KOKC-AM Transmitting Facility (Formerly KOMA-AM) (Moore, Oklahoma)

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  guest (guest)

  It was not a CONELRAD station (remember the 640 and 1240 kHz emergency frequencies?). It was however a station designated to be an emergency broadcast station in the event of nuclear war. The government built a 3-story bomb-proof basement under the transmitter building for housing government people with store rooms full of supplies, including pencils and forms. In the event of nuclear war, heaven forbid the IRS would run out of 1040 forms! KOMA was a 50kw 3-tower directional station, the pattern blowing mostly westward. Down in the secret basement was also an emergency studio and transmitter, 20kW as I recall. It was designed to feed the 3-tower directional system, or a single vertical tower in the event the other two got blown down from the nuclear blast. They also had a buried dipole in the event all three towers were damaged. This was a huge trench about 700 feet long running parallel to the towers, 6-8 feet deep and about 4 feet wide. The sides were lined with cement and wood shoring. The top of the trench was covered with plywood and dirt. The dipole was a thick steel cable running down the center of the trench, suspended now and again with insulators, and of course the center feed point (also buried and running into the building). The trench with the dipole was open air, not filled in with dirt, except for the covering. I don't know how efficient it was. I was told it was tested periodically, but never for the few months I was there in 1968. It supposedly covered all of Texas to the Canadian border. The efficiency must not have been THAT bad! I only opened an access door once and looked into it with a flashlight. Since it ran fairly close to the towers, I don't recall how it negotiated the buried ground radials for the vertical antennas. When I was there, there were no houses for miles, just farm fields filled with oil wells. The studio and transmitter was the building just yards north of the towers. I don't know what the other building to the north on the road is - wasn't there when I was there. Anyway, that's how the government built a buried dipole antenna. It was suspended a few feet below ground grade in an open-air trench. I would suspect the efficiency would degrade as you move up in frequency into the HF ham bands, but 80-40M might still be workable as a guess. For those of you east of the Mississippi, KOMA was THE rock station for the west throughout the 1960-70s. Just about anyone who grew up west of Oklahoma City drove around at night (dragging Main) listening to KOMA. This was years before rock began to appear on FM. It was one of the few 24-hour rock stations even on AM in those days. We often got phone requests from the soldiers in Viet Nam listening to us at night. Those were the days of the top-40, "Million Dollar Weekend" and 20-20 news.

  16 years ago | reply | hide comment
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  Glen H (guest)

  On March 27th, 2015, the towers sustained damage during a tornado. At least one is partially folded over

  11 years ago | reply | hide comment
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  Maury Morris (guest)

  March 25, 2015

  11 years ago | reply | hide comment