WPR has several new stations in the works, including a translator replacement in Rawlins.  The station replacing the translator in Rawlins will be KUWI…2000 watts on 89.9 FM.  This will be a huge improvement from the current 250 watt translator on 89.1 which is subject to interference from a station in Casper.  We are using a transmitter that is being rebuilt after a trip from its former home in California.  I suspect it will perform quite nicely in its new home.  Building this station will require replacing both the transmitter and antenna in Rawlins as well as adding some additional equipment.

The new antenna for KUWI…Some assembly required…

The new KUWI transmitter…It lives!
This transmitter was completely disassembled and removed from another non-commercial station in California.  Amazingly, after reassembly and some minor work it fired up just fine.

Unfortunately one of the blowers in the transmitter had failed (one of the reasons the previous owner retired it).  A temporary blower with external ducting will serve just fine for testing purposes.  Ultimately we will repair the failed blower.

Cooking away happily at almost 2000 watts…We will only need about 1500.

Nice clean carrier on 89.9 FM…

Right on frequency!

I had to provide an exciter for the transmitter (top)…Fortunately we had two on hand that exactly matched this brand of transmitter!
One of them had an issue so I used the second one instead…
Note the audio processor and CD player used for testing purposes.

For testing purposes, we are running into a dummy load located on top of the transmitter.  In spite of this the signal can still be heard in the parking lot of the building…

This is the first time I have rebuilt this type of transmitter.  It is quite exciting and I look forward to putting it into service and providing a significantly better signal to the people of Rawlins and Saratoga!