CJSB-AM “54Rock” was a widely popular radio station in the Ottawa market; in 1994 the changed formats into what’s now known as CKQB-FM The Bear, which I wrote about a few weeks back.
Well, let’s go further back. Jorge and I trekked out to the old and decommissioned AM transmitter site. While I’d been hoping that there’d be tons of radio gear just gathering dust, I was informed that those assets had been removed years previously. Aww. He assured me that it’d still be neat to check out, and it was! 🙂
The facility lies a few kilometers north of Manotick and not far from the CFRA-AM transmitter site too. They had a 50KW day-time transmitter (10KW night) feeding a 6 pole antenna array (4 day, 3 night.)
Entering the building didn’t exactly leave me feeling awestruck, but it’s all about what you put into it:
What you see here is the STL (Studio/transmitter link) dishes in gold, the HVAC ducts (minus the blower unit) for the 50KW transmitter room, the metal rack with lots of green cards is the old audio router and some selector panels are near it. You can see one of the phasing coils standing about 4′ tall at the right, and just at my feet was a portable 12′ satellite receiver dish… in pieces.
In the other rooms there was just remnants of an old radio station… posters, boxes of vinyl, CDs, tower-lamps, spare-parts, winter tires, microfiche, and bugs… lots of bugs. Dead and alive.
So that’s when the real exploring began. The building is rectangular, divided into 3 sections, the rightmost of which was split again, but front to back. Initially we thought the back half of the right room was backup transmitter, the middle room was control and monitoring, and the left room was the 50KW transmitter. But after a few minutes, things weren’t adding up, the pipe trays in the ceiling, the ventilation, power lines… First real tipoff was one of the main breaker panels had labeling for ‘Transfer Switch.’
Took us about half-an-hour to follow trays, sub-floor conduits, guessing what holes in the walls were from. Finally we resolved that the back room was the genset and fuel tanks, the front room was the workshop, pre-power signal processing, and 10KW night/backup transmitter. Middle was control and management, and the 50KW room was always pretty obvious… a twenty by 6 foot scar one the floor made that clear.
As stripped as it was, there was still a lot of things to look at;
A “C-Quam” (Compatible Quadrature AM) unit, which enabled AM to be heard in stereo. Yes, AM radio can be heard in stereo… try it in your car.
No idea why this was there:
After going through some documentation at the studios, I found that the 50KW was a Contintental Electronics 50KW transmitter… so then I started researching. Damn The Internet. I got caught up by Scott Fybush’s Tower Site Of The Week site…. for days. I’m going to make a point to email him about my ‘blog as I’ve gotten access to the Fortune transmitter site that he couldn’t when he featured it a few years ago. Ben MacMurchy also seems to suffer the same addiction, and he seems to be in Eastern Ontario as well. And NECRAT only seems to have a Montreal site…
Anyway, ’bout the Continental xmitter…. want to buy one? No? Maybe just the manual? They look fant-classic:
50,000W of rockin’ AM energy
And here’s the exploded/open view:
Also nearby are the CFGO-AM 1200 site, CFRA-AM 580 site, I believe 1310 AM has to be out here too. The old CBC site should be here too, Ben MacMurchy had a photo of it, so I’d like to find that one. And there’s the big FM/TV transmitter site just east of Manotick on Stagecoach road.. it should be comparable to Fortune… gotta get a tour of that.
Here’s all the photos from the old CJSB site.