Transmitter Tour - KFI Los Angeles 640 kHz

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.

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.

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.

Another interesting, enjoyable facility tour. From an old radio fan who caught the bug from my dad.

So many crazy things which were broadcasted from that building.

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.

Thanks, Marcos! Beautiful tour, so very enjoyable. Doug and his crew have done an excellent job!

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 know absolutely nothing about this subject but really enjoy watching the videos on this site.

Pretty cool! I used to listen to George Noory all the time when I lived in SoCal.

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.

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.

This was awesome! Thank you for sharing.

Many decades back you could on occasion hear KFI on parts of the East coast. Rare now with the hoing of the band.

Great tour!

I started listening to KFI back in 1962, grew up with KFI and the cast of characters thru the decades. Thanks for the video!

Absolutely fascinating.

That's a huge transmitter building. Wow

Great job. Appreciate the effort in documenting the last of the 50kW facilities. Chuck @ KCBS

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...