WREK Radio is the entirely student operated, managed and engineered radio station at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. The station broadcasts 24/7 on 91.1 FM at 100,000 watts and also streams online. From November 2009 to May 2012 while studying at Georgia Tech, I was the Chief Engineer of WREK Radio. The chief engineer is responsible for all technical aspects of the station, including keeping up with all the studio equipment, managing all of the station's computers and servers, repairing and maintaining the station's high power transmitter. I learned so much during my time as chief engineer and I had a lot of fun.

I played with a lot of fun broadcasting equipment as a part of the engineering team. But what I enjoyed most at WREK was working with our Harris HT-HD+ transmitter (AKA, Janice). I've repaired Janice countless times, from replacing the controller interface, swapping out the tube, tracing power supply issues and tuning it for best efficiency. Basically, anytime there was a problem, our remote monitoring system would call me and I got to hear a lovely 5kHz tone followed by Hello… Hello… transmitter control. Usually it was something minor like dead air (an operator's mistake) or power levels too low / too high (the system would correct itself).

Sometimes we had much more serious issues that would totally knock us off the air, and I would have to head out the shack and troubleshoot. One time I had to figure out why our backup controller wouldn't work, but the main controller would (which is very odd since the main controller runs all of it's signals through the backup controller). Another time I had to determine where there was a short in the high voltage system, which caused the 300 amp breaker into our shack to trip. The more challenging mysteries were always the most interesting.

In 2009, I started my own specialty show on WREK called Mode 7, where I played video music, remixes, and other related music. This was really fun. The show was popular with listeners, and I got to blast awesome music and weird sound effects to people all over Atlanta for an hour every week.

Mode 7 continues to air today on Sundays from 6-7pm in Atlanta on 91.1 FM, or via live stream and a 2-week archive on wrek.org. After graduating in 2012, I stopped hosting weekly shows so that current Tech students could host the show. There have been several new hosts since my departure and they're all fantastic!

When I joined WREK, we broadcasted at 40,000 watts from our transmitter shack and 320 ft tower on the west side of campus. My predecessor had upgraded our transmitter in 2008, and with that upgrade we got the ability to also broadcast HD Radio (an in-band on-channel digital sideband that allows compatible receivers to listen in a higher quality and listen to more channels) and the possibility of increasing our power level. Our antenna was 35 years old at this point, and we needed a new one with a directional pattern in order to broadcast more power. When I started as chief engineer in 2009, we already had a construction permit with the FCC that gave us until September 22, 2011 to make all of our modifications.

At this point, I barely knew enough how to keep our station operating, let alone how an antenna works. After a lot of research, a trip to Las Vegas to attend the National Association of Broadcasters convention to speak with all the major antenna manufacturers, and a very helpful consultant, I learned a lot. We wanted to increase our power to 100kW, which is the maximum for an FM radio station. However, we couldn't broadcast this power in all directions or else we would interfere with other stations, so we needed a directional antenna (this is not uncommon). WREK's required radiation pattern was particularly difficult for antenna manufacturers to fill. Fortunately, the consultant we were working with managed to submit an adjusted to the FCC. With this adjustment, ERI said they could build us an antenna.

We got a quote and had to request money from the student government. Jonathan Walker (the general manager) and I had to do this, and fortunately he's better at politics than I. We requested $97,000 from the SGA, and with much tenacity and convincing, we were awarded the funds. We had requested 2/3 of what we thought the total cost of the project would be, including the antenna, installation, some structural modifications, new transmission line, new LED tower lights, and a few other items. Of course, the total cost of the project ended up being close to $300,000, but we had enough reserve funds from when we used to broadcast GT football games.

It's weird to think that a student with no experience in this area was in charge, but I was the project manager. I had to manage time and information between our consultant, the GT legal department, the antenna manufactuer, the installation team, the welding team, the survey crew, the structural engineers, GT facilities, and the station itself. The two weeks of installation were very stressful, as they coincided with my first week as a grad student and my first week as a research assistant. There was even a significant problem with the antenna height that required us to get new parts made and delayed installation by an extra week.

In the end, the installation was successful. I even got a trip up to the top of the tower to inspect it! On September 30th, 2011, we christened the tower with a bottle of the champagne of beers and began our 100,000 watt broadcast.

Of course, I also kept a little souvenir for myself… bay #5 of 12 from the old antenna.

Writeup: May 2012