My previous post led me to look up other local towers that have always piqued my interest.
First up, another broadcast tower. Or, what about four?
These four masts located near Wardsville, Missouri, have been broadcasting KWOS-AM at 950kHz since April 1954. According to FCC records, the station broadcasts at 5kW with only one tower during the day. All four masts are energized at night when the station reduces its effective radiated power to 0.5kW.
Access to the site is limited, especially given the masts themselves are likely energized as many AM stations utilize mast radiators. (If anybody were to touch any part of the tower itself, they would get more than a nice zap … and they wouldn’t need a radio to listen to the station. Therefore, keeping unauthorized personnel out is key.)
From the street, it appears the base station housing the transmitters and other equipment is located underground, accessed via a “hut-like” structure. (This structure is seen between the second and third towers, from left, along the horizon.)
KWOS-AM is owned by Zimmer Communications, which has a microwave studio-transmitter link between the Wardsville transmitter and the studios on South Ten Mile Drive in Jefferson City.
I was unable to find any Antenna Structure Registration numbers for any of the masts.
Mediacom/CTI tower (ASR 1011910)
This 268-foot tower is one of two visible from most places in Missouri’s capital city, but it appears to have been abandoned.
Located off Red Oak Drive in Jefferson City, ASR 1011910 is owned by CTI Towers but appears to only have expired or canceled licenses according to Maprad.io. While presently owned by CTI, I nicknamed this the “Mediacom tower” because it was formerly owned by Mediacom Communications and is just down the street from the Jefferson City Mediacom office.
Maprad.io has two entries for this tower: one microwave, and one land mobile/UHF registration.
If you read my last post, this tower may look familiar because I “teased” it at the very end. My alma mater, University of Central Missouri (formerly Central Missouri State University, as relevant here,) had a 7 GHz inter-city television relay link that extended to this tower from a guyed mast near Russellville. Oddly, no other routes for CMSU/UCM extended beyond Russellville to campus in Warrensburg. This link was registered as WMG229, effective June 10, 1993, and canceled before the Feb. 1, 2006, expiration date. The link was likely used for KMOS-TV prior to its Syracuse transmitter, detailed in my previous post, coming online.
FCC records indicate the Jefferson City tower was constructed in 1996, after WMG229 went on the air.
However, as my nickname suggests, the site was also used by Mediacom for other purposes. It had a land mobile radio repeater station, KRU593, which was effective August 2004 and canceled prior to its April 2014 expiration.
The tower has a Yagi and a couple other RF antennas, along with a small Andrew shrouded parabolic antenna likely pointed toward the Russellville tower for WMG229. The purpose of a larger shrouded parabolic pointed north is unknown, I assume it was an older link.
I remember seeing this tower extend high above the fog with an eerie red glow of its red obstruction light one foggy morning as my grandparents (who I was visiting) drove down Christy Drive on the other side of U.S. 54. Along that road is yet another interesting tower — this time fairly heavily loaded.
“Missouri RSA 11/12 Partnership”/American Towers site (ASR 1004205)
Past the row of car dealerships lining Christy Drive is a gravel road that winds back on the bluff overlooking Special Olympics Missouri’s Training For Life campus and U.S. 54. The other tower visible along the Jefferson City skyline is located along this road, which has a large water tower at the dead end of the road.
The tower, ASR 1004205, is owned by “Missouri RSA 11/12 Partnership” and managed by American Towers, a company who owns towers and leases out space to carriers. According to a 2014 AT&T legal document, Missouri RSA 11/12 Partnership is the alias for Cingular/AT&T’s mobile radio affiliate in Missouri. Furthermore, FCC records for the site list AT&T’s National Regulatory Compliance department email as a contact method.
The date of construction listed on the FCC records for this tower, Nov. 8, 2010, is incorrect. First, FCC’s own history and automated letters database have entries dating back to 2000. The first owner indicated in the records were Southwestern Bell Mobile, which became part of Cingular before AT&T (post-Southwestern Bell acquisition) took ownership of the company. (Essentially a huge loop.) Second, I also remember this tower as a child — prior to 2010. I remember my grandfather delivering yard waste to a quarry that used to inhabit the space below the bluff before the Special Olympics facility was built.
This tower survived the direct hit of an EF3 tornado that moved through the area May 22, 2019. This tornado heavily damaged the then-new Special Olympics facility, and destroyed the aforementioned car dealerships, tossing cars around the lot before it moved toward downtown Jefferson City leaving a path of destruction in its wake.
Maprad.io shows 18 results for the site, with only three active registrations. The only active registration not for Missouri RSA 11/12 Partnership was WNBM948, a land mobile radio/paging repeater for Joplin Beepers Inc (d/b/a Midwest Paging).
WMN683 and WMN684, 6 GHz links effective Jan. 20, 2024-July 1, 2030, are the only active Missouri RSA 11/12 Partnership registrations. Both links hops to a site southeast of Loose Creek.
There are a host of expired, canceled and terminated registrations for the site. Maprad.io also lists:
- WMS522, a Missouri RSA 6.7 GHz microwave relay link to a site south of Dixie, or east-southeast of New Bloomfield in Callaway County. Effective Nov. 14, 1994, canceled prior to Feb. 1, 2001, expiration.
- WPLV713, a 25-watt 75.62 MHz paging land mobile radio channel licensed to Executive Paging & Message Processing of Camdenton. Effective March 13, 1998, and terminated prior to March 13, 2003, expiration.
- WMS893, a Missouri RSA 10 GHz microwave relay link to a site in Brazito. Effective Aug. 30, 2018, and canceled prior to July 1, 2020, expiration.
- WMR707, a Missouri RSA 6 GHz microwave relay link to a site west of California in Moniteau County. Effective Sept. 20, 2016, canceled prior to July 1, 2020, expiration.
- WPPQ839, a 70-watt 800 MHz trunked land mobile radio repeater registered to Nextel License Holdings. Effective Oct. 28, 2011, and canceled prior to the Feb. 11, 2020, expiration date.
- WPJJ824, a 500-watt 900 MHz land mobile radio paging channel licensed to Nationwide. Effective Nov. 6, 2001, and canceled prior to July 1, 2011, expiration.
- KNLS582, a 900 MHz paging channel licensed to MobileMedia DP Properties (debtor-in-possession). Effective April 15, 1998, and canceled prior to April 15, 2008, expiration.
- KNJV331, a 50-watt 154 MHz land mobile radio channel licensed to Braun Automotive Repair. Effective May 22, 2014, and expired June 16, 2024.
Long Lines sites
While photographing tower sites for this and my previous post, I also stopped by a couple “semi-local” former AT&T Long Lines microwave relay sites. Unfortunately, both had been previously photographed and featured on my website. The two sites were along the KC/Oak Grove-Halifax route constructed around 1964.
First, I visited the Barnett, Missouri, site on Aug. 18. This site is presently owned by American Tower but doesn’t appear to have any active microwave links, according to Maprad.io. Its five original KS-15676 horns, along with two newer Gabriel horns pointed north toward Prairie Home, are still installed while some waveguide has been removed. The ASR for this site is 1005481. Cable markers for Southwestern Bell, the RBOC serving Missouri, are still found around the site.
Later that week, I visited Barnett’s southeastern neighbor near Brinktown. This site is a far better maintained specimen of a typical Long Lines site along the Oak Grove-Halifax route, as it is currently used by the Missouri Statewide Interoperability Network. Unfortunately, that means its had its KS-15676 horns long removed and replaced with small shrouded parabolic antennas and dipole arrays for the MOSWIN land mobile radio repeater.
My goal is to photograph the former Rosati, Missouri, AT&T Long Lines site sometime before winter. That site is halfway between St. James and Cuba along the I-44 corridor. Unfortunately, it has long had its horn antennas removed. (Google Earth imagery shows they were removed at some point between April 1, 2012, and October 28, 2014.
Next year I’d like to extend coverage closer to the St. Louis region, possibly getting my own photos of the Hillsboro AT&T site, which was a ground entry point for the AUTOVON and other special communications systems for use by U.S. government and military officials. Longer term, or perhaps on the same trip, I’d like to also photograph many sites east of the Mighty Mississippi in Illinois that do not have photos listed online. Hopefully that trip can include the Norway, Illinois, AT&T site that served as a major switching hub in the Long Lines network and has been up for auction. I’m currently plotting the course for such a trip.