WKAD FM Technical

Engineering by Dave Johnson, Dave Castlebury, Vic Michaels II, Alan Preuss, and Kelly Watts)

WKAD, went on the air in 1978 as the second station owned by Galen D.(Dave) Castlebury Jr. the owner and founder of WMPT AM FM South Williamsport. WKAD, the call letters stood for Kelly, Alan, & Dave), was licensed to Canton, Pa frequency of 100.1 MHZ with a power of 500 watts H & V. The tower site was on Armenia Mountain, near the intersection of Lower Mountain & R. & E. Machmer Road in Tioga County.

The Studio equipment:
Control room: An Eight (8) channel Ramko DC 8MS stereo console, with 2 12" Gates turntables, 2 B.E. mono single cart machines, 2 EV RE 50 Mics, and a Revox A 77 Reel to Reel tape recorder. The frequency and modulation monitors were Belar and the transmitter control unit was a home brew unit designed and built by Alan Preuss. The rack also had a single patch bay for remote loops and other basic functions. With the exception of the cart machines all the control room equipment was new.

Production:
An 8 Channel (used) Gatesway console, a consumer grade turntable and a (used) BE cart recorder. Not a lot of production was done there in my time as most of the produced commercials came up from WMPT on reel or sent up via dedicated broadcast pair from South Williamsport.

Transmitter site:
a 180" guyed tower (used) that had been an AM tower in Orange,Va. Dave and I trucked the tower from VA to South-Williamsport, sandblasted and painted it. Because of the height and location it did not need to illuminated. The tower support design and installation was done by Vic Michaels (II) former part owner Manager of WMLP in Milton a long time friend of Dave's with his son Vic (III) installing the antenna. The tower was constructed on the ground and listed into place by a crane. (On the first attempt we bent a 20' section so the tower was actually shorter than we had planned. The Antenna was a (new) 3 bay CCA dual polarized antenna with heaters. The transmitter was a (new) CCA 500 watt FM transmitter with a Orban audio processor and exciter. Audio was sent to the transmitter site via Stereo equalized dedicated broadcast lines from Canton Telephone Company.

All in all the on air quality was excellent however the signal to the North was a bit spotty as when we picked the transmitter site we missed seeing the peak of Alba Mountain, on our maps, which was 1' below the top bay of the antenna, so we had a shadow in some parts of Troy but a signal you could pick up all over Sullivan and Tioga Counties and even in Williamsport.

One funny side light was with the Ramko console, the channel selectors (A & B) would switch for no apparent reason. It was finally discovered that the switched, (resistance type like in an elevator) were so sensitive that a fly could cause them to switch. after lots of consultation with Ramko the solution was to 'paint' the switch rings with a black magic marker.

The tower site is still in use, but owned now by The Innes Hose Company (Canton Fire Department) and the tower has a variety of municipal two way antenna's attached. The old WKAD frequency was abandoned when the tower site was moved after the station was purchased by Dave Bernstein who also owned stations in Selinsgrove and Bloomsburg.