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MANCHESTER (N.H.) UNION LEADER
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 1, 1954

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The Keller Products, Inc., of Manchester, New Hampshire, builders of arctic homes for then U. S. Army, designed and built in sections the WMTW building on Mt. Washington. The walls consist of several layers of wood with heating elements between layers.

A roof had to be constructed that would protect the men and equipment from falling ice. Keller joIned forces with the Therrien Roofing Company and Bird & Son to develop this special roof. It consists of plywood, balsa, fir and six layers of asphalt felt, each hot mopped with asphalt. The balsa, consisting of six inch rectangular blocks, the grain is in vertical position, provides the necessary resiliency to prevent the roof from cracking or shattering when ice falls on it.

As final safety test, two huge chunks of ice, one weighing 100 pounds and the other 200 pounds, were dopped 50 feet through the air onto six foot square panel of the roof. Both chunks of ice broke into a thousand pieces, but not even a dent appeared on the roof panel. (For those familiar with Manchester, the test was run on the Queen City Bridge. The ice was dropped to the Boston and Maine RR tracks that run underneath the bridge. An easy to get to location, from Keller products, with a controlled impact area. ggn)

While the building and roof were being pre-fabricated in Manchester, the 105-kilowatt transmitter is being assembled in the same city. The first time this has ever been attempted. William F, Rust of Rust Industrial Company and a member of the Mt. Washington TV board of directors, supervised this operation in his plant.

Rust said that pre-assembling the transmitter and the building saved several weeks work that ordinarily would have to be done at the site of the transmitter. The transmitter a 20-ton unit was then disassembled, packed in special padded trucks, hauled to the top of the mountain and put back together again.

Trucking the transmitter plus the sections of the building to he top of the 6,288 foot mountain was a long, tedious job, using special Mack LS trailers with a specially designed low gear for long hauling, each truck took two hours to make the eight-mile journey. Drivers had to use their many years of experience to maneuver the 40 hairpin curves and upgrades which rise to a better than 40 percent grade at some points. While this was being done, workmen were finishing an oil tank farm about 100 yards away from the transmitter building. Five tanks holding 20,000 gallons each were constructed from which the oil will be pumped into the building to run the three diesel engine generators.

The actual construction of the building began with more than 200 prefabricated sections put in place and bolted rigidly to the foundation.

It took four different specialized crews to construct the building and install the antenna on the former Yankee Network tower. The tower is 50 feet high and the antenna 40 feet high. The building holds the transmitter unit, power equipment and living quarters for the three-man engineering staff.

Mt. Washington TV, New England’s newest television station began commercial telecasting Saturday, September 25. WMTW operates on VHF Channel 8 and carries network programs of CBS, ABC and DuMont.

As the “on the air” sign flashed for the first time, thousands of Channel 8 viewers saw the baseball game of the week between the American League Champion Cleveland Indians and the Detroit Tigers. This officially put Mt. Washington TV on the air, ending over a year of planning and building.

Despite dire predictions by many persons familiar with the rugged mountain top and its Sierra-like weather, Mt. Washington Inc. officials pressed forward with the gigantic task of constructing a television transmitter building and antenna on top of Mt. Washington, highest point in the northeast United States. They were spurred on by the knowledge that if their plans were successful, the signal would cover more thar 25,000 square miles.

Those, familiar with Mt. Washington know that it common for winds to blow 150 miles per hour or more nearly 100 days a year. In fact, the highest wind velocity ever recorded, 231 miles per hour, was clocked on top of Mt. Washington.

Extreme cold and ice was another problem that faced engineers. Temperatures drop to 40 degrees below zero or more, practically every winter day, and on Mt. Washington winter usually starts in late September and ends in June.

Rime ice, or white frost, as it is more commonly known, forms up to six feet thick at times. When the temperature starts to rise, this rime loosens up and starts to fall, sometimes in chunks weighing up to 200 pounds. These and many other problems faced engineers as they started to work on plans for the transmitter building.

The present building is what came of their long hours of planning and designing testing, and more planning and designing. A concrete foundation constructed to withstand wind velocity capable of moving 18, 000,000 pounds was built. Construction workers excavated a plot of land 79 feet by 37 feet, digging up eight to 10 feet of solid rock by hand. The working space was too narrow and too near the edge of the mountain to use a bulldozer or any other heavy equipment.

When the tons of rock had been cleared away, nearly 200 holes were, drilled five feet into the ledge. Especially constructed iron rods were cemented into the ledge itself and extends into the foundation 18 inches. The cement was poured and allowed to harden.

Meanwhile plans were being completed for a building that would safely house the engineering staff and expensive equipment from the extreme weather conditions.

The studios of Mt. Washington TV are located in the Riccar Inn in historic old Poland Spring, Me. The inn was once used as a lodging for chauffeurs employed by Poland Spring Water.

The question asked most is, “How does the signal get to the top of the mountain?”

Network programs are received immediately in the control room of the studio via microwave and coaxial cables Here is what happens: There is a series of microwave towers in all parts of the country. A microwave dish mounted on a hill near the Poland Spring House picks up the programs and they are relayed by a 2,500 foot underground cable to the control room. From the control room, a huge microwave dish on top of the Riccar Inn sends the signal to another dish in the transmitting building on top of the mountain 46 miles away.

The signal is then relayed to the antenna and sent out to viewers in most of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont, part of Canada including Montreal, part of upper New York State and some of eastern Massachusetts. The primary area which Mt. Washington TV will serve in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire has a $1 1/2 billion retail sales market, includes 25 cities with a population of 10,000 or more. There are more than 1,500,000 people and 445,000 families in this area.

In case you’re interested the effective radiated power of WMTW is video, 105,000 watts and audio, 52,500 watts.

The Mt. Washington-TV, Inc., building atop the highest mountain in the East, consists of three sections, with all the necessary comforts of home, plus rigid safety precautions incorporated.

One section houses all the transmitting facilities, another section provides the living quarters for the crew, plus food and water storage, and the third section holds the power equipment and microwave relay receivers.

A crew of three engineers is on duty with two working and one off schedule. Their quarters consist of two 9x12 bedrooms with twin beds and large closet space in each bedroom; a large 12x18 living and dining room combination; a bathroom, kitchen and storage space.

Five 20 cubic loot freezers hold enough frozen food for a year, while shelf space will provide enough packaged and canned food for the same period. There are also tanks for drinking water, as well as two tanks for wash water.

The power house holds one 50-kw diesel engine and two 175-kw diesel engine generators. One-third of the wall in the power house is constructed of fiberglass. A 10-foot microwave dish facing east toward the studios in Poland Springs, Me., occupies this spot.

Standing next to the building are the tower and antenna from which the signal is sent out. The top of the antenna is 6,375 feet above sea level, the second highest point east of the Mississippi River.

The elaborate antenna system was especially designed for WMTW by Andrew Afford of Boston considered "the world’s formost authority on television antennas."

After many weeks of consultation and checking records supplied by the U. S. Weather Station on Mt. Washington, Alford designed a slotted ring antenna. It is in two sections, each 20 feet long, or more commonly known as a two-bay antenna. Every six inches there is an aluminum ring with a heating element inside, similar to those on an electric range. These units produce 100 kilowatts of electricity, or enough to keep a 15-room house warm when the temperature is 40 below zero and the wind is blowing 100 miles per hour.

The antenna is mounted on the former Yankee Network FM tower. This tower was constructed in 1938: shortly before the hurricane of the same year. It is designed to withstand wind velocity of 300 miles per hour. Needless to say, it fared extremely well with Carol and Edna. It is designed so that If one bay should fail at any time, the other bay can carry 90 per cent of the power needed to transmit the signal. It is also built to send color television.

Construction of this nature is common to Alford. Among his engineering feats has been the antenna for WCBS-TV on top of the Woolworth Building in New York back in 1949. It was designed so that any ice forming on the antenna would melt immediately. This wiped out the danger of ice crashing down on Broadway.

More recently he faced the task of Installing an antenna for WOR-TV in New York. It had to go on top of the Empire State Building, but there was no space available. Known for doing the unusual, Alford built the antenna around the base of the observatotry, the first time anything like this had ever been attempted.