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Former J93.3 tower

H

historybuff

Guest
I was in Manchester on Sunday and discovered that most of the former J93.3 tower on the mountain above town had been removed. Doesn't surprise me as I've thought for years that it looked like the top 100 feet or so was leaning. I assume that J's parent company still owned/owns the stick and I've wondered why they left it up, at least at full height for so long after abandoning it in the late 90's. Of course Mountain Country 94.5 took up residence near the bottom several years back. I noticed their 2 bay antenna is still in place on what remains. Always figured that the Mountain Country folks could brag about their "tall" tower since the average person on the street doesn't know the height limitations of a class A station or even what that means. Was definately a landmark for Manchester. Does anyone know when it was built? I remember an old tower in the general vicinity from my childhood for then WFDR AM/FM. I know the AM was up there then because that tower had insulators on the guy wires. Of course WFDR AM is now just north on Manchester along HWY 85. I guess Provident built that AM facility when they built the big FM stick, I assume in the early 80's.
 
The top portion of the tower did have a pronounced tilt several years back due to failure of the "Philly-stran" guy wire sections at the top of the tower. (Philly-stran is a non metallic material used to make guy wires invisible to to RF - keeps the guy wires from distorting the signal.) This was all replaced back in early 2000 with steel cable.
The plan had always been to take most of the tower down - I think it has been gone a number of years.
I wonder if they ever sold the studio building adjacent to the tower? It was a very large, and reasonably nice building......I'll bet someone could have bought that for a song.
That tower was modified in the early 80's when Watkins bought the station and reached 1000 feet afterwards. It was a great tower location and the station had great coverage. Too bad there was no one else who could make use of that facility after VFJ left.
 
The building was sold from what I hear and became an events center. Last time I drove by it looked like it had closed. The tower was still standing at 1000ft when I was in Manchester in mid January. It must have been dismantled in the last month or so. I did see on the Mountain Country 94.5 Facebook fan page one day last week that they were off the air for a few hours during the day for "transmitter maintenance". Perhaps they were finishing up then and had to power off while the crew was near the antenna.... I was down there after dark last summer and the thing was fully lit. I thought then that it must be costing someone lots of $$ to maintain not to mention liability insurance.
 
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