Talking 160m on an Abandoned AM Broadcast Tower of Former KDWN & KXST

I had the opportunity to join some ham operators out at the former KDWN/KXST AM transmitter tower in North Las Vegas, right near Nellis Air Force Base and the Las Vegas Motor Speedway along I-15. In this video, I made contact with Leo WA6MTZ in Newberry Springs, California, which is just east of Barstow, California. In terms of "range," it's not really that far of contact, but it's still cool to me.

The land that these towers are on ended up being worth more than the AM stations, and the owner, Audacy, sold off the land. (Their penny stock price might have had something to do with it.)

This was a last-chance opportunity to put some RF thru these 240-foot-tall towers before they collapsed and sold off for scrap.

The towers are 240 feet tall and were erected in the 1970s back when the only thing out here was the Air Force base. Urban sprawl and encroachment are very real.

A very special thanks to Dan W7IVK, the engineer at this broadcast company (they still have a half dozen other AM/FMs in the market), for the invite. Dan W7IVK is one of the guys that helps maintain the Sin City Repeater Network/Federation/whatever you want to call it.

The rig pictured is an Icom 756 Pro II owned by Kirk Nemzer NO7BS. Kirk was using an Ameritron ATR-20 antenna tuner.

#N4NJJ #W7IVK #NO7BS #KDWN