Charles “Buc” Fitch is a frequent contributor to Radio World.
Take a look at the attached picture of “Walton Peak” on Franklin Mountain in El Paso, Texas. You can click on the image to enlarge it.
(click thumbnail)
Walton Peak in El Paso, as photographed by Isaac Chambers
Such a beauty. I found the image on Google Earth and thought RW readers would enjoy it. The photo is by Isaac Chambers, who kindly agreed to let us reproduce it here.
I have written about this site before. This is the highest and most northern site along the mountain ridge and is home to Entravision’s big-gun FMs along with Channel 17 and a handful of other LPTVs.
Radio World readers may recall a photo of the same paging satellite dishes; it ran with our 2008 satellite article and was taken from behind the dishes. I snapped it after taking the tram to the top of this site several years ago. In the earlier picture, we are probably looking toward the spot where this photo was taken. I suspect the photographer was standing about the point you can see behind the step-down transformers.
This site really is the last usable one, as higher up and further north, signal shadowing probably would start to appear in the metro area.
John Walton could have located his tower and site a little further north and a hundred or so feet higher, but a shadowing phenomenon begins on the downside, so this was JW’s highest possible location for a build.
Share your site photos with me and readers. Write to me at [email protected] or post a comment below.
