The Big Island Wildlife Area is bustling with waterfowl and birds of numerous species. A pair of mature eagles can be found almost any day cavorting in the west end of the area along the Larue-Prospect Road. Numerous Great Blue Heron can be found in the same area. This is the season for the return of warblers and waterfowl as they return to their warm weather nesting grounds.
Birders by the thousands can be found along the Lake Erie marshes during April and May. We recently visited the Sheldon Marsh, which is next to the Sawmill Lodge just east of Sandusky. Here you will find Great Egrets,Trumpeter Swans, Bald Eagles and migrating warblers in large numbers and species. The marsh begins on the original road that led to Cedar Point. In 1919 a storm on Lake Erie destroyed much of the road. curbs are still visible along the old roadbed. This led to the building of the current Cedar Point causeway.
Recent news about the moving of WMRN-FM to Dublin, Ohio brought back memories of my years as an engineer at WMRN. When I joined the station the FM transmitter was sitting idle. A freeze on FM radio stations was in effect. By 1953 the FCC permitted new fm stations and this brought WMRN-FM on the air.
What was once a very quiet control room now resounded with heavy duty air blowers that cooled the final amplifier of the transmitter. Soon we took on the Cleveland Indians broadcasts. This required the engineer running the am studios to do double duty and manage the Indians broadcast along with the commercial insertions in the broadcast. The blowers not only cooled the transmitter tubes, but also provided a heat source, which nearly overcame the engineer on duty. The following year, an air conditioning system was installed.
The RCA BTF 3B transmitter was pushing out 3.5 kilowatts into a pylon type antenna, which I worked inside while it was being assembled on the ground. When installed atop a new tower erected in 1953, it began to whip like a snake in certain winds. The pylon had to be equipped then with vertical aluminum strips to break up the wind flow.
A few years later a permit was granted to increase the power to 5,000 watts. This required a conversion to the transmitter that the RCA Company said would take a mere eight hours. It took several weeks actually to complete the conversion. The antenna had an efficiency rating that increased the effective radiated power to 25,000 watts. Numerous technical problems developed with the new power including the generation of a third harmonic of 106.9 MH, which became an interfering signal to U.S. aircraft in the Dayton, Wright Patterson area.
A call from the air force prompted us to begin a long series of tests to try and find out how the third harmonic was getting out, since it was not detected on the main carrier to any substantial level. There were two windows in the rear doors of the transmitter, which allowed a visual inspection of the transmitter. We covered the windows with copper screening and the interference with the U.S. Air Force was gone.
The FCC made periodic inspections of radio stations at that time. It seems as though I was always the engineer on duty during these inspections. The inspector was always the same man, Richard Cotton, who gave me my amateur radio exam in 1949. The newly converted transmitter had a habit of blowing out condensers in the power amplifier section, which could only be corrected by reducing the power. A proper notification on the transmitter log had to be made when doing this. I had forgotten, and here is the FCC inspector taking the transmitter readings. To this day, I will never understand why he did not notice this and issue a citation.
Those days are gone forever as well as the old troublesome RCA BTF 5A as it became known after the conversion. So when you hear about the move to Dublin, it comes with a lot of old memories.
