Harris Research Facility Opens Doors to Broadcasters

Harris Broadcast’s Mason, Ohio research facility hosted a special tour for broadcasters and others attending the 2013 “Hamvention” in Dayton, Ohio. The tour was arranged by Geoff Mendenhall (back row, second from right) and Jay Adrick (back row, extreme right).

MASON, OHIO—Broadcasters, industry consultants and other invited guests were treated to a special tour of the Harris Broadcast research facility here on May 16.

The tour was arranged by Geoff Mendenhall and Jay Adrick, recently retired Harris Broadcast executives and now technical advisers to that company. The group was escorted through several laboratories and viewed on-going research and development activities in connection with transmitters, encoders and other Harris Broadcast television and radio products. Most of the tour members had traveled to Ohio to attend the annual Dayton “Hamvention,” the largest gathering of radio amateurs in the world. This year’s three-day Hamvention attracted more than 25,000 attendees.

Mendenhall and Adrick also arranged a tour of the historic WLW radio transmitter plant located in Mason. There, tour members viewed a range of high-power transmitters contained in the 1920s-era building. These included WLW’s original 1928 Western Electric 50 kW transmitter and two contemporary solid-state 50 kW units. The building also houses the station’s 500 kW RCA transmitter used in the 1930s when that station was licensed for experimental “super power” AM broadcasting.

Mendenhall and Adrick have been hosting similar tours for broadcasters attending the Hamvention for several years.

James E. O’Neal has more than 50 years of experience in the broadcast arena, serving for nearly 37 years as a television broadcast engineer and, following his retirement from that field in 2005, moving into journalism as technology editor for TV Technology for almost the next decade. He continues to provide content for this publication, as well as sister publication Radio World, and others. He authored the chapter on HF shortwave radio for the 11th Edition of the NAB Engineering Handbook, and serves as editor-in-chief of the IEEE’s Broadcast Technology publication, and as associate editor of the SMPTE Motion Imaging Journal. He is a SMPTE Life Fellow, and a Life Member of the IEEE and the SBE.