A VE3KSR Update by John Riddell, VE3AMZ Photos by Ben VA3BNY

These new tower sections lined up and ready to be hoisted into place, are 7 feet across the face.

The folks at Baden Hill have been working on the new tower for CKCO and the small (200 Ft) tower that our equipment was using has been removed. This tower was originally installed in 1949 and was used for CFCA-FM which went off the air around 1952. CFCA then re-appeared in 1967 and is now known as "COOL FM"

The temp antenna farm for KSR and SED atop the CKCO TX shack. The WX station is also here.

 TV then came on the air in 1954 using the small tower at first then in 1956 built the present 600 foot tower.  This tower will be coming down as soon as the new one is up and working.

Our equipment including the packet and VE3KSR (voice) is currently working on temporary antenna's on the roof of the TV transmitter building (see pix to right) and of course the coverage is not very good (as advertised).

The new tower (left) on the way up and when complete will be 700 feet high.

There has been some work done at our new site, the Bell Canada building at Mannheim. Some co-ax has been installed and we hope to soon have some equipment working at that site. The long range plan is to move VE3RCK repeater to that site and get it out of the rooftop room at 100 Queen St, Kitchener.

We have another possible site nearby that may be available to us It has a 350 foot tower with an OMNI antenna at the top and we are working at getting the proper approval for this site. We may consider moving VE3KSR to that site, but that has not been approved by the directors and is only in the planning stage.

The work at Baden is behind schedule and we the Amateurs will be the last to have our antenna's installed on the new tower. Commercial users will come first as could be expected since we are "guests" there. Incidentally we have been very fortunate to have the Baden Hill site since July 1 1969 that's 31 years !

Some estimates say that it may be next spring before our antenna's are installed on the new tower. The new tower will be in the area of 700 feet and the Television antenna's will be "Panel" antennas mounted around the tower at the top. there will not be a single "stick" for CKCO as is now.

We wanted to advise you that no one is allowed on the Baden Hill during this construction phase. A few of the technical committee are allowed access for service work only. 

73, 
John J. Riddell, VE3AMZ, 
Technical Director, KWARC, inc.
e-mail: jjr@attcanada.ca