National Weather Service Transmi

Pictured is a Crown WRG 300R transmitter system. The entire unit is housed in a building owned by WKTV, at their Fairfield, NY tower site. This system is made up of a controller unit, two 300 watt transmitter units, power amplifier, and a four bay antenna mounted at approximately 600 feet on the WKTV tower. There are two transmitters - so the controller unit will automatically switch back and forth to whichever one is working properly. At this time - the output power at the transmitters are 166 watts each. This is a very comfortable level for the transmitters, but still gives excellent coverage to our warning area. Input signals for the transmitters are sent to the site via dedicated phone lines from the Albany National Weather Service. Someone at the NWS office has to put a message in special format into their computers to generate what we hear. The voices we then hear transmitted are digital "voices" produced at the NWS office.

The tower is a 1100 foot tall guyed structure, on top of a hill which is 900 feet above sea level, making the top of the tower about 2000 feet above sea level. With the antenna array at about the 600 foot level on the tower - it puts the weather service antenna about 1500 feet above sea level.

This system was obtained by a joint effort of representatives from the Albany NWS, Utica National Insurance Co., WKTV and The Fort Herkimer Amateur Radio Assoc, Inc. Meetings, ideas and work by the committee was begun in 1997. After installation and testing in the fall of 2000, this system has been successfully transmitting NWS information 24 hours a day. If there are any problems with the system, the Fort Herkimer Amateur Radio Association, Inc. has the responsibility of "first look" troubleshooting the system.