During the heyday of AM in the 50's and 60's, practically every consulting engineer and tower contractor had a "wire plow" that they used or loaned out to build ground systems.  After the demise (as it were) of AM in the early 70's, most of these plows were junked or allowed to slowly rust away.  There was very little AM building going on and hence very few ground systems being built.

Then along came the 80's.  Many ground systems were over 30 years old and had been damaged or deteriorated to the point that the stations coverage was being affected.  The knowledge and equipment to repair and/or rebuild ground systems had been basically lost.

In the late 80's I had a contract station that needed a new ground system built.  Their staff engineer had already purchased the #10 copper wire. He and I hunted unsuccessfully for several months to find a contractor to install the before mentioned wire.  Quite proud of himself, the full time engineer one day announced that he had located someone to put the new radials in.  AND they were only going to charge $350 to do it.   Hmmmmm...

On the appointed day, I arrived at the transmitter bright and early and dutifully marked off each of 120 radials at the appropriate lengths.  I used red paint and little red survey flags at the end of each radial.  The stations staff engineer arrived and we proceeded to wait for over an hour for the plow guy to show up.

I knew we were in trouble when the plow guy arrived at the transmitter site riding a Ditch Witch trencher and carrying several pieces that had vibrated off of his machine.  His truck had quit a couple of miles down the road and he had unloaded the Ditch Witch and drove it at about 3 mph to the site.  Anyway, back to my tale...

We walked out across the field where the radials were to be installed and showed the Ditch Witch cowboy a red flag marking a radial end.  He said that yes he had estimated the job at about the right amount and that he would be done in an HOUR(?) or so.  "Oh by the way", he asked, "What are the rest of these flags for?"  Uh oh...

It seems that he had only figured on ONE trench and obviously didn't understand the concept behind an AM ground system.  With that revelation, the staff engineer quickly found some other place to be and left me to work things out between this vibration crazed trencher jockey and the station owner.  Needless to say, the station owner wasn't at all happy about this $350 job turning into a $4500 job.  They finally hit upon the $4500 figure and the trencher started work.

As you might imagine, as the trenching proceeded to destroy the existing ground system,  the tower and transmitter departed from normal tuning and several trips to the site were necessary to keep the old Gates on the air.  During each visit, I checked on the quantity and quality of the trenching job and was quite pleased with the results.  Having to work around the existing building and a couple of other obstructions had caused a pronounced "pin wheel" effect in the trenches. I contacted  a consulting engineer friend who assured me that it was perfectly OK to have some bend in the radials and that I should not worry about it.  The trencher had ran about 12 hours a day for 5 days and had about 75% of the trenches dug when the full time engineer showed up at the site for the first time since his hasty escape.  Seeing the (harmless) bend in the trenches he blew a gasket.  He fired the trencher guy and made him fill all of the trenches back in before leaving.  He then proceeded to call the owner and tell him that the trencher guy had screwed the job up and that he had fired him and was going to do the job himself.   He called a local well driller to come drill a well for a "temporary" ground and then started exploring methods to fix his mess.

Sometime over the next few months, the staff engineer and the owner had a heated disagreement over another matter and the engineer quit.  Nothing had been done with the ground system and the stations coverage was terrible.  The owner called me to do some emergency work on a co-owned station and proceeded to tell me how much money I had cost him on the ground system project.  After a stunned silence, I asked him what exactly he was referring to and he proceeded to lambaste me for the supposedly screwed up trenching.  With more than a bit of disbelief, I told the owner that the trenching hadn't been screwed up at all.  He maintained that John (the staff engineer) said that it was really fouled up and that he had fired the trencher cowboy.  I maintained that there was no problem what so ever with the trenching and that it would have worked fine.  After a short silence from his end this time, he said that we would talk about all of this later but please go up and "throw" some wire in the trenches and try to get some signal out again.  I replied that I would be glad to if there were any trenches to throw wire into.  Another stunned silence... "What do you mean?", he asked.  I then proceeded to tell him that John had made the trencher guy fill all of the trenches back in and smooth the ground up.  More stunned silence... He then said, "Well, at least tie something from the tower base over to the well casing".  To which I replied, "I would be most happy to, but I'm not sure that PVC is going to offer much of a ground".  "What do you *&%^%&^& mean PVC?".  I then explained that his former engineer had spent another $2000 to have a well drilled and then had let the driller put PVC plastic pipe (instead of copper or steel) in for a well casing.  The silence was broken this time by a stream of profanity that I wouldn't dare repeat here.  I later met the owner at the site and showed him what he had for his $6500 ($4500 + $2000 = $6500).  Nothing... Absolutely Nothing... Actually he was worse off than before because of the trencher tearing up what little ground system that he had previously had.  I now realized that even though I didn't know a lot about AM ground systems at the time, I had certainly learned how not to build one.

After again unsuccessfully searching for someone to build a ground system, I decided to have a go at it myself.  I talked to numerous "old timers" and consulting engineers about how best to go about building a ground system.  As is often the case, the best way turned out to be neither the cheapest nor the easiest.  I bought a hacked up subsoil plow from a local tractor dealer and made several modifications to it myself.  Following several consultants advice, I built a spool carrier on the plow that allowed the wire to spool off into the ground directly behind the plow foot .  I also added an attachment that would allow me to cut the wire from the tractor seat.

I recruited my father for my hookup man and borrowed a farm tractor from a family friend.  Armed with my new "invention" and a Massey Ferguson 275 we started plowing.  Things went surprisingly smooth and the entire plowing process was done in a little less than 4 days.  I then started brazing the radials down and connected the whole thing to the tower and transmitter grounds and to a piece of strap extending to the bottom of the otherwise useless well.

After retuning the ATU and transmitter to match the now properly grounded antenna,  the station enjoyed better coverage than in years.  Antenna impedance was much more stable and lightning damage was significantly reduced.

And from the "For What It's Worth Department", the station owner previously mentioned has become a close friend and owns 2 stations that I still engineer 10 years later.

Further more, then along came the 90's.  Most stations were originally built on the outskirts of town and the towns have grown to surround the formerly rural tower site.  It wasn't long before some transmitter site properties (be them station owned or leased) became worth more than the entire station as an operating radio station.  In recent years we have witnessed lease rates on property skyrocket and station owners sell off pieces of "unused" property for exorbitant prices.  A tower contractor once called me asking about ground systems and explained that a station he was doing work for had sold off their property to within 50ft of one of their 3 towers.  Even worse, the corner of the sold property extended between the tower and guy anchor.  Hmmm.  Time to be hunting a new transmitter site I would think...

Some stations have been forced off of their leased property by property owners raising rates or simply breaking contracts.  We recently quoted a new ground system to a station where their old lease had expired.  The new lease was for about double the old rate and a clause was added that said that the lease would go up $100/month EVERY year.

And hence a new surge of AM transmitter site building is underway.

But to answer the question, "How did a full time broadcast engineer get into the glamorous business of ground system construction?"

Simple...

It had to be done and no one else was willing to put forth the effort nor acquire the expertise and equipment to do it right.
 

Now Back to the Home Page