM A HAM/AMIGA NERD MY SELF .. SO GO ""LEWIS """ YOU ROCK BRO.. EVEN LAUGH SAME WAY

So cool. Subbed

I know someone who has one in his garage.

NERD!!

Marvelous transmitter. KUGN (Eugene) ran the very similar BTA-10, operating at 5kW, thru 1978 when it was replaced by a Continental. Amazingly solid, good sounding, and reliable. Also easily capable of 110% to 120% positive given the oversized components.

Want to sell it? Lolz

x-rays you mean

there is no APM/ACPI because chipset is i440FX a early Pentium II chipset with very limited features, has no APM, no ACPI, no AGP and no SDRAM

Watching as I sit here in a modern AM radio station waiting to load my "carts" for the overnight newscasts.

Yeah, my Grandfather, now deceased, sold these RCA transmitters. No wonder he was so successful. They don't build them like that anymore!!!

Selected power amplifier plate voltage --> 4,750 volts

I thoroughly enjoyed your tour of the transmitter! Great job.

Interesting video! Loads of tubes, Kilowatts in air... Nowadays , in my opinion the AM MW transmitter can be implemented by class D audio amplifier with power mosfets with gate driver (to achieve dead time) in switching mode. But power of such a transmitter constraints by several tens of kilowatts - the modern mosfets runs up to 1000V

Cool, thank's

Which Radio Station's Transmitter Site is this?

@ 20:19 Does it go to 11?

She is quiet for an old girl!

My dad was a chief engineer at a AM station in early 50's and I remember as a kid going out to the transmitter with him to check on things. Mainly remember the tremendous heat coming out of the equipment. Thanks for the video!

La Voz de Carabobo 1040 AM, broadcasts from the city of Valencia, Venezuela with a similar Harris 10kw

I own a 77 Monte Carlo with four switches eight batteries three pumps over the years it's had a lot of upgrades I love lowriding it's a lifestyle that's definitely addictive awesome video footage of this 63 impala

What I woudn't give to get to see that transmitter in person...

That was really cool. One of these things most people will never get to see in person or work on. Something so cool about tubes and analog electronics though, how you can actually see and hear it work.

If that's glass (not plexi-glass) over the rectifiers, it should block the UV.

Wow, this takes me back. I worked at a station in the late 70's, that was using a 1 KW Raytheon, (1947 vintage), at night, directional 4 tower array. Daytime, we used an RCA BTA-5, non-D. The RCA BTA-5 was only 2 units though. There wouldn't have been enough room at the transmitter site for that mega-monster 5KW that you showed here. I was one of the jocks at the station, but was at the x-mitter site on many occasions. It was nice to take a trip back to the fun old times of radio. I got paid crap, but I had fun.

The rail track above the falls is part of the "Charlotte Line" also known as the "Hojak Line". It's a branch leaving the CSX mainline on the west side of Rochester crossing Hague St & Lyell Ave, continuing on to Kodak Park. From KP it continues north crossing Dewey Ave splitting left to Latta Rd & right past Turning Point Park to the Port of Rochester. At the Port it made an easterly turn across the river by swing bridge (torn down) to Irondequoit. West from the Port it paralled Lake Ontario Parkway, met the the other branch & continued past Dewey Ave to Hilton & Hamlin... All of the businesses north of KP once served by the Charlotte Line have long since faded into history. They included: lumber yards at the first Dewey Ave crossing & Latta Rd, Port of Rochester, delivering coal to RG&E Russell Station on Beach Ave & the Odenbach factory at Dewey Ave & Lake Ontario Parkway. The Odenbach factory built coastal oil tankers for the US Army & allies during WWII & was finally torn down a few years ago. Also, there were passenger stations at Dewey Ave crossing, Port of Rochester, Hilton & Hamlin. There might have been another station between the Port & Hilton probably around Braddock Bay.

Surprisingly, TV is known as the “tube,” and “vacuum tubes” form a pneumatic tube transport system, and the Internet is a series of “tubes” - Al Gore