No Subject

Down from the mountain, we headed north to the single towers of
Spanish ranchera KSUN (1400) and news-talk KFYI (550). The latter was
relatively unimpressive for a heritage station, the former KOY, but
then this is a fairly recent site, having moved just in the 1980s.

Following I-10 east and south around South Mountain took us to
Ahwatukee and Guadeloupe, on the east edge of the hill, and the studio
of KUPD (97.9) and KDUS (1060), though the signs still called 1060 by
its old calls, KUKQ. The 1060 towers, three of them, sit just to the
north, easily glimpsed from I-10.

Traffic slowed down as we drove through Tempe, past Arizona State
University and the KAET (Channel 8) studios, then back west again to
the KNXV (Channel 15) studios, a new building on the Phoenix/Tempe
line. Two more stops awaited us before checking in to the motel to set
up the VCRs for an evening of Phoenix TV: the four towers of KGME
(910), just west of I-17 and north of downtown, and the studios of
KPHO-TV (Channel 5), on the I-17 frontage road a mile or so
away. (There's a connection here: 910 was the old KPHO radio, back
when it operated from the Westward Ho Hotel downtown. Remember the
opening shot of Psycho, and the hotel with the self-supporting AM
tower on the roof? That's the one, and it still stands on Central
Avenue downtown...)

After getting the VCRs rolling, it was back out to the car for another
90 minutes or so of twilight tower-hunting. First stop: KTAR (620)'s
two towers, so widely spaced that they built an entire shopping center
on the land between them.  Just down the street sits KAZG (1440), an
old self-supporter in the lot of a lumberyard.  

Heading east into Mesa, we found the six towers of KMIK (1580), the
old KNIX(AM) and a 50 kW signal heard widely throughout the West. A
few blocks away sit the two towers of KXAM (1310 Mesa), a little talk
station that covers the West Valley but not much else.