I had a déjà vu experience last July — revisiting the site of my alma mater’s television transmitter four years after my first visit.
Recent Reddit posts, especially on r/antennasporn, encouraged me to dig up photos from both visits. I’ve also visited other tall guyed masks in the area that have piqued my interest, although the KMOS tower takes the cake as the tallest, most intriguing and the only one I got to see truly up close.
The KMOS-TV transmitter south of Syracuse in rural Morgan County is massive. According to FCC’s Antenna Structure Registration database (ASR 1040329), the tower is exactly 2,000 feet tall. It can be seen from miles; On a clear day, I can see the guyed mast from more than 20 miles away.
While traveling back home from Warrensburg as a student at the University of Central Missouri — who owns KMOS-TV — I made a slight detour off U.S. 50 one day during a summer trip to see the tower up close. The tower is perched away on a gravel road south of Syracuse off Route PP. As you slowly wind around the gravel road, the tower grows in size. The guy wires eventually shadow over your car, and you must lean forward and look up to see the entire mast from your car.
Unfortunately, unlike self-supporting microwave towers that I’m more familiar with visiting and photographing, guyed masts like the one used by KMOS-TV are often located far away from the street entrance in the middle of a field. Like other sites, a gate limits access to the field (including the site and guy wire anchors), protects from unwanted visitors and — in many cases — prevents the property owner’s livestock from wondering off. However, this limits visibility of the base station and its ancillary equipment such as generators. In the case of the KMOS-TV site, only part of the base station is barely visible from the gate at the bottom of the hill.
Thankfully, I would get an inside look at this site — by surprise — July 15, 2023, while on a work assignment. As part of that assignment, I was a participant in a tour of several local businesses and “points of interest” in the area. Although the tour was supposed to be limited to nearby Moniteau County, I was surprised when our line of vehicles passed the county line into Morgan and traversed down the same roads leading to the KMOS-TV transmitter. This time, the gate was opened by the station engineer, allowing the line of buses and cars to get closer to the base station.
As part of the tour, we also got to see inside the base station. I enjoyed seeing the digital TV transmitter up close, and learning about the maze of thick copper coaxial waveguide running throughout the building, outside and up 2,000 feet. With KMOS-TV having one of the largest structures in Missouri, the tall tower — combined with 322-kilowatt effective radiated power (ERP) — allows them to have one of the largest ranges for a TV station in the state.
After concluding the inside tour, the convoy of vehicles snaked around in the surrounding field to look at just a couple of the many thick guy wires holding the tower up. The photos below do not do the scale of the cables and their anchors justice.
As a former digital media production student at UCM, I had most of my classes and even worked in the same building as the KMOS-TV studios. I had several friends that worked there, including in master control. During my time at The Muleskinner, the student newspaper, we were stationed in a office with a glass wall facing the small mast on the Martin Building supporting the parabolic antenna that initiates the studio-transmitter link eastward to Syracuse. On another occasion, I happened to be in a classroom on the third floor of Martin when that mast took a direct lightning strike. The bright flash was followed by a rumble that shook the building and made everyone jump in their seats.
However, recalling the KMOS-TV chief engineer’s comments during the tour, the microwave studio-transmitter link is mostly moot anymore for much the same reason other RF/microwave links — including AT&T’s Long Lines — became obsolete. Two fiber optic internet networks are now used to stream the broadcast from master control at UCM to the Syracuse transmitter site. It’s likely (but my speculation) the microwave link is usually offline, but the registration and equipment maintained for the rare occurrence both fiber connections are interrupted.
While writing this, I located these photos I took of a vintage RCA studio camera and color monitor once displayed outside the KMOS-TV studios at UCM.
Another TV mast: KMIZ-TV transmitter
West of Jamestown in rural Moniteau County is the very small “hamlet” of Cedron off Route D. The most prominent part of the unincorporated community is the picturesque Assumption of The Blessed Virgin Mary Catholic Church and its graveyard. Although capturing pictures of the beautiful, 19th-century church was a perfect excuse to detour off Route D down the gravel road named for the community, I had another purpose in mind.
Along Cedron Road is the KMIZ-TV (more commonly known as “ABC 17”) transmitter. Despite being the transmitter for two of the “big four” television network affiliates in the area — KMIZ-TV at channel 17 as the ABC affiliate, and KQFX-TV at channel 22 as the Fox affiliate — it’s only slightly more than half the size of the KMOS-TV mast. FCC records indicate KMIZ-TV height above average terrain (HAAT) is 352 meters, or nearly 1,155 feet. KMIZ transmits at 231 kW ERP, KQFX transmits at 15 kW ERP.
The tower is ASR 1312587 and belongs to NPG (News-Press & Gazette) of Missouri, LLC, with a registration address of ABC 17’s studios on Business Loop 70 in Columbia.
Maprad.io has more than 20 live registrations at the KMIZ-TV transmitter site. Among them are the microwave studio-transmitter link — WIL65, 7 GHz — registered to NPG (News-Press & Gazette) Media, owner of KMIZ-TV/KQFX-TV. Broadband radio service (BRS) and education broadband service (EBS) registrations at the site are also linked to Clearwire Spectrum Holdings III LLC, Columbia College (in Columbia) and Southern Boone School District in Ashland. There are also canceled BRS/EBS registrations at the site for ComSpec Broadband LLC. Maprad.io records also indicate NPG had a land mobile radio repeater at the site, but the registration was canceled before its Aug. 24, 2021, expiration.
Cumulus and Zimmer radio repeaters
Just down Route D from the KMIZ-TV transmitter is yet another tall mast. However, this one isn’t for television — rather, more likely a FM broadcast translator.
Cumulus Media is a national broadcasting company with several stations in Columbia, Missouri. Yours truly grew up listening to a couple of them, mainly KPLA-FM (101.5 MHz, adult contemporary) and KBXR-FM (102.3 MHz, adult album alternative), but they have a couple others.
Their main transmitter, per radio-locator, is off Brown Station Road in Columbia.
However, maprad.io shows another microwave studio-transmitter link going from the Cumulus studios on Old U.S. 63 in central Columbia to this tower, ASR 1042618, less than two miles south of the KMIZ-TV tower on Elliott School Road.
FCC records indicate the tower is owned by VB (Vertical Bridge) Nimbus, LLC, of Boca Raton, Florida. It has a height above average terrain of 303.6 meters (996 feet). Atop the guyed mast is an eight-bay FM antenna used to rebroadcast the Cumulus stations.
Russellville translator
The Cumulus site near Cedron has links to another translator site northeast of Russellville in Cole County. Cedron acts as transmitter on the studio-transmitter link, WQCY441 (948.5 MHz).
This site is located just northeast of the former Southwestern Bell microwave relay site (now used by a wireless internet service provider) I published photos of in June. It is registered with the FCC as Antenna Structure Registration 1004494, belonging to Zimmer Radio — Cumulus’ rival.
According to Maprad.io, the 156-meter (~512-feet) tower is used by both Cumulus and Zimmer as a broadcast translator site. The Russellville site has microwave links WLP465, WROE622 and WROE624 to the Zimmer studio in Jefferson City.
Like Cedron, the Russellville site is another microwave studio-transmitter link relay station that extends to yet another translator used by Zimmer. This translator is located off the west side of U.S. 54 south of Eldon. It is a receiver on WROE623, a microwave link with the Russellville site operating at 950 MHz. The Eldon translator has a link to another site near Osage Beach.
Russellville’s site has yet another active license for Zimmer, KPM462, a 450.45 remote pickup/land mobile radio transceiver. There is also a canceled license, WMG229 (effective June 10, 1993, expired Feb. 1, 2006), for inter-city television relay for (Board of Regents of) Central Missouri State University.
In 2006, Central Missouri State University became the University of Central Missouri. I speculate WMG229 was one of several sites that acted as television translators — like the FM (and AM) radio translators — extending KMOS-TV’s range before the 2,000-foot Syracuse tower came online. After the Syracuse tower came online, the inter-city TV translators were no longer necessary due to the huge range of the new transmitter.
Maprad.io shows WMG229 was a 7 GHz microwave link to the Mediacom tower off Route C in Jefferson City. However, no other links are shown for either Russellville or the Jefferson City site for CMSU/UCM/KMOS-TV.
Going full circle is a good ending point. In a future post I might dive into the Mediacom tower, now owned by CTI Towers, and a nearby microwave relay tower — both I vividly remember from visiting Jefferson City as a younger child.
