Local TV May Tune Out Soon

Lake Chelan Mirror
It started as an undercover operation. Two apple orchardists, an ex-army electrician, and a horse named Scallywag scoured the mountains around Lake Chelan. The sorrel packhorse was loaded with electronic equipment, including a portable black and white TV. The group’s mission — finding clear pictures of “I Love Lucy” and “The Honeymooners.”

At the time, most rural outposts pirated television signals from bigger cities. The town of Manson however, became the first small community in the nation to install a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) licensed UHF translator system.Now, decades later, Lake Chelan’s TV district may shut down its translators on Slide Ridge, leaving hundreds of local televisions in the dark.

“We wonder if it’s time for the TV district to go away,” said Doug England, president of the group that maintains the translators.

Fewer people use the historical signal that translates five Spokane stations to Chelan, Manson, and Mansfield. Even fewer community members pay the annual twenty-five dollar fee charged by the district.New government policies also dictate changes to the existing system that may cost up to $60,000.

England says that without major funding, the historical translator could be turned off within a year.

It was 1954 when Marion McFadden led Scallywag through the pine trees. He and two other men climbed the highest peaks above Lake Chelan to find the clearest television reception.They discovered it at 3,000 feet on Bear Mountain, on the south shore of the lake.

Until that time, the few local families with TV’s carried them to high elevation points and watched snowy pictures from stations in Spokane and Seattle. Small towns across the nation couldn’t get good reception. They were considered black-out areas.

But on Bear Mountain, the men caught an excellent stream from Spokane’s KXLY station. Manson’s TV pirates took a VHF antennae and pointed it east toward the bigger city. Then they pointed a second antennae toward Manson and hooked an amplifier onto it. Voila, television for families in their homes.

But the FCC was buckling down on small towns pirating signals. The penalty was a $10,000 fine or 10 years in a penitentiary, said McFadden, who served as the first president of the television district.

The community wanted a legal translator. Drumming up support from local senators and congressmen, they untangled red tape, wrote drafts, and filled out applications using a manual typewriter, sometimes typing 12 copies each.They submitted their application to the FCC, proposing to translate VHF (very high frequency) to UHF (ultra high frequency). The idea was new, but George Freze, a commercial technician for television stations lived in Wenatchee and teamed up with the Manson group. He said he would design and hand-build the translator. George St. Peter, also of Wenatchee, said he would supply the necessary electronics.

Freze traveled to Washington DC to represent the nonprofit group, and in 1955, the FCC issued Manson an experimental license to rebroadcast KXLY from Spokane. It would be the first legal translator for small communities in the United States.

The Manson group formed a television district, borrowed money from the bank, and solicited funds to build the translator. Each household was asked to pay $62.50. Fifty dollars went toward membership; the rest was an annual maintenance fee. The group received $6,000 intonations from 150 families. More than a 100 citizens volunteered to help with construction.

In the winter of 1955, volunteers hauled supplies to snowy Gurr’s Peak at the edge of Bear Mountain. It was leased to the district by the Chelan Lumber and Box Company for $1 a year. The location was once the site of a sawmill and part of the Gurr homestead, an early landmark in the valley.

Volunteers used fire pots to thaw the frozen ground. They set a sprawling tent over the spot they poured concrete for the transmitter building. They workers left a small hole in the middle of the floor, where the center tent pole stood to protect it from snowfall.

The earliest translator on Bear Mountain used batteries, a propane motor, and a generator. Its signal reached from Willow Point to Rocky Point and stretched five miles back toward Cooper Mountain.

The team added two more Spokane stations, and in the 1970’s, they moved the translator from Bear Mountain to its current location at Slide Ridge, where the signal reaches Chelan. Spokane’s public television station KSPS began streaming at that time.

The move was a major task. The Public Utility District (PUD) agreed to furnish poles and hang electrical line, but volunteers had to set the poles from the road to the top of the ridge, almost a 5,000 foot elevation change. Community members dug holes four to five feet deep for each pole. They hauled the poles up the back of the mountain, then tied rope to the poles and skidded them down the lake side.

“Those poles would go like a freight train,” said McFadden, who remembered losing a few down the mountain.

He said the hard work was a small price to pay. “I think of all the people who had no entertainment, the old people, the bedridden. Television added a lot to their lives.”

Community members were asked to pay annual dues to maintain the translator. The annual rate began at $12.50 in the 1950’s and held steady at $20 for the past two decades. Collected funds covered repairs and small improvements, but sometimes, in the early days, a broken translator stayed broken until dues trickled in.

Today, however, the translators may go down – and stay down. Even if everyone using the signal paid their dues — about 200 households are billed by the district each year — the money wouldn’t cover the required overhaul. The federal government is selling the frequencies Manson’s translator currently uses to cell phone companies. New frequencies are available, but the upgraded equipment would cost up to $60,000.

The television district wants community input (see sidebar). “We’re more than willing to upgrade if people want us to,” said England, “but do we want to spend tens of thousands of dollars for new equipment when only 200 people use it?”

A full version of this story was published in The Lake Chelan Mirror.