VOA Bethany Transmitter Building
During the weekend of the Dayton Hamvention, there was an opportunity to make the trip to visit the VOA Bethany Relay Station located in West Chester, Ohio.
Unfortunately all the antennas and a lot of the real estate where the they were located has been sold off by the VOA but the main transmitter building is still there. Inside there is a collection of some of the very first radios made by the Crosley Company who originally set up and built Bethany. It also charts the history of Bethany and the beginnings of the VOA.
Bethany’s Old Control Room
Still mostly intact was Bethany’s old control room from where all the program changes and frequency changes were made. Interesting there were no microphones or any way to transmit any content from within the site as all the feeds came from the VOA studios elsewere vie telephone lines.
Antenna Switching Matrix
Individual antenna feed line switching breakers
Switching the various transmitters to the different antennas was done from this wonderful manual antenna switching matrix. All of the antennae were fed with twin feed line made from metal pipes and using the above switches they were able to switch any of the trasnmitters to any of the rhombics and curtain arrays they had.
Rob
G0MGM