> I know a guy who works at one of the 50 kw clear channel MW stations in
> Chicago and they went to a solid state transmitter at some point in the
> past. You can go to the Harris website and look at them--they have them up
> to 500 kw if I remember correctly, for MW and HF (also FM and low power TV).
I purchased and installed the Harris DX-50 50KW transmitter for the legendary
WAPE - 690 kHz in Jacksonville back in 1995. It was
without a doubt one of my better decisions when I was in the broadcast
engineering field. The current Director of Engineering
recently informed me that in seven years of continuous service, he has not
experienced a single failure of any kind...even though
we're in one of the most lightning-active areas of the world. A Harris DX-10
was simultaneously installed at the six-tower
night-time site and it too has exhibited no failures. Since the Harris DX-50
and DX-10 requires no tube replacement and efficiency
is extremely high, the daytime transmitter reached positive payback in only
four years as compared to the Continental 317C2 it
replaced. The latest generation of the DX-50 randomizes the load across the RF
module array to add even more resiliency to Hilmer
Swanson's already incredible design.
-Paul, W9AC
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