• 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

Towers

johntherogger

johntherogger

So I have a question and seeing how there isn't a thread here that talks about the area towers, figured I would start one.

So feel free to ask all your tower questions here and hopefully some of our local posters can put answers to them.

Here is mine. There are two towers I'm curious of. One is in Kendall, by the end of the Don Shula after you merge onto the turnpike heading south toward homestead. There is an antenna farm off to the west of the highway that has two larger AM looking antennas and a series of smaller ones between them. What are those? Is that shortwave? I've never seen a setup like that before.

Also there is a really tall tower in Homestead that you can see for miles. Is that TV or FM?

Thank you!
 
johntherogger said:
So I have a question and seeing how there isn't a thread here that talks about the area towers, figured I would start one.

So feel free to ask all your tower questions here and hopefully some of our local posters can put answers to them.

Here is mine. There are two towers I'm curious of. One is in Kendall, by the end of the Don Shula after you merge onto the turnpike heading south toward homestead. There is an antenna farm off to the west of the highway that has two larger AM looking antennas and a series of smaller ones between them. What are those? Is that shortwave? I've never seen a setup like that before.

Also there is a really tall tower in Homestead that you can see for miles. Is that TV or FM?

Thank you!
Click to expand...


The Homestead stick has some history to it.

It came down in Hurricane Andrew's 175+MPH sustained/approx. 200 MPH gusts in August 1992.

It was formerly home to Analog Channel 6 (WCIX from 1967-95, WTVJ 1995-2009).

It is currently home to several FM's:
88.1 WGRP
88.9 WDNA
89.7 WMLV (the former WMCU/WKCP)
98.3 WRTO

Back in early 2011, I was visiting a friend of mine who lives near Florida City. On my way back up to Broward, I took a detour in the dead of night to go see the tower. I could only get within a couple of blocks of it. It was eerie. All you saw was the 1600 ft stick lighting the sky, the beacon flashing, while all around it was pitch black. Not a street light in sight. I could swear I drove through a neighborhood where there were still just vacant land and foundations from razed houses from Andrew.
 
Last edited:
johntherogger said:
So I have a question and seeing how there isn't a thread here that talks about the area towers, figured I would start one.

One is in Kendall, by the end of the Don Shula after you merge onto the turnpike heading south toward homestead. There is an antenna farm off to the west of the highway that has two larger AM looking antennas and a series of smaller ones between them. What are those? Is that shortwave? I've never seen a setup like that before.
Click to expand...
Is this the antenna farm near Kendall you're referring to? If so, it belongs to the U.S. Coast Guard.

I'd like to know if iHeart uses the old WINZ/WZTA building in Carol City for anything other than a transmitter site these days. If the aerial photo is any indication I'm sure the answer is no, especially since both stations moved out ages ago. I remember Neil Rogers talking about how a bullet came through one of the windows late one night in the 80s but it was supposed to be pretty nice inside.
 
DavidEduardo said:

Technically, the location is described as "Redland" 98.3 was on the tower when it came down.
Click to expand...
(also known As Princeton)
As was 95.7, the original WXDJ, but they moved downtown before the new stick went up.
 
Last edited:
strangelove said:
Is this the antenna farm near Kendall you're referring to? If so, it belongs to the U.S. Coast Guard.

I'd like to know if iHeart uses the old WINZ/WZTA building in Carol City for anything other than a transmitter site these days. If the aerial photo is any indication I'm sure the answer is no, especially since both stations moved out ages ago. I remember Neil Rogers talking about how a bullet came through one of the windows late one night in the 80s but it was supposed to be pretty nice inside.
Click to expand...

That's the one! So it's the Coast Guard! I knew it was something unique because of the setup. Thanks for clearing that up.
 
Sorry, I clicked the wrong button. This is for RadioGuy.

That I had no idea about. It looks so tall, I was half expecting it to house a few TV's but that's no longer the case........did they leave it because of the Analog/Digital crap?
 
strangelove said:
I remember Neil Rogers talking about how...it was supposed to be pretty nice inside.
Click to expand...

It was very nice with a big atrium in the middle, and two small buildings within the building for the main AM and FM studios.
All the production and on-air equipment was first class.
All audio cables ran through patch panels in the engineering room where a "Dimension System",
early all-electronic telephone switching system was encased in an RF shielded enclosure.
A separate AM transmitter building housed, and likely still houses, two fifty transmitters, I forgot the brands,
phasers for a six tower pattern and a retired three tower pattern, and a generator that could power everything.
The satellite photo does not show cars or well-manicured lawns.
It was so nice and new when it was so nice and new!
 
johntherogger said:
Sorry, I clicked the wrong button. This is for RadioGuy.

That I had no idea about. It looks so tall, I was half expecting it to house a few TV's but that's no longer the case........did they leave it because of the Analog/Digital crap?
Click to expand...

Yes, WTVJ is now located at the antenna farm in North Dade. Watch the day they switched from channel 4 to channel 6 here and the day they switched off the analog transmitter here.
 
ai4i said:
It was very nice with a big atrium in the middle, and two small buildings within the building for the main AM and FM studios.
All the production and on-air equipment was first class.
All audio cables ran through patch panels in the engineering room where a "Dimension System",
early all-electronic telephone switching system was encased in an RF shielded enclosure.
A separate AM transmitter building housed, and likely still houses, two fifty transmitters, I forgot the brands,
phasers for a six tower pattern and a retired three tower pattern, and a generator that could power everything.
The satellite photo does not show cars or well-manicured lawns.
It was so nice and new when it was so nice and new!
Click to expand...

Sounds it. Do you know what else required RF shielding in that building? I'd imagine people in the neighborhood have WINZ coming out of toasters and space heaters when it's at daytime power! (exaggerating, of course.)
 
strangelove said:
Sounds it.
Click to expand...
To the best of my memory, just the 1980's Dimension System.
I have no idea why they did not go for a north-south day pattern when they no longer had to protect
the FCC monitoring station in Davie to no more than 33mv/m or Cuba under the discarded NARBA treaty.
The towers, cables, and most of the coils and caps were already in place from the old day pattern as well as from the night pattern.
 
Last edited:
ai4i said:
To the best of my memory, just the 1980's Dimension System.
I have no idea why they did not go for a north-south day pattern when they no longer had to protect
the FCC monitoring station in Davie to no more than 33mv/m or Cuba under the discarded NARBA treaty.
The towers, cables, and most of the coils and caps were already in place from the old day pattern as well as from the night pattern.
Click to expand...

Very interesting about the phone system. Isn't the WINZ pattern omni-directional during the day? According to the FCC website it's directional night time only.
 
fybush said:
You can see a big chunk of the Miami TV/FM tower farm in this Site of the Week piece from 2015:

https://www.fybush.com/site-20150918/
Click to expand...

More YouTube fun: Here's the WLYF antenna/tower changeover on Sept. 3, 2009.

Bonus: Here's the transition piece produced by Lite FM's Rob Sidney which paid tribute to WLYF Chief Engineer John Morris who passed before the new site was completed.

Scott, I enjoy your website a great deal and I'm glad you made it down to South Florida. I grew up on the Dade/Broward line and those towers were a very familiar part of the landscape. For some reason I don't remember the Hallandale tower coming down, I just remember visiting a friend in the old neighborhood in the early 2000s and it looked... different. The old tower didn't have a candelabra and I remember it being taller as well. Could just be my imagination, though.
 
strangelove said:
Isn't the WINZ pattern omni-directional during the day?
Click to expand...
Yes, my question was why?
A broad north-south pattern like most of the FM's and some of the TV's have would be a more efficient use of their fifty gallons.
 
ai4i said:
(also known As Princeton)
As was 95.7, the original WXDJ, but they moved downtown before the new stick went up.
Click to expand...

I was at 95.5 WAIL FM in Key West. We moved to 99.5 for the WXDJ move in the 80's
 
Groove1670 said:
I was at 95.5 WAIL FM in Key West. We moved to 99.5 for the WXDJ move in the 80's
Click to expand...

What was it like working in Key West? The friends I know who have worked there said that the fun wore off in a month or two and the low pay, poor equipment and occasional bounced checks took over to make it very tedious.
 
Groove1670 said:
I was at 95.5 WAIL FM in Key West. We moved to 99.5 for the WXDJ move in the 80's
Click to expand...
That might have been for when WXDJ first signed on at 17107 SW 248 St.
Moving north and decreasing both their height and power might have given WAIL an oportunity to increase their signal but would not be a cause [for them] to re-crystal their transmitter.
 
Last edited:
ai4i said:
Yes, my question was why?
A broad north-south pattern like most of the FM's and some of the TV's have would be a more efficient use of their fifty gallons.
Click to expand...

Good question. Is keeping it omni instead of directional north/south done to protect WLQH near the panhandle? Focusing that much power north might cause interference. Were they to do that, however, it might solve the problem I have with WINZ being more faint than WFTL on my Superadio (outside, in the daytime, in western Broward.)
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.
Back
Top Bottom