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WHKW - WHK
- Thread starter johnbasalla
- Start date
The big tower way in the back itself is WTAM.
The FM antennas on the top belong to WZAK 93.1 and WAKS 96.5. The dishes are microwave links.
The auxiliary antenna for WTAM is the smaller tower closer to the street.
The tower was also home to WNBK 4 (known today as WKYC 3) when they first signed on, and was the original site for WBNX until moving to Parma in the mid 90s.
Media-Com originally planned on placing W35AX (known today as WOCV-CD) there in 1989 until they built a tower in Parma, which WBNX would eventually move to. HC2 did have applications to move both WEKA-LD and WQDI-LD to the WTAM tower and increase coverage, but both were abandoned.
I doubt that those microwave links are still in use. Just about everyone moved their STLs to IP.
I thought WBNX was originally on Rex's Erection in Cuyahoga Falls.
Perhaps someone with more tech knowledge and better memory can address this. For about 20 years, between the mid fifties and seventies, 1100 was moved from the Brecksville tower to a new tower in Parma that combined TV 3, and 105.7 and was a unique AM tower. It was explained to me as an inverted dipole, actually divided in the middle by an insulator and fed by two transmission lines. Supposedly, this gave it a better groundwave or skywave, or both, with more control over each. At the same time, the 1-A station became a DA-1 because of having to protect a station up north in Canada. The story was they used one of the guy wires to create a small null to the north, with a minimal impact on the signal.
The former antenna site was purchased by consulting engineer Carl E. Smith who leased it out to other operators and for his own use.
After the radio stations were spun off during the 70's, the TV owner told them to leave, at which point they went to Carl Smith who welcomed 1100 back home. I don't recall where 105.7 went. Since then I have heard persistant rumors that 1100 is, or wasn't, operating at a full 50KW because the old tower could no longer handle it or that there is still some problem to the north. I saw some time ago that Clear Channel/I Heart was looking to build a new 1100 tower near the Cuyahoga/Summit line.
The former antenna site was purchased by consulting engineer Carl E. Smith who leased it out to other operators and for his own use.
After the radio stations were spun off during the 70's, the TV owner told them to leave, at which point they went to Carl Smith who welcomed 1100 back home. I don't recall where 105.7 went. Since then I have heard persistant rumors that 1100 is, or wasn't, operating at a full 50KW because the old tower could no longer handle it or that there is still some problem to the north. I saw some time ago that Clear Channel/I Heart was looking to build a new 1100 tower near the Cuyahoga/Summit line.
They're still in use. Either as a main or a backup.
WTAM's meters were still showing 50 kilowatts last time I saw inside a year or so ago. The tower needed a new base a few years back, so they had people come in to chisel and reinforce that concrete block it sits on. There's been other work there as well. Any time work is being done on the main tower, the station has to move to the aux and lower the power output.
When I moved back to Florida years ago, I could pick up WWWE [WTAM now] almost every night. Last time I was back there a couple of years ago in the middle of the state, I could pick it up but it didn't sound as good.
That's where it would have been had the concrete tower been finished. Rex would later sell the construction permit for WBNX (then with the calls WCOT-TV) along with his Cathedral of Tomorrow to Ernest Angley. Angley would then sign on WBNX on December 1, 1985 from the WTAM tower in Brecksville, before eventually moving the transmitter out to Parma. The unfinished concrete tower is not owned by Angley's ministries or WBNX, and is currently being used to hold cellular transmitters.
Sounds about right, from what I've heard. That particular tower was removed in 2010, shortly after WKYC built a new tower right next to it for their digital transition to RF 17, and for WVIZ's RF 26. There was a site that had pictures of the new tower being constructed, as well as the old tower being removed, with a closeup of the insulator in the middle. That site has since been taken down.
From what I've heard, that building was also used up until the 90s for AM 1260's studios, then WRDZ at the time.
105.7 has been on the WBNX tower since the 90s, perhaps ever since that tower was built in 1993. I don't know where they were prior to that time and after they were on the TV 3/AM 1100 Parma tower. Around that time, wasn't 105.7 WWWM and 1100 WWWE (known as 3WE)?
Seeing that their Brecksville tower dates back to the late 40s, it wouldn't surprise me that the tower is in need of some maintenance. The base insulator, as well as the insulators on the guy wires, have likely deteriorated to the point that there's likely leakage while operating under 50,000 watts. Replacing the insulators would mean that WTAM would have to go off the air while they are being replaced. Same goes for their grounding system. The little tower that sits close to the road in the northeastern corner of the property is supposedly their backup transmitter, though I can't imagine 50,000 watts being pushed out of that thing. I don't even think it can do 5,000 watts. Maybe 1,000 watts at the most. It's probably feasible just to build a new tower rather than greatly reduce coverage or go off the air while repairing the existing tower.
I don't think ANY radio company will be tossing money around to build a new tower for any AM station nowadays. Unless, of course, it's insured and some storm or other catastrophe causes it to collapse. And even then the insurance company is going to come in and do an inspection or something and then decide "Nah, we ain't paying, it collapsed due to lack of maintenance, act of God, a duck farted on it while flying by it and knocked it down." Any excuse to get out of paying for a new one.
No. It's an AM station, for which the whole tower is the antenna, usually with a big insulator at the base so it can be series-fed just above the insulator. And it has to be a specific height - for class A AMs that's usually 5/8 wavelength, so the WOIO tower would be too tall.
Over the last three or four years, a lot of old cables, microwave antennas and other junk were cleaned off the main WTAM tower.
Looking at the Google Streetview images, I see that the two microwave links near the top are now gone.
105.7 signed on as WTAM-FM in 1948. When channel 3 built their tall tower sometime in the mid 50s, the FM went up there. There were no real power/height rules back then, so the FM was 27kw at 900 feet AAT. The only problem was that the FM antenna was side mounted on the tower and had a blind spot on the backside. It was that way for many years, until they moved to the new channel 55 tower (by this time WMJI). They went way up to over 1100 feet AAT with an antenna system which surrounds the structure on all sides. They were able to keep the grandfather (new site was close enough to the original site) but had to scale it back a bit due to the height increase. Ended up with 16KW at over 1100 feet AAT, which is about twice the power that they would have been allowed under the current rules. This is why they pretty much have the best FM signal in the market.
WTAM's skywave is quite good. But their groundwave coverage is substandard for a 50K non-D on 1100.
Sometimes, especially on smaller stations, these could be "tradeouts". I know of one small station where the grocery market ads are in exchange for the owner getting groceries from the store.
Groundwave coverage is more dependent on the conductivity of the terrain at the site and in the region, then even the tower itself.1100 as always had lesser coverage than similar powered stations in places like Chicago, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Texas, and Nebraska because of this factor.
When I listened as a local back in the early 60s on the east side of Cleveland, it was often easy to hear a coach channel station from as far away as Venezuela even with them on the air.
Do you remember the receiver/antenna you were using at the time?
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