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New Longview LPTV

C

Chuck

I was driving past the old KLUE radio tower this afternoon. There was a tower climber on it and what looked like a UHF transmitting antenna and feed line have appeared. Oddly, it is not at the top of the tower. It is side mounted, on the Longview side of the tower. Perhaps that's all the HAAT they FCC will allow. Or maybe, the top 25% of the tower is not structurally sound. It looks pretty shaky to me.

Anyway, It looks like Longview will be getting a new LPTV. According to the Longview paper, it will be a religious format, replacing channel 10, which is now occupied by KLTV-HD.
 
Who was crazy enough to climb the tower in the first place to find out if ANY segments of it were viable? Given its schedule of no inspections or maintenance tne whole blooming structure looks shakey.
 
nuzguy said:
Who was crazy enough to climb the tower in the first place to find out if ANY segments of it were viable? Given its schedule of no inspections or maintenance tne whole blooming structure looks shakey.
Click to expand...

You sure wouldn't get me to crawl up there. Maybe that's why the guys form Tower Specialists, or Service Tower get "the big bucks."

In all fairness, the beacon light seems to be working, so somebody has had to make it to the top sometime during the life expectancy of the lamp. I'm sure it is no fun to change it.
 
The only CP I could find for Longview was for KLGV-LP, which went silent from ch-10 in early February. They're moving to ch-36 and moving their transmitter to a tower near the jct of Loop 281 and I-20, just south of LeTourneau Univ. I've never been to Longview - is that the tower you're talking about? The old KLGV-LP transmitter was located about 4 miles west of the new one they're building.
 
dhett said:
The only CP I could find for Longview was for KLGV-LP, which went silent from ch-10 in early February. They're moving to ch-36 and moving their transmitter to a tower near the jct of Loop 281 and I-20, just south of LeTourneau Univ. I've never been to Longview - is that the tower you're talking about? The old KLGV-LP transmitter was located about 4 miles west of the new one they're building.
Click to expand...

Yes. KLGV-LP tried to fight the FCC over KLTV's digital channel allocation, but lost. They actually continued to transmit on channel 10 for about 3 months after KLTV-DT signed on.

Their previous channel 10 transmitter was at the tower at the old Cherokee St. landfill in SW Longview. About 75% of their signal transmitted over the unpopulated Sabine River flood plain. With their new signal, they are probably increasing their potential viewership by 10 times.
 
It seems they own the old KLUE site and tower. It's about 10 acres. I noticed a snowy picture on channel 36 this morning which I think was them. It seems they are on the air. . The transmitting antenna is on the north side of the tower, so I'm probably in the shadow of the tower. I'm about 8-10 air miles south of their site, but don't have any antenna pointed that direction which may explain my poor reception.

When I visited, they were installing the transmitter. It's 1000 watts. They said their antenna gain would give them an ERP of 10,000 watts. I think that is fairly optimistic, especially taking into account the 350 feet or so of feed line going to the antenna. But, I'm not their engineer, so I may be mistaken about that.

I think the basic idea is to get a decent signal into Longview Cable. I suspect what they are doing should handle that easily.

The good news is they plan to fix up this decaying facility. It helps preserve a little of East Texas broadcasting history, and should make the neighborhood a better place. That's not all bad.
 
At least as far as the immediate vicinity is concerned in cleaning up the area. The studio location is very near a revitalization zone but that territory to the north along Green and Mobberly streets is beyond hope--a mecca for drive bys and drug deals.
 
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