10-14-08 On The Road, Part Four

Well I thought it was going to be a dry day. At least that’s what the weatherman at KOLN-TV/KGIN-TV Lincoln/Grand Island said last night. Guess you can’t have all sunny days on your vacation. So you make the best of it. The old Avenger is doing well and we’re keeping the powder dry. Anyway, for today, we look at AM radio and corn.

This morning before the rains came in, I headed south on Nebraska State Route 183 to the outskirts of Holdrege and the transmitter site of KRVN in Lexington, 880 on your AM dial. This is a very unique radio station and broadcasts what is known as Ag Radio, dedicated to the agricultural needs of the Heartland. They talk about everything from corn to cattle to farm tractors to live stock auctions to country music. They are affiliated with the ABC Radio Network and you get to hear the legendary Paul Harvey just before 12 noon. Back in 1998, I got to see the transmitter site. With the help of the assistant chief engineer, who just happened to be a ham radio operator, I got the tour of the transmitter building. Two big 50,000-watt transmitters, one on the air and one as a hot standby. And out in the backyard are 4 towers, lined up in a row, with the alignment of the towers aimed at 86 degrees, just a bit north of east. If you were to follow a straight line from here, you would eventually wind up at the island in the bay near Queens, NY and the transmitter site of WCBS, News Radio 880, New York, NY.

Both stations are Class 1 clear channel stations, meaning that they have ability to operate on AM 880 at the full power level allowed of 50,000 watts. With both stations on AM 880, they would not interfere with themselves due to the 1500 miles between them. But during the night, the radio waves from both transmitter sites exhibit a phenomenon called sky waves. On the AM band, these sky waves travel great distances at night and if something were not done, you would have interference in each station’s service area. So in this case, WCBS is licensed as Class 1A, meaning it has the authority to transmit at full power with a single omni-directional tower. KRVN is licensed as Class 1B, meaning it can stay at full power during the day but it must protect WCBS at night. So at local sunset in Lexington, KRVN does what’s known as a pattern change or “antenna switch” as the late Bob Steele use to say on WTIC Hartford. What was once a large, mostly circular pattern from the number 3 tower (2nd from left) that covered Nebraska, southern South Dakota, and the northern half of Kansas now becomes an oblong blob coming from all four towers with all of the signal aimed west and with only about 50 miles aimed east. If you were to listen to KRVN in Kearney, 50 miles due east of Lexington, you would hear it as normal during the day. But at sunset, the signal goes to about one fourth of what it was and by the time it is completely dark an hour later, the signal has vanished.

And as a side note, the assistant chief showed me just how strong 50,000 watts is. He took a 4-foot long florescent light bulb in hand. We went into the back room where the antenna feeds go out to the towers. He slowly placed the bulb near the feed point for the number 3 tower and the bulb lit right up just as it would if it was in a lighting fixture. Talk about the power of radio!!

As I mentioned before, KRVN is located in the middle of cornfields. And quite frankly, you can’t mention them in acres. Square miles are a better description. And in just about every city and town along the Lincoln Highway is the midwestern version of a “skyscraper”: the grain elevator. Here is where the corn kernels are stored until they are ready to be shipped to market via unit grain trains. And these grain elevators do help in another way. They are the telltale indicator of where the next town is as you travel on U.S. Route 30.
And those brown, shriveled, 8-foot high stalks that were once teaming with huge ears of hybrid corn??

Here in mid-October, the fields are now being run over by combines, which gather up the stalks and shred them and spit them out the back.

In due time, the farmers will bring out their high horsepower, 10-foot high tractors with their plows and in turn bury the shredded stalks which will enrich the soil for next season’s plantings.

As important as corn is to the basis of some of the foods we eat and drink and for fattening up beef cattle, more and more corn is being used for making ethanol. With this country’s huge appetite for gasoline, more and more resources have to be found and used to get us away from foreign oil independence.
Go to Google Maps and type in Holdrege, Nebraska. Zoom it out and look at the number of cornfields that abound. Some of them you see are circular. And below is why:

This very long and spindlely device is a Zimmantic farm-size water sprinkler. Pivoting on a large water supply pipe, this creature crawls along on big rubber tires and the cornfields get their water in addition to that from Mother Nature. Any kid in his right mind could have the biggest and best party during the long hot days of summer with all of his friends while getting cooled off from this manmade behemoth of a drencher.

So tonight we arrive in Cozad. This town has the distinct honor of being located on the 100th Meridian or longitude. And a huge sign that straddles U.S. Route 30 on the western side of town reminds you of that honor. We’ll get some pictures tomorrow. It’s just too plain wet out here today.