This is one of those updates, that I would call NIFTY. I got to see some towers that have long long been on my list to visit, as well as visit some family sites.
But the first visit I did was actually back in March. Doug Kehrig has been a close friend of mine for many years, and we both have been trying to find some time to get together to see the little AM he engineers, WMRC. (See, Doug is a transmitter engineer for WHDH-TV, just like I am for WFXT, so both our schedules are quite busy).
Anywhos, we got a chance to finally merge off work so I could see his station. I have a full 15 photo gallery of the station on the page. (Linked above)
Then this month (April, 2016), was my annual “field trip” to Allentown, PA to the Spring Melt fire convention, which includes a free day for tower gathering. This year, I got two days in.
The first day I got out to Carlisle, PA to see the six radio stations there. See Carlisle is a special place to me. My Aunt Marge (Marjorie Ann Fitzpatrick January 01,1934 – November 12,2011) lived here for all of my life, and had been inviting me to come down for many years. Unfortunately, I was never able to make it down, and she passed in a tragic car accident on November 12th. So this year, I corrected that wrong, and visited her grave, as well as saw her old houses.
Anyways, it gave me a chance to visit all the Carlisle radio stations, including the one at Dickinson College, where she was a professor.
After visiting this historic and beautiful town, I headed south to see the towers of York, Lancaster. (Plus some of the prettiest country you’ll ever see.).
While down there, I had to go to Millersville to see the college station at Millersville University, where family of mine graduated.
After leaving Lancaster, I had a ton of daylight left, and decided to polish off two more sites from my list that I’ve always wanted to visit. The first was just outside of Hanover. The hill where WGTY Gettysburg, and WYCR York-Hanover both site. What a surprise it was to find WYCR’s very old RCA Batwing still mounted up the hill!
Plus across the street was an old AT&T Longlines tower.
See the whole Carlisle set here, and the whole Lancaster-York-Hanover set here.
After leaving that area in Pennsylvania, the plan was to go to Elizabethtown to get a picture of 106.7 , licensed to Hershey. I was surprised when I came upon the tower of WWKL 93.5, while taking the back roads up there!
On my way back home from Pennsylvania, I decided to polish off a few more sites in the New York City area that I have never been to.
The first is one that I didn’t realize was as close to the highway as it is. The monster signal of WAWZ in Zarepath. Back when I started the website, a gentleman sent me some old pictures of it, with the caption. “I couldn’t find the way up”. Well thanks to Google Earth, I was able to find this easy to get to site.
From there I headed to West Orange, to visit the WNSH 94.7 site, which also is home to WFMU 91.1, as well as the backups for several other NYC Stations, AND one TV station as well, WNYJ-TV.
On my way there, I was quite surprised to see a big beefy self supporting tower about a mile and half up the road , I wasn’t expecting. After photographing it in good detail, I learned it is home to a massive NYC TV backup site.
Leaving there, I visited the WWRL 1600 site to update my pictures of there and got a picture (not fantastic but ok) of the new WEPN towers. Along the way, however, I stopped and added another very prominent AM site to my list. The big 570 WMCA/ 820 WNYC site. As an added unexpected bonus, I got a shot of the new One World Trade center behind them.
I also corrected one huge omission from my site. This is an important one too. Scott Fybush, of Fybush Media/Fybush.com has documented on his excellent site, this tower with very detailed history. Really he has explained it in much more detail than I could ever do! I am talking, of course, of the Armstrong tower in Alpine, NJ.
The tower is used by two FM broadcasters. WPLJ maintains a Shively backup on the tower, and WFDU has their primary antenna here.
On the way out of here, I stopped by Nyack College to grab a quick photo of WNYK, then stopped in Danbury on my way home.
I had never made it up to the WXCI site. (Sorry Oz!). This time, I walked past the gate up the short hill, and grabbed a few photos of this rather interesting tower.
I also made one final stop, while in Danbury, to get a shot of the WDBY-FM1 Booster.
So you can see this is quite an update, and I hope you enjoy it.
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