Is the tallest self supporting tower the WTHI tower in Terre Haute? WGNR isn't far behind. Am I missing one? Low frequency AM towers somewhere?
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Tallest Self Supporting Towers in Indiana
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There are no low frequency AM's in Indiana, that is a fun fact I find interesting.
Here in this neck of the woods Evansville, 1280 and 1330 have self supporters but are about 200 feet tall. The old WIKY tower was a self supporter before the tornado brought it down. I'm not sure of the height. The remaining base and the picture in the lobby seems to indicate it might have been a half wave for 820 about 500 feet tall, Chief Engineer might add insight.
The engineering wonder of self supporters is about three miles from Indiana in Owensboro, the WOMI tower. Hugh Potter and the Hager Family decided to build a more impressive tower than their competitors the Steele Family, owners of WVJS. The WOMI tower was a sectionalized self supporting tower. An insulator was on each leg at the seventy-five foot level. Above that was a 5/8 wave radiator, pretty impressive for a graveyard at 1490. The owners gave up on the AM in the eighties and decided the tower was more valuable as vertical real estate. WOMI was relegated to a skirt antenna and the sections separated with an insulator are joined together with steel plates. The ground system is buried under blacktop and a shopping center.
Here in this neck of the woods Evansville, 1280 and 1330 have self supporters but are about 200 feet tall. The old WIKY tower was a self supporter before the tornado brought it down. I'm not sure of the height. The remaining base and the picture in the lobby seems to indicate it might have been a half wave for 820 about 500 feet tall, Chief Engineer might add insight.
The engineering wonder of self supporters is about three miles from Indiana in Owensboro, the WOMI tower. Hugh Potter and the Hager Family decided to build a more impressive tower than their competitors the Steele Family, owners of WVJS. The WOMI tower was a sectionalized self supporting tower. An insulator was on each leg at the seventy-five foot level. Above that was a 5/8 wave radiator, pretty impressive for a graveyard at 1490. The owners gave up on the AM in the eighties and decided the tower was more valuable as vertical real estate. WOMI was relegated to a skirt antenna and the sections separated with an insulator are joined together with steel plates. The ground system is buried under blacktop and a shopping center.
WIKY AM on Mt. Auburn was indeed roughly 500 feet before it was dropped by the weather some 30 years ago. The base of that tower is still outside the WIKY/SCC studios and looks impressive in itself.
WIKY 820, now WSWI, may have been the lowest frequency licensed to Indiana. True?
WIKY 820, now WSWI, may have been the lowest frequency licensed to Indiana. True?
810 your Am band WATI or whatever the calls are this week Indianapolis. There is a CP for Terra Hut in the 600s.
Wigbifs towers were/are 250 or 300. The nice thing about them is the occasional act of throwing off the top 60 some feet of the West tower. This is a stress fracture thing due to vibration and wind. After climbing the thing I asked about the extra towers in the field and Erwin just laughed. Those are the tops of the tower you were just on....
WHBU had a tower on a building as did WROZ, WIKY, WEOA now....The Pimp, er The Pump. The Anderson tower was Blaw Knox. Sean Mattingly has pictures of it being taken down on his Facebook page. WCNB is still self supporting but it is guyed and also skirted now. Red Hot 5000 Watt WSLM gets out well but I can't remember their frequency.
990 in Muncie had full wave towers on 90 acres until they cut them down. Not self supporting though.
Unfortunately most of the towers in Indiana were designed at a time that all the glitter had left radio and the pavement met the budget. The big signals that could have been self supporters? Louisville and WHAS had a guyed tower in Indiana. 1070 has (for all the good it does) guyed towers on what could be the next business industrial park in Zionsville. WOWO the same. We have so many graveyard signals with crappy signals the expense of the best tower would be wasted.
Crawfordsville at 1550, Boonville15??, WEOA's signal was so bad I couldn't hear it at my home just N of Boeke avenue less than a mile from the tower at night. 1390 Seymour, 15?20 Paoli, Linton 1600.
From Louisville and Evansville the sheer lack of stations and the population was something of a wasteland. 41 had WRAY then WAOV at Vincennes. Through the mid part of the state WTCJ 1230 then Jasper 990, Bedford, then Bloomington, and Martinsville. 31 had Lousiville then WSLM, WJCD 1390 Seymour, Columbus 1010 (had a 500 foot tower but not self supporting til the FM fell down in 1962 100 kw at 93.9), then Indy. I 74 has Crawfordsville West and Shelbyville 1520, WTRE 1330 East. Even in Columbus trying to listen to a good clean local signal when I was a few years younger was tough. Wife seemingly disappeared, WXLW had Shirk complain about signing off then signed off, and I could kind of listen to WNDE. Then they put Hans on in teh morning and killed any audience it had left.
Wigbifs towers were/are 250 or 300. The nice thing about them is the occasional act of throwing off the top 60 some feet of the West tower. This is a stress fracture thing due to vibration and wind. After climbing the thing I asked about the extra towers in the field and Erwin just laughed. Those are the tops of the tower you were just on....
WHBU had a tower on a building as did WROZ, WIKY, WEOA now....The Pimp, er The Pump. The Anderson tower was Blaw Knox. Sean Mattingly has pictures of it being taken down on his Facebook page. WCNB is still self supporting but it is guyed and also skirted now. Red Hot 5000 Watt WSLM gets out well but I can't remember their frequency.
990 in Muncie had full wave towers on 90 acres until they cut them down. Not self supporting though.
Unfortunately most of the towers in Indiana were designed at a time that all the glitter had left radio and the pavement met the budget. The big signals that could have been self supporters? Louisville and WHAS had a guyed tower in Indiana. 1070 has (for all the good it does) guyed towers on what could be the next business industrial park in Zionsville. WOWO the same. We have so many graveyard signals with crappy signals the expense of the best tower would be wasted.
Crawfordsville at 1550, Boonville15??, WEOA's signal was so bad I couldn't hear it at my home just N of Boeke avenue less than a mile from the tower at night. 1390 Seymour, 15?20 Paoli, Linton 1600.
From Louisville and Evansville the sheer lack of stations and the population was something of a wasteland. 41 had WRAY then WAOV at Vincennes. Through the mid part of the state WTCJ 1230 then Jasper 990, Bedford, then Bloomington, and Martinsville. 31 had Lousiville then WSLM, WJCD 1390 Seymour, Columbus 1010 (had a 500 foot tower but not self supporting til the FM fell down in 1962 100 kw at 93.9), then Indy. I 74 has Crawfordsville West and Shelbyville 1520, WTRE 1330 East. Even in Columbus trying to listen to a good clean local signal when I was a few years younger was tough. Wife seemingly disappeared, WXLW had Shirk complain about signing off then signed off, and I could kind of listen to WNDE. Then they put Hans on in teh morning and killed any audience it had left.
I know WIND is officially a Chicago station, but it is 560, and I think of that area as "Black Oak", a suburb of Gary,
which is in Indiana. No, they're not self supporting towers, but they are a low frequency AM in Indiana.
I have to wonder who now owns and maintains the tower in Valparaiso where WNWI 1080 was from 1965 to 2003-ish.
Hard to imagine Baruch comm would have "kept" the property and tower after the move to Oak Park, Illinois.
Someone must be paying the light bill on the beacons....
which is in Indiana. No, they're not self supporting towers, but they are a low frequency AM in Indiana.
I have to wonder who now owns and maintains the tower in Valparaiso where WNWI 1080 was from 1965 to 2003-ish.
Hard to imagine Baruch comm would have "kept" the property and tower after the move to Oak Park, Illinois.
Someone must be paying the light bill on the beacons....
To my knowledge there's only one AM self supported tower and that's #5 for WKJG 1380, but I don't know if it even goes up to 350 feet. It's got beacons so I know it's over 200.
Tom Wells said:
WIND was licensed to Gary until sometime in the 1940s.
There was also a CP for WICI/600, licensed to Elletsville but owned by WBWB Bloomington, shown in the 1989 Broadcasting Yearbook. I don't think it ever went on the air, nor does BY show how much power it was supposed to run. I think that was the lowest frequency assigned to a station in Indiana other than WIND.
DTV-Chief said:
Radio Locator has WTHI at 530 feet above ground level, and WLBC at 459. WGNR is 509 according Radio Locator.
KeithE4 said:
Prior to landing at 1280 (1250 I believe before the frequency shift) WGBF was on 630. There was a 640 in Terre Haute prior to their shutdown in the nineties.
WNDE has a tall self supported tower in it's array. It's fairly tall and the fcc database shows it has an electical height of 194 degrees...194 degrees of 1260khz is 421 feet? Chief, Bob check my math?Juan Bodley said:
The tower for 640 in Terre Haute looks like it is guyed, but I am old..just ask my kids!
http://www.fccinfo.com/MapIt5.php?l...erre+Haute,+IN&city=Terre+Haute&Button=Map+It
http://www.fccinfo.com/MapIt5.php?l...erre+Haute,+IN&city=Terre+Haute&Button=Map+It
Tom Wells said:
The WIND towers are actually located in Griffith Indiana & not Black Oak (Griffith's northern most boundary is 29th Avenue, & the towers are west of Colfax, south of 29th Ave, & just north of the Little Calumet River). I live in the area, and Black Oak is actually a part of Gary, & not a town or city. It was unicorporated until 1976 when it was annexed by Gary, & that was around the time WIND moved to their present site.
As for the current WNWI on 1080, their towers & studios are located in Riverdale Illinois at 934 West 138th Street, & not Oak Park. The station is licensed to Oak Lawn, IL. I would have no clue about if the tower for the old WNWI in Valparaiso is still there or not. I don't even know where it was located at.
I just wish the FCC website weren't down right now (after 3am). I wonder how tall the self supporting tower is for WJOB, which is located on site with their studios at 6405 Olcott Avenue in Hammond Indiana.
WTHI the HAAT is 488 ft. the overall height above ground is 550 ft and the ground elevation is 494 ft. so who knows what any of that means but it looks like it is probably about 500 as a nice round average number, I guess.
It was built for Channel 10 back in 1954 with the FM antenna strapped to a legg on the side. Then in the late 60's the Farmersburg tower was built for TV right after WTWO went on.
The TV 10 "bat wings" antenna came down in 81 and the HI-99 FM antenna went up to the mast on top. HI-99 had a back up antenna on the SE legg till about 10 years ago and that came down during a main antenna rebuild and an overhaul on the feed line.
In the end you would never see something like that built in the middle of a downtown ever again. Toney Hulman had some real pull in his day.
It was built for Channel 10 back in 1954 with the FM antenna strapped to a legg on the side. Then in the late 60's the Farmersburg tower was built for TV right after WTWO went on.
The TV 10 "bat wings" antenna came down in 81 and the HI-99 FM antenna went up to the mast on top. HI-99 had a back up antenna on the SE legg till about 10 years ago and that came down during a main antenna rebuild and an overhaul on the feed line.
In the end you would never see something like that built in the middle of a downtown ever again. Toney Hulman had some real pull in his day.
radiorob2.0 said:
640 in Terre Haute was a two tower directional. One tower was shared with 1230 and the second tower was a guyed tower that was built when 640 came to town.
The old 1230 tower "was" a little over 200 ft. I say was because it is now folded over in half and has been for many years now. It may be a four legger ( I dont remember for sure) and not a tripod 3 legger like the THI tower.
OK I forgot to mention when I posted about WKJG 1380 - it's the only self supported tower that I know of in FORT WAYNE. Slap me stupid.
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