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Mobile Atmore: Does anyone know what this FM antenna was for, and what's up with this tower?

tomservo

tomservo

I stumbled across this… thing… on street view tonight and haven't for the life of me been able to figure out what that old two bay FM antenna side mounted on the tower is for.

It looks like a small radome for a commercial weather radar, but I'm not familiar with anything like that existing in Atmore, so it's got me puzzled. If you zoom in on the radome you can make out "50,000" which makes me think it was used to advertise their WASG when it was on 1140 and ran 50 kW. But what is up with the FM? There's a STL dish up there, and what appears to be an AM skirt, so I'm wondering if this could have been a long-disused auxiliary site for their stations. Nothing I could find in FCC records, though mentioned anything at this location, and the tower (such that it is) isn't in the ASR. If not an aux, maybe an old translator site? But I wouldn't even know how to begin to find that since translators move around so much.

Oddly, the property that this tower is owned isn't Creek owned, but by the podiatrist in the building that is on highway 21 out in front of the tower. I'm wondering if it may have been a studio in the past.

I guess I'm hoping someone knows the area well enough to make explain what the deal was with the radome and FM bays. It just seems rather out of place for tiny little Atmore! One thing is clear, it has not been used in quite a while. There are no outbuildings at the base and I don't see power or cabling to any of the antennas. The street view only goes back to 2008, but historical satellite imagery from Google Earth shows satellite dishes around the base in 2004. I
 
Skirt wires could be for detuning if there was an array for an AM station in the area. It does look like a weather radar dome. Could WASG have had a weather radar at one time?
 
The old 104.1 transmitter was on Craig Street in Atmore, next to what is now Atmore Community Hospital. That lasted from initial sign on (c. 1967) to around 1980 when they were authorized to move to a tall tower near I-10 just west of the Florida Alabama line.

Edit: I should add, I didn't check aux facilities.
 
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The tower is on a parcel of land, per county tax records online, at 1318 S Main St, Atmore. It is the current home of Southeast Podiatry, but the property was the one time home of Southern Media Communications -- the FCC sent a couple of letters to SMC at that address (paragraph 15 in https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2003/DA-03-3654A1.html and in paragraph 15 in https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-238202A1.pdf) about its then-WBCA 1110 having an unlicensed tower in Bay Minette. 1318 S Main St, according to the second letter, was serving as the main studios of then-WYDH 105.9 and WBCA.

It kind of looks like a doppler radar tower. Presumably, it was related to 1110/105.9 back in the day.
 
It could have been an old pre Doppler "reflective" weather radar. That appears to be a really old site. It wasn't until the late 1970s or early 1980s the weather service got Doppler nation wide. I don't know when TV and radio stations could got Doppler gear.

Channel 2 in Atlanta wants you to believe their radar can give you 5 or 10 minutes advanced warning verses the National Weather Service
 
secondchoice said:
It could have been an old pre Doppler "reflective" weather radar. That appears to be a really old site. It wasn't until the late 1970s or early 1980s the weather service got Doppler nation wide. I don't know when TV and radio stations could got Doppler gear.
Click to expand...
In Dallas, the then-big 3 TV stations had local doppler radars in the 1980s. KDFW had theirs in Cedar Hill, SW of Dallas. WFAA had theirs in Justin, north of Fort Worth. These days, only NBC O&O KXAS has its own to the southeast of Dallas. The others rely on the National Weather Service's NEXRAD to the south of Fort Worth.
 
Before the question arises, yes, I was there. You are looking at the old WASG (1140 and then 550) studio site. The tower was constructed during the 1980s as a support structure for the weather radar unit which was a later addition. At some later time, Dale Gehman was able to add some (I don't recall exactly how much) some nighttime power to the formerly daytime only signal. It was miniscule and I do recall that it covered only the city limits of Anymore. Because it was such a tiny amount of power, the studio site tower had a skirt added and the nighttime signal was broadcast from there as the main (daytime) tower was ten or so miles outside of town and, had it been used for the nighttime signal, I seriously doubt there signal would've made it back into town. As for the FM antenna, I have no clue but, I can do some digging if you're really interested.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
Edit: I should add, I didn't check aux facilities.
Click to expand...

104.1 did have a few aux licenses. The one from the 80's doesn't seem to have coordinates associated with it, while the newer one from the early 2000s puts it at the 105.9/1590 site next to the Walmart north of town.

txchipk said:
The tower is on a parcel of land, per county tax records online, at 1318 S Main St, Atmore. It is the current home of Southeast Podiatry, but the property was the one time home of Southern Media Communications -- the FCC sent a couple of letters to SMC at that address (paragraph 15 in https://transition.fcc.gov/eb/Orders/2003/DA-03-3654A1.html and in paragraph 15 in https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-238202A1.pdf) about its then-WBCA 1110 having an unlicensed tower in Bay Minette. 1318 S Main St, according to the second letter, was serving as the main studios of then-WYDH 105.9 and WBCA.

It kind of looks like a doppler radar tower. Presumably, it was related to 1110/105.9 back in the day.
Click to expand...

As an aside, I remember coming across that fine notice while doing some research a while back and wondered how the station could have lost its antenna registration. It's been in the same spot since forever, so there's no way it wasn't a registered site at any point in the station's history.

I was surprised to see the tower in question has also been taken down. It is not there in the 2024 street view, but it was there during the last pass in 2022.

wattwatcher said:
Before the question arises, yes, I was there. You are looking at the old WASG (1140 and then 550) studio site. The tower was constructed during the 1980s as a support structure for the weather radar unit which was a later addition. At some later time, Dale Gehman was able to add some (I don't recall exactly how much) some nighttime power to the formerly daytime only signal. It was miniscule and I do recall that it covered only the city limits of Anymore. Because it was such a tiny amount of power, the studio site tower had a skirt added and the nighttime signal was broadcast from there as the main (daytime) tower was ten or so miles outside of town and, had it been used for the nighttime signal, I seriously doubt there signal would've made it back into town. As for the FM antenna, I have no clue but, I can do some digging if you're really interested.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the information! Pretty cool that a little AM/FM combo in small town Atmore had their own weather radar. From what I could find in my research, it appears the nighttime authorization didn't come until they moved to 550, so that would have been in 1987. I never saw anything noting that it was a two-site operation, though.

While the FM antenna is the main reason I asked, please don't go through any trouble on my behalf. I figure it's either an old backup antenna or from a translator that was in town at some point before everyone started moving them around. Judging from the street view, the two bays seemed to be in very good condition so it's kind of surprising it hasn't been removed and put to use elsewhere.
 
tomservo said:
While the FM antenna is the main reason I asked, please don't go through any trouble on my behalf. I figure it's either an old backup antenna or from a translator that was in town at some point before everyone started moving them around. Judging from the street view, the two bays seemed to be in very good condition so it's kind of surprising it hasn't been removed and put to use elsewhere.
Click to expand...

if the fm bays are in good condition, they cant be THAT old
 
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