WKAR AM870 transmitter site
The site is just south of the MSU campus in East Lansing. The station runs 10 kW, DA-D, daytime only on 870 kHz. The array is a unique two-tower, with tower #1 being a grounded, self-supporting shunt-fed tower, while tower #2 is guyed and series-fed. The station is the third oldest in Michigan, on the air since 1922. Originally on 1040 kHz, WKAR moved to 850 kHz and shifted to 870 kHz in the 1940 NARBA reallocation. Operation from this site commenced in 1948. Previously 5 kW nondirectional, the guyed tower was added when WKAR increased power to 10 kW in 1969 because the cost of building a second matching freestanding tower was too high. You'll note the antenna tuning unit for the south (freestanding) tower is enclosed in a fence to the left of the tower. The tower is fed via a slant-wire running from the ATU up to the tower at about a third of the way up. The FM antenna for WDBM, the student-run FM station, can be seen on the mast at the very top. The mast was also used for the WKAR-FM antenna when it first went on the air in 1948. WKAR-FM later relocated to a taller tower in Okemos.
The white house to the left houses the transmitter, service shop, garage, and a vast archive of radio-related stuff (at least it did the last time I was there). In the distance behind the transmitter house is the MSU Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education, a large arena that is the host to trade exhibits, dressage competitions and home and garden shows. To the right is the Hancock Turfgrass Research Center. The site is surrounded by other agricultural facilities including centers for crop science research, teaching and learning centers for dairy cattle, beef cattle, swine and sheep, a diagnostic center for population and animal health, and a nursery where trees and shrubs are grown for planting on the 5,000-acre campus. The smokestacks in the distance are part of the T. B. Simon cogenerating power plant, built in 1965 to augment the coal-fired generating station on campus which has since been decommissioned. The plant can operate on multiple fuels including natural gas, biofuel, and coal (which has not been used since 2016), and is capable of generating nearly 100 megawatts among its six units, making it one of the 500 largest power plants in the US. Michigan State generates virtually all of its own electric and steam energy for use on campus, and interchanges with CMS Energy and the Lansing Board of Water and Light.
A historical note on the callsign: You may wonder why the call isn't WMSU or something more descriptive of Michigan State. You might also think that the "KAR" suffix has something to do with automobile manufacturing that has its origins in Lansing with the R. E. Olds company. It's not. When the call was assigned by the Commerce Department (which governed broadcasting prior to the Federal Radio Commission's establishment in 1927), it was decided to issue call signs in alphabetical sequence but by incrementing the last and second letters, keeping the third letter the same (A) until all combinations were used up. They then changed the third letter to B and went through the cycle again. Thus, the call signs of many very old stations have an A or B in the third position. (Some examples still around are WBAP, WCAU, WOAI and WBBM, and the case of WTAM, which went through three callsigns - KYW, WKYC, WWWE - only to end up back at WTAM.) That is the case with WKAR - the call was issued in alphabetical sequence, right after WKAQ and just before WKAS.
