Do it yourself ground system

Sometime about 1983 I discovered some of the ground radials for KXEO were literally disintegrating in the ground. I had been trying to track down why the KXEO AM signal did not seem as strong as it should have been in the Mexico area.

From 1948 until 1966, KXEO broadcast from a self supporting 180' tower in back of the station.  There were 3 huge concrete pillars that served as anchors for the old tower. When they built the FM tower in 1966, they didn't bother to move the ground system - it was still centered for the old tower, now about 15 feet away from the new tower.

So the copper radials had been in the ground from 1948 until 1983. I don't know what the normal life expectancy of an AM ground system is, but the age of that ground system, along with it being centered for the original AM tower resulted in a weak AM signal.

Then GM Jerry Johnson, checked into what a new ground system would consist of.  He found they'd use a 12' by 12' copper screen around the base of the tower, placed in sand, and silver solder 120 new 100' copper radials in a circular pattern away from the tower at evenly spaced intervals. Once completed, the copper screen would be further covered with sand, then a layer of gravel on top of that.

The cost for something like that? Around $12,000. Using good old Yankee ingenuity and our own staff, he figured the ground system could be done for around $7,000.

I believe it was the summer of 1984 that we set out to put in a new ground system for KXEO.

Jerry borrowed a tree planting attachment from his brother who worked for the Department of Conservation. The station bought a small John Deere tractor and he ordered in enough number 10 copper wire for the new ground system.

First order of business was the copper screen. We dug a 12' by 12' area about 6 inches down around the 400' KWWR/KXEO tower. then a layer of sand was placed in that area and the copper screen was placed on top of the sand. The screen was silver soldered to the large copper ground at the base of the tower. and we started the work of laying 120 100 foot radials that would each be silver soldered to the screen.

A copper spool was placed above the tree planter on the back of the tractor, the tree planter was lowered about 6 inches into the ground, then the tractor plowed a small trough while somebody fed wire from the copper spool and each radial was placed from the screen at the base of the tower out to 100 feet.

There were 4 big obstacles in the way of part of that ground system - the studio building, the parking lot, a lake and plowing through the old ground system. A 4 inch copper strip was laid around the perimeter of the studio building, tied by a copper strap back to the base of the tower. The radials were then burred as close to the building as we could get with the tractor, then dug in by shovel and silver soldered to the copper strap. On the far side of the building, a radial was placed from the copper strap out to a point 100 feet way from the base of the tower. So the building was an electronic hole in the ground system.

Toward the southwest, the radials had to go across the parking lot to near Highway 54. They rented a trencher from a local hardware store and the tedious task of making troughs for the radials 6 inches down across the parking lot got underway. That took a long time. It broke quite a few teeth on the trencher, but they'd get replaced and the work could continue.

Toward the north was an old railroad lake. So the radials were placed as close to the water as possible with the tractor, then hand dug to the water's edge. We used a small john boat to take to the radials out into the lake for their 100 foot length from the tower, and a rod was used to push the radials into the mud of the shallow lake bed. That took quite a while, too.

The ground system crew consisted of Jerry, me, Randy Johnson with Music Incorporated (which later became Sound Solutions), Kevin Johnson, Jerry's father in law, Junior, and some other Music Inc. staff members as time would allow.

That was a long, hot summer. Plus I still had my daily duties within the station to complete each day (as did Jerry, Randy and the rest of the staff).  It was hard work, but we got the job done and felt good about it.

The AM signal for KXEO was finally centered on the newer 400' tower and new copper radials would serve as the ground system for many years to follow.

But that was only a hint of things to come. The following year a new 1000' tower was constructed for KWWR just west of Mexico, and on this project, the same basic station crew would be surveying the 40 acre plot to lay out the concrete anchor placement as well as building the wood frame transmitter building.

Hard work. Manual labor. Not exactly what I had signed on for, but it was rewarding.

About that same time period (83-84), we also undertook the major task of replacing the audio control consoles in the main (AM studio) and the smaller (FM studio). The old audio control boards were Gates branded consoles that were installed in 1966. But that's a story for another day.

So it goes.