• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Gainesville/Ocala WRUF-AM 850 giving up 5 kW nighttime signal dating back to the 1940s

M

MediaMan

University of Florida has filed to eliminate the four-tower 5 kW nighttime signal on WRUF-AM 850 dating back to the 1940s. They are proposing 86 watts from the taller daytime only tower. Daytime will remain at 5 kW. WRUF-AM operates a translator on 98.1.
 
The tower site is a mile or two west of the University of Florida. The campus is on one side of Interstate 75, the towers are on the other. The plot of land must be quite valuable now, even if it wasn't when those towers went up. It is off NW 75th Street, between SW 8th Avenue and SW 13th Road. If the station eliminates three of its four towers, I suppose that land could be sold for a good sum.

Interesting to note that WRUF-FM's tower, 768 feet above average terrain, is not at the AM tower site. It's about four miles north of the AM towers and the university, in a place called Devil's Millhopper Geological State Park. I wonder why the AM and FM are at two different sites? The FM dates from 1948, the AM from 1928. Although I don't know when each of their current tower sites was constructed.
 
Gregg. said:
Interesting to note that WRUF-FM's tower, 768 feet above average terrain, is not at the AM tower site. It's about four miles north of the AM towers and the university, in a place called Devil's Millhopper Geological State Park. I wonder why the AM and FM are at two different sites?
Click to expand...
Very few AM-FM combos are at shared sites, especially in the south and west, where FMs can use very tall towers without dropping power.

WRUF-FM's tower is shared with WUFT-TV.
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
Very few AM-FM combos are at shared sites, especially in the south and west, where FMs can use very tall towers without dropping power.
Click to expand...
More than that... FMs want to be on hills or higher elevations. AMs want to be in salt flats, swamps, wetlands and low, flat moist areas.
 
Gregg. said:
The tower site is a mile or two west of the University of Florida. The campus is on one side of Interstate 75, the towers are on the other. The plot of land must be quite valuable now, even if it wasn't when those towers went up. It is off NW 75th Street, between SW 8th Avenue and SW 13th Road. If the station eliminates three of its four towers, I suppose that land could be sold for a good sum.

Interesting to note that WRUF-FM's tower, 768 feet above average terrain, is not at the AM tower site. It's about four miles north of the AM towers and the university, in a place called Devil's Millhopper Geological State Park. I wonder why the AM and FM are at two different sites? The FM dates from 1948, the AM from 1928. Although I don't know when each of their current tower sites was constructed.
Click to expand...
I can actually answer that. The tower road site originally did house the FM as well as the AM. The taller tower is 429' tall and is the original support for the WRUF-FM antenna. This site was the primary location until around 1978 when a tornado took down three of the towers, including the FM. It was rebuilt, but around 1980, WUFT built the site near the Millhopper and WRUF moved to the TV tower, side mounted just below the TV antenna. They've been there ever since. As late as the mid 1990s, there was still a Collins 5kW transmitter at tower road for standby use. As an aside, if you drive down tower road past the WRUF field, take a look at the three shorter towers. You will note that one of them is much heavier than the other three. That tower is an original Windcharger from 1948 when the site was built. It is the sole survivor of the 1978 tornado. The other, lighter towers are modern, designed using CAD in the late '70s, so they have less steel in them and are actually stronger (on paper).
 
850 kHz. is the home of KOA in Denver (Class A) so no non-directional station on 850 kHz. is going to be allowed much power at night.
 
Kyle- I remember the tornado. When the tornado came through David Reaves and I were just under a mile away from WRUF at WGVL (or maybe where we lived down the street). We made our way over to WRUF. I clearly remember the sight of the FM bays biting into the ground.

I think David knew the engineer on duty because David and I were in the quonset hut transmitter building. As I recall... when WRUF Chief Engineer Ed Slimak arrived, he was understandably not pleased to see us there, at that stressful time. We left and went back to WGVL, grateful that we had been spared.

This brings to mind something... I don't recall any de-tuning apparatus on the WGVL tower, with respect to the nearby directional WRUF antenna system. Perhaps the rules were different then.
 
Last edited:


Back
Top Bottom