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Site of the Week 3/29/2019: A Little More from Rochester

Scott Fybush by Scott Fybush
March 29, 2019
in Free Content, New York, Tower Site of the Week
1

Text and photos by SCOTT FYBUSH

For my entire lifetime (and a few years before that), the tallest structure in my hometown of Rochester has been the Xerox Tower, rising 443 feet above the east side of downtown. For nearly my entire lifetime, the Xerox Tower has been crowned by the antenna of WDKX (103.9), the locally-owned gem of a station that super-serves Rochester’s urban community. And for nearly my entire lifetime, I’ve looked up from below at the WDKX site without ever getting up to the roof.

Translators and WDKX
Translators and WDKX
Hi, Mike!
Hi, Mike!

Thanks to last summer’s visit from my tower-photographing pal Mike Fitzpatrick of NECRAT.us, that omission has at long last been rectified. That’s Mike there on the lower roof level, while I’m up on the very top roof level enjoying my brief status as the highest person in Rochester.

WDKX transmitter room
WDKX transmitter room
WDKX transmitters
WDKX transmitters

WDKX itself is the Shively side-mounted off the penthouse on the roof; the newer addition just next to it is a pair of translators, W248BH (97.5, a Spanish-language translator for WRSB 1590 Brockport) and W288CS (105.5, urban “Beat” rebroadcasting WLGZ 102.7’s HD2).

The WDKX transmitter room is down a couple of flights of stairs in a small walled-off space adjoining a big mechanical room. That Gates on the left? That’s the original transmitter that put WDKX on the air back in 1974; the BE on the right now powers the station, which has one of the best class A signals out there.

WRMM from WDKX
WRMM from WDKX
South down the river
South down the river

And the view from the rooftop? It’s spectacular. Look to the west (above left) and that’s the big FM tower on Rochester’s west side (carrying WRMM 101.3, WBZA 98.9 and WLGZ 102.7) silhouetted against the setting sun. Look south (above right) and the University of Rochester is prominently visible just west of the Genesee River.

Looking north toward Kodak
Looking north toward Kodak
Pinnacle Hill
Pinnacle Hill

While Xerox no longer makes its home in the Xerox Tower, what remains of Eastman Kodak is still easily seen to the northwest. And to the southeast, there’s a dynamite view of Pinnacle Hill, home to all of Rochester’s TV signals and many of its FMs.

Old WDKX studio
Old WDKX studio
New WDKX studio
New WDKX studio

The WDKX studio, just a few blocks away on East Main Street, deserves a complete feature of its own (and will get it eventually) – but for now, we give you just a quick peek into the station’s 1990s-era studio in the main part of this Victorian mansion (which was a funeral parlor before the Langston family moved the radio station here in the 1980s), and into the snazzy new Wheatstone-equipped air studio Andre’s been building at the back of the building.

Thanks to Andre Langston for the tours!

SPRING IS HERE…

And if you don’t have your Tower Site Calendar, now’s the time!

If you’ve been waiting for the price to come down, it’s now 30 percent off!

This year’s cover is a beauty — the 100,000-watt transmitter of the Voice Of America in Marathon, right in the heart of the Florida Keys. Both the towers and the landscape are gorgeous.

And did you see? Tower Site of the Week is back, featuring this VOA site as it faces an uncertain future. 

Other months feature some of our favorite images from years past, including some Canadian stations and several stations celebrating their centennials (buy the calendar to find out which ones!).

We still have a few of our own calendars left – as well as a handful of Radio Historian Calendars – and we are still shipping regularly.

The proceeds from the calendar help sustain the reporting that we do on the broadcast industry here at Fybush Media, so your purchases matter a lot to us here – and if that matters to you, now’s the time to show that support with an order of the Tower Site Calendar. (And we have the Broadcast Historian’s Calendar for 2025, too. Why not order both?) 

Visit the Fybush Media Store and place your order now for the new calendar, get a great discount on previous calendars, and check out our selection of books and videos, too! 

 

And don’t miss a big batch of Rochester IDs next Wednesday, over at our sister site, TopHour.com!

Next week: A little more from Rochester? Yeah. (But then we’re done for now.)

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Tags: W248BHW288CSWDKXWLGZWRSB
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Scott Fybush

Scott Fybush

Editor/Publisher, NorthEast Radio Watch and Tower Site of the Week

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