Mystery Tower Quiz #4

[Howaboutthat]

CJOC
Are we in the right province?

[Dan Sys]

You guys must have been driving around the northside if you thought it might have been CHMG 1200. The only other regional AM station north of Edmonton is CFOK 1370 in Westlock. Might be a little too far north, but that's my latest guess.

[jon]

CJOC - coincidentally, that was the answer to last week's quiz. Right province, wrong end for this picture.

CFOK - another two tower array, I'm afraid. But I should mention that Dan's information on CHMG may have been correct when they were on 1070 (as CKST), but 1200 was allowed to cover Edmonton, which wouldn't have been possible from a transmitter location North of Edmonton, with their night-time pattern, and would have only been marginal in parts of the City with their day pattern.

[Steve Sanderson]

I think Dans got it with CFOK...But..If he hasn't, I'll go with
CKJR in Wetaskiwin, Alberta.

[jon]

CKJR - No, a nice three towers in a row array, too, but that was Quiz #1 and I don't like to repeat myself (so quickly).

Hint time, I guess. When I first heard this station from Burnaby as a DX'er in the late 1960s, it was the only Alberta station that I had not yet heard. In those days, it had a different owner, and was only 5000 watts. Today, it is still on the same frequency, but 10,000 watts. And is owned by one of the largest radio owners in Canada. Day and night patterns are the same because it has to protect a very strong West Coast U.S. station on the same frequency.

Sorry, but it is way past my bedtime, so I'll have to answer in the morning.

[jon]

Oops, I missed the earlier CJCA guess. No, they are a four tower rectangular array.

[Howaboutthat]

CKER (The World - Edmonton)

[Steve Sanderson]

CKER

Howaboutthat....Does that start with FU?

[Howaboutthat]

Yer lucky I can only put random letters together!

[mightymouth]

WKRP....Come on, what are we doing here, a bunch of sticks in the ground in God knows where. Is there anyone aside from the person who took the picture going to know where in the Hell this is?

[Steve Sanderson]

WKRP....Come on, what are we doing here, a bunch of sticks in the ground in God knows where. Is there anyone aside from the person who took the picture going to know where in the Hell this is?

I'm with my buddy mightymouth on this one!!

[Dan Sys]

Is there anyone aside from the person who took the picture going to know where in the Hell this is?

Yeah, I think I do thanks to the hints that Jon gave above. Sure sounds like it might be CHFA 680.

[jon]

And we have a winner! Dan is correct: CHFA.

CKER is an interesting guess. They switched to FM (The World) from 1480 in 1994, but it is possible that the towers are still up. I have coordinates for them, so I'll check it out this summer.

The guess is also interesting because they also had a three towers in a row array, with the same pattern day and night, as I hinted for CHFA much earlier.

Back to our winning answer: CHFA. Run privately by a group of local citizens, CHFA signed on in 1949 as Alberta's only French language radio station. The station was sold to the CBC on April 1, 1974, though they had always been affiliated with the CBC, i.e. - paid to feed some CBC French programming.

CHFA installed larger towers in 1975 when they increased power to 10,000 watts. I cannot find any confirmation, but viewing the transmitter site pictured, I suspect they have been there since 1949. There is no CBC signage anywhere that I could see.

The transmitter site is in the Southwest corner of Edmonton, within the current City limits, just East of the North Saskatchewan River. The new Anthony Henday ring road freeway is at about the point where Zero Avenue would be, if it existed. CHFA is just South of the 36 Avenue South of Zero, on 170 Street, which would give it a 36xx 170 Avenue SW address. Here is a Google Map satellite picture of the site, with the towers clearly visible:
http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&sll=49.891235,-97.15369&sspn=41.976148,113.90625&ie=UTF8&ll=53.406145,-113.610606&spn=0.002357,0.006952&t=h&z=18&iwloc=addr

Next week's Mystery Tower Quiz is in an Urban setting, as will be clearly apparent from the picture. What is less clear, at least to me, is whether it is actually still used for a television station transmitter site. I'm pretty sure that it is, but, having seen it from time to time over the last 42 years, I keep thinking it used to be taller. I haven't grown any taller since then, so it should be my perspective. Anyway, until 2005, the tower was also used to carry an FM station. Between 1947 and 1959, the site, and possibly the same tower, was used as an AM transmitter site. Today, a building on the same site is used as the studios for one TV station, two FMs and an AM. And they are not even co-owned!

[jon]

I should have also oriented this to Dan's CHMG-1200 site. CHMG was located on the land adjoining, just of South of, the Transportation Utility Corridor where the Anthony Henday freeway recently opened, due North, about 35 blocks North, of the CHFA site shown. CHMG became CFMG-FM in the early 1990s, switching from Oldies to mostly early '80s Adult Contemporary, because CRTC regulations of the time would have automatically refused their AM to FM flip if they had proposed Oldies, which were restricted to AM at the time. The Easy Rock name came a year or two later, and effectively captured the original K-Lite (CKRA) audience who had been less than enthused by the format changes forced on CKRA by the CRTC after CIRK complained. At the time -- early 1980s -- a requirement for more hits meant more explicit lyrics, which turned off much of the young adult female and Music at Work audience that K-Lite was originally built on. You really couldn't have four letter words coming out of your Radio in your cubicle at a time when Radios were first starting to appear en-masse on the desks of office workers.

[Howaboutthat]

Next week's Mystery Tower Quiz is in an Urban setting, as will be clearly apparent from the picture.

Its not going to be another support post disguised as a transmitter is it?