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WTEL Tower Question

R

RadioAl

A visitor to my site had the following question and I thought someone here might have the answer:

"When I was a kid in the 1960's my friends used to climb a tower located a few blocks from me, just south of "G" Street and Wyoming Ave. It's still there, derelict and falling slowly to pieces. It's been listed for at least 40 years on USGS maps (the Frankford quad map) still has it listed as "RADIO TOWER (WTEL)".

Is there any way to find out when it was used? It's a fairly small tower with a wide base. If I had to guess I'd say it was originally 75 to 125 feet, 150 at most, but it's hard to tell since so much of the top has fallen off. They tore down the shed alongside it in the 70's. I don't know why they'd build a tower there, it's not a particularly high area. I Googled different combinations for over an hour but came up with nothing."
 
WTEL increased its power and started using a directional antenna system around the end of the '60s, so that's the latest they could have transmitted from a single tower. The old Bulletin Almanac used to include lists of Philadelphia radio stations with frequencies, powers and studio and transmitter locations--if you can find a library that still has a collection of those, you might be able to find out for sure.
 
WTEL was a sharetimer with WHAT. Both sharing 1340. WTEL's transmitter during the sharetimer time frame with WHAT was located on Old York Rd. far above North Philly. WHAT's tower was on Conshohocken Av. Therefore every 90 minutes one station would sign off, while the other would sign on. The geographic separation of the signals essentially was so far apart, for most of the audience is was like the freq. went dark every 90 minutes. In 1950 the FCC granted daytime status and freq. change for WTEL. leaving WHAT with full time status on 1340Kc and WTEL with full daytime status on 860Kc.
 
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