I started listening to KFI in the late 70's. I visited the tower site in 1986 long before all of the commercial land was developed. I took pictures on slide film of the old tower and the KFI tilework. I was at the tower site a few days after the tower fell in 2004 and still have a paint chip about 2 inches in diameter that I removed from the original tower. I have cassette recording of KFI from the early 80's through the mid 90's. I lived in the City of Orange and would visit the tower occasionally every few months when I lived there (1990-late 1992) I still listen to KFI at night as I live in Chico Ca (about 500 miles away) Great memories.
Remember that chunk of tower leg I brought you for a desk ornament that weighed a ton? I never knew the original tower sections were solid, not hollow tubes like today's towers.
Thanks for the tour! Nice to see an old SpectraTAC voting comparator still going strong so many years later. I didn't realize stations were using them for RPU. Love this era of transmitter site, and that "staircase of death" is phenomenal.
Back around 1970 for Halloween they replayed the original "War of the Worlds" program. They said KFI was an NBC station then so it would have been on KFI originally.
Wow! So lucky! I've been listening to KFI since I was a little kid with my first AM pocket radio tucked under my pillow at night from several states away. I've always been fascinated by this station and their transmitter facility.
Interesting to see the towers in such an intensively built up area rather than on agricultural type land in some rural setting. The contrast is fascinating remembering a picture I once saw of the old 630 CFCY transmitter and tower sight on agricultural land outside of Charlottetown Prince Edward Island, Canada. Ground radials in rich red soil with salt water a short distance away. For a 10 KW Station CFCY had a massive signal. I had not imagined an AM Station having towers where you have them. Thanks for all the education you provide.
Heard KFI in Alexandria, VA a couple of times when they hit their 50th anniversary. Including once with nearby WMAL-630 in D.C. on. Of course that was with the old tower. RX was a Lafayette HA-600A and antenna was a "Space Magnet" electrostaticailly shielded ferrite loop.
I was fortunate to be leaving an event at another station the day John & Ken were broadcasting live to switch to the rebuilt tower and I stopped by for the festivities. It's quite an impressive transmitter plant as Marcos & Doug have shown us. Sadly, two engineers who were there when the original tower fell and present for the big reveal are no longer with us. RIP Tony Dinkel and John Paoli.
Very interesting presentation. Some of the acronyms used mean nothing to me but that's just my ignorance. As a Mediumwave DXer in South Africa ive never heard KFI but did manage KNX1070 once or twice.
That is a lot of copper. Way Cool! I would love to see more of the Original AM Broadcast stations, knowing that many have go the way of the Dodo. Are you planning and visits to stations in other counties' and maybe states later? Please let me know. Peace
Yeah lots of copper, but not really reclaimable copper without a TON of work (as in deconstructing the building). I’m working on some Denver stations now that I live out here and maybe some in Indy as I visit there frequently.
I remember flying in and out of Fullerton Airport and having to make a turn to the south to avoid the KFI antenns off the end of the runway. First time doing that was back in 1974.
Think KFI was around my entire life. Dad would listen to it in the car. It comes in ok in Las Vegas in the morning, then fades with the sun. Handle in the morning. Makes the new interesting. Still looking for the keys for the mountain towers..
I would have liked to see the auxiliary transmitter for the Emergency Alert System. This was an original Conelrad station back in the day. And even now it's supposed to be on the air in case of a national emergency. The logs for December 7th 1941 being lost is interesting. I think back in the day, there was concern the signal could be used by enemy planes as a beacon, just like it happened in Hawaii...
That was the reason for Conelrad after the war. I remember radios made in the 1950s and 60s had the Conelrad synbol marked at 640 and 1240 on the AM dial. They never did tests like they do now.
@dfirth224 There may have been a couple of tests, but 1) it sounded like trash on the air and not always food enough to hear for the public, 2) the frequency change took a while to do (wasn’t necessarily existing 640/1240 stations), 3) it was hard on the transmitters to turn on and off.
I always liked joe crummy. Tom lykus earned his status as a legend too. My apologies i spelled phonetically because um ignorant but those are my favorite kfi personalities.
I wonder if the "Tower Lights" switch, was placed due to I've seen some older antenna sites where the call letters of the station were on the antennas, and had ground lighting aimed at them. Wonder if that existed there?
Started listening to KFI in the mid 1990s, very entertaining station back then, with David G. at the helm. Anyway given that KFI is a clear channel station and may broadcast EAS messages in an emergency it is important that the signal get out to as many people as possible. Here is a way to extend the broadcast reach without increasing power...remove one of the AM sidebands. The broadcast engineering guys know that the typical AM broadcast has three parts, the carrier and the two sidebands, the exact same speech information is carried in each sideband, the carrier does not contain any speech information. About 2/3 of the total Amplifier power goes into the carrier the remaining 1/3 of Amp power goes into each sideband, so only 1/6 of the amplifier power goes into the speech signal. So your 50,000 watt transmitter basically only puts 8300 watts into the speech signal. A Ham radio operator guy on TH-cam pointed out that a typical AM receiver can tune in an AM signal with one Sideband removed. This is how you increase your reach, with one Sideband removed 1/3 of the Amp power will go into the speech signal so out of 50,000 watts about 17,000 watts will go into your speech signal. Double the strength! The Canadians use the modulation scheme described above for their shortwave time signal stations or CHU stations, better use of amplifier power. Ever seen the transmitter facility for KCBS in San Francisco?....it's immaculate....the video is on TH-cam, KFI transmitter site has "character"...
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Nice, it is a good idea to modulate the carrier based on the modulation...the whole idea is trying to get AM radio broadcasts as close to single Sideband broadcasts...the Canadians use single Sideband AM (with reinserted carrier) for their time signals
@@TheBroadcastEngineerI'm going to be in the Southern California area around September 27-29, I plan to visit the KFI transmitter facilities, well just look from the outside. I'll be in town to check out Phil Hendrie at Theatre West, he used to be on KFI 1996-2004 or thereabouts.
@@johng.3740 It's not the best part of town... I loved when he was on the air. It was always funny that people would miss the obvious sarcasm and get so worked up.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Yeah, very creative and funny guy. I'm from the San Francisco Bay area and I used to listen to him way back in 1996 via Ionospheric skip. The KFI signal used to (and still does) come in clear without much radio static on most nights up there in the San Francisco Bay area. The 640 AM dial position is clear channel so there isn't much interference
When it's only a couple of engineers to manage several stations in a few markets, there isn't a lot of time for getting rid of things that have piled up over the last 100 years.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer I was actually shocked that anyone is considering throwing away history when there are a ton of people who would take it, organize it and make it available to enthusiasts.
Superb! Many thanks. Amazing how they nested the tower in this congested area. Makes me wonder what FCC hoops they had to jump through to keep the public safe from RF exposure. Much history with this station. 73 OM
Grandfathered in, that likely was all open fields originally when they built there, and the current walls are now where the RF level is just below the OHSA level. will bet that every building there has RF grounds checked annually, and that as well every tenant by now knows all about FCC rule B regarding accepting interference, because the only radio station they can get there is KFI, even on things that are not actual radio receivers. Guaranteed there are a few wall panels that act like speakers every so often.
@@SeanBZA Oh yes, I know very well about the "speaking walls". We had that in Boston on 590 WEEI "Edison Electric Illuminating" (5Kw DA) as some genius built housing right in the main lobe at the boundary of our TX property. Salt water and slight corrosion within the metal under the sheetrock made a very nice crystal receiver. LOL
KFI was there before the Fullerton Airport was built. The FAA (or City of La Mirada) wouldn't let them rebuild the original 749' tower's height, so it now is top-loaded with that "hat".
The history of this transmitter site is amazing. I really wish you had done more to capture that history in this video. The guy giving the tour in this video indicates that "old" renovations were done "10 years ago". This transmitter site dates back to the early 1920s. When I think of "old" renovations in a site like this, I think of modifications dating from the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s. The comment from the tour guide at about 16:00 though kills me: "...yeah, I guess we have some old stuff that we haven't gotten rid of yet..." -- That's absolutely heartbreaking, considering he's showing the old original transmitter logs. No offense, but given his comment, everything in that room should be removed and placed somewhere that the staff from this station have no access at all. You've referred to this station as "historic". Unfortunately you did not capture that at all in this video.
@@AlaskaMike72 There is another video that was produced (I think I linked to it at the end of the video) that goes into the detailed history. This was not a historic tour, but more of a what it’s like today. The reference to the “haven’t gotten rid of stuff” was mostly in regards to the piles of junk in the first floor. It’s become a collecting place from other sites of theirs. The logs have been safe in that room for a long time, and will probably continue to be in that room for a long time to come. I’m a part time content creator on this platform. I don’t have the time nor finances to do deep dives into the history of the site. I really wish I could, because that would be really interesting. However, sites like this have lost so much in history because they are viewed as utility and not as historically significant.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Understood--thanks so much for the reply! I'm a big history guy, and I completely understand there are much greater difficulties and complexities involved with a deep history dive in a site like this. Thanks again for making the video!
How can they afford to operate this thing? Electricity in California has never been more expensive and AM radio is less relevant than ever? Every now and then I can get whispers of KFI in Texas on a good e-skip morning twilight, but that is about it. Enjoy this clear channel operator while you can... I think they will reduce power or stop operating within a decade.
You should take Geerling Engineering as an example of how to do site tours. People watching this are interested in the RF hardware. Not the bathroom tile.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer The example I meant was that they go deep into the power and RF hardware which I feel like is what people are interested in. Your tour was more like a historical presentation. I'm not faulting you, I'm just suggesting what I suspect most viewers are into.
I do go into things like that in other videos. Just usually not the facility tours unless it's something very unique or unusual. Because of the very short time we had to do this tour, I didn't get too into it with them. We do talk a bit more about the RF stuff in the KLAA tour and I do go into the FM side of the RF world in videos when I was working in Southern California.
![[DRIP] ‘CLIK CLAK’ PREVIEW](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/bcxkcOSbpac/mqdefault.jpg)
I started listening to KFI in the late 70's. I visited the tower site in 1986 long before all of the commercial land was developed. I took pictures on slide film of the old tower and the KFI tilework. I was at the tower site a few days after the tower fell in 2004 and still have a paint chip about 2 inches in diameter that I removed from the original tower. I have cassette recording of KFI from the early 80's through the mid 90's. I lived in the City of Orange and would visit the tower occasionally every few months when I lived there (1990-late 1992) I still listen to KFI at night as I live in Chico Ca (about 500 miles away) Great memories.
Another interesting, enjoyable facility tour. From an old radio fan who caught the bug from my dad.
Thanks, Marcos! Beautiful tour, so very enjoyable. Doug and his crew have done an excellent job!
Remember that chunk of tower leg I brought you for a desk ornament that weighed a ton? I never knew the original tower sections were solid, not hollow tubes like today's towers.
Thanks for the tour! Nice to see an old SpectraTAC voting comparator still going strong so many years later. I didn't realize stations were using them for RPU. Love this era of transmitter site, and that "staircase of death" is phenomenal.
I heard KFI back in the mid-1970s way out in south central Kansas! I used to love to hear distant stations on my AM radio.
I know absolutely nothing about this subject but really enjoy watching the videos on this site.
So many crazy things which were broadcasted from that building.
Back around 1970 for Halloween they replayed the original "War of the Worlds" program. They said KFI was an NBC station then so it would have been on KFI originally.
Wow! So lucky! I've been listening to KFI since I was a little kid with my first AM pocket radio tucked under my pillow at night from several states away. I've always been fascinated by this station and their transmitter facility.
Hopefully I can get back there after they get things settled down.
Interesting to see the towers in such an intensively built up area rather than on agricultural type land in some rural setting. The contrast is fascinating remembering a picture I once saw of the old 630 CFCY transmitter and tower sight on agricultural land outside of Charlottetown Prince Edward Island, Canada. Ground radials in rich red soil with salt water a short distance away. For a 10 KW Station CFCY had a massive signal. I had not imagined an AM Station having towers where you have them. Thanks for all the education you provide.
Not that long ago it was rural farmland.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Interesting!
Heard KFI in Alexandria, VA a couple of times when they hit their 50th anniversary. Including once with nearby WMAL-630 in D.C. on. Of course that was with the old tower. RX was a Lafayette HA-600A and antenna was a "Space Magnet" electrostaticailly shielded ferrite loop.
I started listening to KFI back in 1962, grew up with KFI and the cast of characters thru the decades. Thanks for the video!
Great job. Appreciate the effort in documenting the last of the 50kW facilities. Chuck @ KCBS
The last of them? Has FCC reduced the number of 50 Kw stations?
Many decades back you could on occasion hear KFI on parts of the East coast. Rare now with the hoing of the band.
Up here in central CA KFI came in loud and clear at night. Many people listened to the Dodger games on it up here.
I was fortunate to be leaving an event at another station the day John & Ken were broadcasting live to switch to the rebuilt tower and I stopped by for the festivities.
It's quite an impressive transmitter plant as Marcos & Doug have shown us. Sadly, two engineers who were there when the original tower fell and present for the big reveal are no longer with us.
RIP Tony Dinkel and John Paoli.
Drove past and around this historic site back in April. Best signal in Southern California.
Absolutely fascinating.
Pretty cool! I used to listen to George Noory all the time when I lived in SoCal.
This was awesome! Thank you for sharing.
That's a huge transmitter building. Wow
Great tour!
Thanks for sharing!
Very interesting presentation. Some of the acronyms used mean nothing to me but that's just my ignorance. As a Mediumwave DXer in South Africa ive never heard KFI but did manage KNX1070 once or twice.
That is a lot of copper. Way Cool! I would love to see more of the Original AM Broadcast stations, knowing that many have go the way of the Dodo. Are you planning and visits to stations in other counties' and maybe states later? Please let me know.
Peace
Yeah lots of copper, but not really reclaimable copper without a TON of work (as in deconstructing the building).
I’m working on some Denver stations now that I live out here and maybe some in Indy as I visit there frequently.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer KOA was another power house clear channel station in the old days. At night they could be heard over all the western states.
@dfirth224 Still working to find someone to give a tour. I’ve driven by the building in Parker.
I remember flying in and out of Fullerton Airport and having to make a turn to the south to avoid the KFI antenns off the end of the runway. First time doing that was back in 1974.
great tour, as a side note, I note the URI for this video ends in AAFM :)
maybe they are hinting do some FM tours :P
I have several FM tours on my channel. The Mount Wilson series is all FMs.
Very cool to see. Cheers 👍
Think KFI was around my entire life. Dad would listen to it in the car. It comes in ok in Las Vegas in the morning, then fades with the sun. Handle in the morning. Makes the new interesting. Still looking for the keys for the mountain towers..
F layer gives it the nighttime reach to Las Vegas and beyond.
Hmm… not a bad idea for a video…
I would have liked to see the auxiliary transmitter for the Emergency Alert System. This was an original Conelrad station back in the day. And even now it's supposed to be on the air in case of a national emergency. The logs for December 7th 1941 being lost is interesting. I think back in the day, there was concern the signal could be used by enemy planes as a beacon, just like it happened in Hawaii...
We were both pressed for time that day. We had talked about it before.
That was the reason for Conelrad after the war. I remember radios made in the 1950s and 60s had the Conelrad synbol marked at 640 and 1240 on the AM dial. They never did tests like they do now.
@dfirth224 There may have been a couple of tests, but 1) it sounded like trash on the air and not always food enough to hear for the public, 2) the frequency change took a while to do (wasn’t necessarily existing 640/1240 stations), 3) it was hard on the transmitters to turn on and off.
I would love to see more about the FEMA setup and how they made it EMP proof.
Me too! One of these days...
I always liked joe crummy. Tom lykus earned his status as a legend too. My apologies i spelled phonetically because um ignorant but those are my favorite kfi personalities.
Not sure how "Crummy" is spelled. I would guess "Crummey." Tom's name is spelled "Leykis."
I wonder if the "Tower Lights" switch, was placed due to I've seen some older antenna sites where the call letters of the station were on the antennas, and had ground lighting aimed at them. Wonder if that existed there?
Looking back I’m thinking it may have been lights from the building aimed at the tower… but who knows.
Came to say the same thing. Glad someone beat me to it
Great fun !
Thank you for posting this video !!!!!
sbf
You need to come to Downers Grove, IL.
The old WCFL xmitr farm will be moved and the 3 sticks coming down - soon.
I would love to! The earliest possible would be August…
I still have a couple of the 1947 insulators and a large part of the tower that came down in 2004. Maybe a couple of other things too but SHHHHH!
Nice! I heard nothing… 😉
Does KFI still broadcast HD Radio or just analog? Last time I was in Hawaii I picked it up at night very faintly.
I believe they turned off HD a few years ago.
KSL was an all clear radio station also.
Started listening to KFI in the mid 1990s, very entertaining station back then, with David G. at the helm.
Anyway given that KFI is a clear channel station and may broadcast EAS messages in an emergency it is important that the signal get out to as many people as possible.
Here is a way to extend the broadcast reach without increasing power...remove one of the AM sidebands.
The broadcast engineering guys know that the typical AM broadcast has three parts, the carrier and the two sidebands, the exact same speech information is carried in each sideband, the carrier does not contain any speech information.
About 2/3 of the total Amplifier power goes into the carrier the remaining 1/3 of Amp power goes into each sideband, so only 1/6 of the amplifier power goes into the speech signal. So your 50,000 watt transmitter basically only puts 8300 watts into the speech signal.
A Ham radio operator guy on TH-cam pointed out that a typical AM receiver can tune in an AM signal with one Sideband removed. This is how you increase your reach, with one Sideband removed 1/3 of the Amp power will go into the speech signal so out of 50,000 watts about 17,000 watts will go into your speech signal.
Double the strength!
The Canadians use the modulation scheme described above for their shortwave time signal stations or CHU stations, better use of amplifier power.
Ever seen the transmitter facility for KCBS in San Francisco?....it's immaculate....the video is on TH-cam, KFI transmitter site has "character"...
KFI, as are many other AM stations, are running MDCL. Reduces the power on the carrier and saves a lot of money on power bills.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Nice, it is a good idea to modulate the carrier based on the modulation...the whole idea is trying to get AM radio broadcasts as close to single Sideband broadcasts...the Canadians use single Sideband AM (with reinserted carrier) for their time signals
@@TheBroadcastEngineerI'm going to be in the Southern California area around September 27-29, I plan to visit the KFI transmitter facilities, well just look from the outside.
I'll be in town to check out Phil Hendrie at Theatre West, he used to be on KFI 1996-2004 or thereabouts.
@@johng.3740 It's not the best part of town...
I loved when he was on the air. It was always funny that people would miss the obvious sarcasm and get so worked up.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Yeah, very creative and funny guy.
I'm from the San Francisco Bay area and I used to listen to him way back in 1996 via Ionospheric skip.
The KFI signal used to (and still does) come in clear without much radio static on most nights up there in the San Francisco Bay area.
The 640 AM dial position is clear channel so there isn't much interference
I wanted to see the glowing transmitting tubes,
The days of glowing tubes is quickly becoming only a memory. Too expensive to run tube transmitters.
"Yea, I guess we have some old stuff were haven't bothered to get rid of" WTF?!?!
When it's only a couple of engineers to manage several stations in a few markets, there isn't a lot of time for getting rid of things that have piled up over the last 100 years.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer I was actually shocked that anyone is considering throwing away history when there are a ton of people who would take it, organize it and make it available to enthusiasts.
640kHz is pretty low freq, but I wonder how much tower height the capacity hat cuts off?
I knew the answer, but I'm totally blanking on it now. But yes, it was a significant height reduction.
Man I really like the tour but you are really fast on your camera motion :/ I got a little motion sick.
Sorry, the next will have less whip pans.
Kiel, please. Sorry a few quick pans made you feel nauseous but this is really, really not about you.
Here in Ohio, we have WLW that for a short time ran 1/2 million watts.
Superb! Many thanks. Amazing how they nested the tower in this congested area. Makes me wonder what FCC hoops they had to jump through to keep the public safe from RF exposure. Much history with this station. 73 OM
Grandfathered in, that likely was all open fields originally when they built there, and the current walls are now where the RF level is just below the OHSA level. will bet that every building there has RF grounds checked annually, and that as well every tenant by now knows all about FCC rule B regarding accepting interference, because the only radio station they can get there is KFI, even on things that are not actual radio receivers. Guaranteed there are a few wall panels that act like speakers every so often.
@@SeanBZA Oh yes, I know very well about the "speaking walls". We had that in Boston on 590 WEEI "Edison Electric Illuminating" (5Kw DA) as some genius built housing right in the main lobe at the boundary of our TX property. Salt water and slight corrosion within the metal under the sheetrock made a very nice crystal receiver. LOL
The radio station was there first, before all of the industrial stuff came in the last 10-20 years. It used to be a rural area.
KFI was there before the Fullerton Airport was built. The FAA (or City of La Mirada) wouldn't let them rebuild the original 749' tower's height, so it now is top-loaded with that "hat".
The history of this transmitter site is amazing. I really wish you had done more to capture that history in this video.
The guy giving the tour in this video indicates that "old" renovations were done "10 years ago". This transmitter site dates back to the early 1920s. When I think of "old" renovations in a site like this, I think of modifications dating from the 1930s, 1940s or 1950s.
The comment from the tour guide at about 16:00 though kills me: "...yeah, I guess we have some old stuff that we haven't gotten rid of yet..." -- That's absolutely heartbreaking, considering he's showing the old original transmitter logs. No offense, but given his comment, everything in that room should be removed and placed somewhere that the staff from this station have no access at all.
You've referred to this station as "historic". Unfortunately you did not capture that at all in this video.
@@AlaskaMike72 There is another video that was produced (I think I linked to it at the end of the video) that goes into the detailed history. This was not a historic tour, but more of a what it’s like today. The reference to the “haven’t gotten rid of stuff” was mostly in regards to the piles of junk in the first floor. It’s become a collecting place from other sites of theirs. The logs have been safe in that room for a long time, and will probably continue to be in that room for a long time to come.
I’m a part time content creator on this platform. I don’t have the time nor finances to do deep dives into the history of the site. I really wish I could, because that would be really interesting. However, sites like this have lost so much in history because they are viewed as utility and not as historically significant.
Actually here’s the link, it was in the description of the video: th-cam.com/video/Qnvmf8mPUW8/w-d-xo.htmlsi=0xhrSTvX3NF29sLq
@@TheBroadcastEngineer Understood--thanks so much for the reply!
I'm a big history guy, and I completely understand there are much greater difficulties and complexities involved with a deep history dive in a site like this.
Thanks again for making the video!
The home of Tom Leykis. Back in the Days.
Handle on the law
Technology excites my wonderment however consolidation and STLs and iHeart radio leave a bitter taste in my mou...... soul
mouth
@@bellytripper-nh8ox both
How can they afford to operate this thing? Electricity in California has never been more expensive and AM radio is less relevant than ever?
Every now and then I can get whispers of KFI in Texas on a good e-skip morning twilight, but that is about it. Enjoy this clear channel operator while you can... I think they will reduce power or stop operating within a decade.
That’s why they replaced the Continental with the other Nautel. They utilize MDCL to further lower electrical costs.
Thank you for the tour! Let's hope they can continue to transmit at 50kW for the foreseeable future.
Using the MDCL mode reduces utility power consumption by around 1/3.
You should take Geerling Engineering as an example of how to do site tours. People watching this are interested in the RF hardware. Not the bathroom tile.
Thank you for the suggestion. But I’m not going to roast a hot dog on a live tower just for clickbait.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer The example I meant was that they go deep into the power and RF hardware which I feel like is what people are interested in. Your tour was more like a historical presentation. I'm not faulting you, I'm just suggesting what I suspect most viewers are into.
I do go into things like that in other videos. Just usually not the facility tours unless it's something very unique or unusual. Because of the very short time we had to do this tour, I didn't get too into it with them. We do talk a bit more about the RF stuff in the KLAA tour and I do go into the FM side of the RF world in videos when I was working in Southern California.
@@TheBroadcastEngineer I will go check out the video.
Thanks!
Thank YOU!