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While a few convention attendees stayed behind in the meeting room at the Batavia Days Inn to swap stories and share books full of old QSLs, TV DX pictures and early WTFDA bulletins, about 20 of us trekked 40 minutes west to Buffalo to see some of the broadcast sights of the Queen City. First stop: Entercom's new studio complex in Amherst, home to WGR, WBEN, WWWS, WWKB, WKSE and WTSS, where engineer Dan Gurzynski showed off the massive warren of studio and office space. Here, Harry Helms, Saul Chernos, Marv Shults and Dave Janowiak admire the WKSE studio while Froggy jocks the middays. After the Entercom tour, it was time for lunch at a nearby branch of Ted's Hot Dogs (mmmm...), followed by frozen custard (soft-serve ice cream to some of you) across the street at Anderson's (mmmmm.....), and then a little drive through Buffalo and down to Colden....

...where transmitter engineer Clint Soemann showed off his rebuilt WIVB-TV/DT site to the group.

Before going inside the building, Clint took the group out back, where a new tower (just built last year) rises more than 1000 feet above the western New York hills. See those stairs? They lead to an elevator platform 55 feet up...

...where the view back down to the building looks like this. That's WIVB's old (1952) tower at left, which has been left partially standing in hopes of renting space out to tenants. The taller portion of the building at right is the new DTV room. (And yes, they get ice here - Clint showed us where falling chunks have bent the inch-thick steel grating that makes up the ice shield. There's a wooden deck over the building's roof to absorb the impact, and an indoor garage where Clint parks in the winter to keep his vehicle from getting dented...)

Here's the view looking straight up the tower from inside. A few weeks before our tour, a jumper broke in and climbed that ladder all the way to the 700-foot level, then jumped - only to catch his parachute on the guy wires of the old tower, then plummet another 300 feet to the ground. Amazingly, he lived to tell about it. (Don't try that yourself. It's illegal and very, very stupid.)

Two views inside the old part of the WIVB transmitter building. At left is WIVB-TV's Larcan transmitter; in the middle is WTSS (102.5)'s new BE transmitter; at right is 102.5's old RCA transmitter. 102.5 used to be WBEN-FM; channel 4 used to be WBEN-TV.

Here Clint shows off the transmitter tube of WIVB-DT (Channel 39)'s Thales transmitter. WIVB-DT was the first DTV station on the air in western New York, and is still one of only a handful broadcasting a full HDTV signal.

Here's a wide view of the WIVB-DT transmitter room, part of the new construction at the site.

On to Saturday...