Tribute to Shortwave WYFR

The Okeechobee Story

As we continue in our long and interesting series of topics on the illustrious history of shortwave station WYFR, we come now to the story of the current transmitter site which is located in Okeechobee Florida.  Okeechobee itself is a quite small regional city located above the northern edge of the rather large Lake Okeechobee, in the bottom part of the Florida peninsula.

          

  Lake Okeechobee is itself a large freshwater lake, 35 miles long and 29 miles wide, with several small rivers and streams running into it.  The name Okeechobee means “big water” in an old local American Indian language.  The small town called Okeechobee, which caters for lake tourism, is situated near the northern edge of the lake itself.

         

The huge new mega-shortwave station for Family Radio was constructed on a leased property of 664 acres, some 20 miles north of Lake Okeechobee.  The flat land in this area is utilized locally for animal grazing, and nearby are large citrus groves and areas for sod grass crops.

            A single one-storey building was constructed in the center of this property for use as the transmitter building, and the surrounding area was set aside for the installation of a massive series of antenna systems; rhomboid, curtain and log periodic.  The pattern of the multitude of feeder lines, running from the transmitter building to the antenna systems, is described as resembling the spokes on a huge wheel.  Construction work on this new shortwave station began nearly forty years ago, in late 1976.

During the following year (1977), the first shortwave transmitter was installed.  This unit was a 100 kW Continental model 418D that Family Radio had purchased a few years earlier and it was taken out of storage in Dallas Texas for installation in Okeechobee Florida. 

This new transmitter, now identified as WYFR1, was taken into scheduled service on November 23, 1977 with programming in two progressive segments which were beamed to Europe followed by the Spanish service to Latin America.  At this stage, WYFR was now on the air from two widely separated locations; four transmitters, 50 kW and 100 kW at Scituate in Massachusetts and the new 100 kW in Florida, all under the collective callsign WYFR. 

The second transmitter for installation at the new Florida site was also a 100 kW Continental  model 418D and this unit had been on the air earlier with Family Radio at Hatherly Beach Scituate for just three years.  This Scituate transmitter, WYFR(6), was shut down in late 1977 and made ready for the more than 1200 mile journey to Okeechobee Florida where it was re-activated early in the following year and identified consecutively as WYFR2.

            

The 50 kW Continental 417B at Scituate, where it had been on the air under the previous owners as WNYW4, was shut down in the early part of the year 1978, and after installation at Okeechobee it was re-activated at the end of the same year as WYFR3.  During the two years, 1978 & 1979, two more of the transmitters at Scituate, the 100 kW Harris Gates units, model HF100, WNYW2 & WNYW3, were shut down and re-activated at Okeechobee under the consecutive designations WYFR4 & WYFR5.

The last transmitter at Scituate, the 50 kW Harris Gates model HF50C, was closed down without ceremony at the end of its broadcast day on Friday November 16, 1979.  A report in an Australian radio magazine atests the closing time as 2052 UTC; that is, 4:52 pm Eastern Daylight Savings time, at the end of the English Service to Africa on 21525 kHz.  However, Dan Elyea, WYFRThe last transmitter at Scituate, the 50 kW Harris Gates model HF50C, was closed down without ceremony at the end of its broadcast day on Friday November 16, 1979.  A report in an Australian radio magazine atests the closing time as 2052 UTC; that is, 4:52 pm Eastern Daylight Savings time, at the end of the English Service to Africa on 21525 kHz.  However, Dan Elyea, WYFR

The last transmitter at Scituate, the 50 kW Harris Gates model HF50C, was closed down without ceremony at the end of its broadcast day on Friday November 16, 1979.  A report in an Australian radio magazine atests the closing time as 2052 UTC; that is, 4:52 pm Eastern Daylight Savings time, at the end of the English Service to Africa on 21525 kHz.  However, Dan Elyea, WYFR

Engineering Manager, who was at the transmitter site at Hatherly Beach at the time, remembers that the final broadcast over WNYW ended sometime in the evening.                 

        

At the end of its 60 year era of illustrious service, Scituate now lay silent.  Gone were the uncounted, innumerable broadcasts in a multitude of languages that were heard virtually in every country of the world, and gone were the life stories of the experienced radio personnel who kept the station alive over the life time of its active on air service. 

       

After Family Radio, under Dan Elyea and his crew, had removed all usable equipment, the 40 acre property reverted to its owners and it lay idle for a score of years.  Occasional radio visitors to the location described the property as abandoned and covered with so much undergrowth that it would be better described as overgrowth.

       

 There were just a few identifiable objects that remained on the property as reminders of its previous glory.  The transmitter building, which had been in use by the American army during World War 1 for an electric power generator was still there, and so was the old chimney, though minus either of the callsigns WRUL or WNYW.  In addition, a few odds and ends of debris lay scattered around on the ground.   However, some 20 years ago, the property was taken over for the construction of an upscale housing area, and it remains that way to this day.

Meanwhile, down there in Florida, WNYW5 from Scituate was installed as WYFR6, where it was reactivated on its previous frequency, 21525 kHz in the English Service to Africa. In addition, work continued on the construction of eight more transmitters at 100 kW, and the erection of the remaining antenna systems.  Each of the new transmitters was constructed by WYFR staff on site at Okeechobee using the same design as the Continentals that were already on the air at WYFR.  The first of their new locally made units, WYFR7, was activated on December 7, 1981, in the Family Radio English Service to Western Canada.

        

    During the next four years, seven more locally made transmitters were installed at the shortwave site and the final unit, WYFR14, was activated on September 25, 1988.  Thus they were now fully complemented with 14 shortwave transmitters, 2 at 50 kW and 12 at 100 kW, together with a bevy of 23 antennas; 12 log periodics, 5 nested double rhomboids (10), and a TCI curtain with a passive reflector.

(AWR/Wavescan-NWS 311)