By SCOTT FYBUSH
It’s one of the most terrifying things that can happen to a broadcast engineer – the station goes off the air, hitting “power up” on the remote control doesn’t work, and so it’s off to the transmitter site to find, well, this:
That is – or rather, was – the 200-foot tower of WMDR-FM (88.9 Oakland ME), which collapsed Wednesday morning in a windstorm atop Streaked Mountain, just east of Paris, Maine, and this was a scary day for engineer Joel Eppley. He tells NERW that conditions were so foggy that after hiking up the icy hill past trees that blocked the road, he still couldn’t see the bent-over tower until he was practically atop it.
Eppley says the custom 10-bay Shively directional antenna had been put into service less than a year ago, and that station owner Light of Life Ministries doesn’t have an auxiliary site in service for the 100 kW/1282′ C0 signal that serves much of western Maine.
For now, “God’s Country 88.9” is off the air while Eppley works out a plan to get it back in service, at least at reduced power. The tower collapsed within a tight 50-foot radius, as it was designed to do, and the transmitter shack appears relatively undamaged, but the big challenge now for the station is a basic one: clearing the road so that there’s any kind of vehicle access to the site at all.
On a tight budget, Light of Life is looking for a replacement tower – if you’re in the region and can help Joel, let us know and we’ll make the connection. (In the meantime, Eppley’s at least breathing a sigh of relief that the rest of the stations along WMDR’s network are now fed by an Internet feed instead of directly off the air, so only two small translators are off the air while the main signal is silent.)
We’ll have an update on WMDR’s situation in Monday’s NERW.
And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!
If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!
This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.
And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future.
Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).
We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.
The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?)
Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too!
In this week’s issue… Fear and Uncertainty in Las Vegas - Memory Stations to sign off - WNED, WBFO rebrand - Najman out at WDEV - Zoomer expands in Ontario By SCOTT FYBUSH Jump to: ME - NH - VT...
A visit to many of the sites in Pennsylvania's Poconos, plus Bold Gold's stations in Scranton
In this week’s issue… Remembering Pittsburgh's Quinn - Seven Mountains enters Harrisburg - My launches new brands - Ryan out at B101 - More cuts at Radio Vermont - Another AM deleted
Tower Site goes Jeeping (and fixing a flat tire!) up in the mountains of northwest New Jersey
