SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — The landscape near Garden City is changing as the new KDLO TV tower has reached 1,542 feet.
The tower and its antenna. should be completed this fall, said KELOLAND chief engineer Brian Baier.
A 10,000-pound antenna is scheduled to arrive in South Dakota on Aug. 22, Baier said.
“Once the tower is up, someone comes to sweep the line,” Baier said. A sweep is a check for leaks or other issues that could cause problems.
When the sweep is completed KELO Media Group can start broadcasting from the KDLO TV tower.
“Everybody is pretty excited,” Aaron Bjerke said of the progress of the KDLO TV tower. Bjerker lives in the area and operates Prairie Ridge Lodge near Garden City.
Although reception has been available through some subscription services and via antenna, as the tower construction progresses, many people are waiting to again get the full antenna reception.
A new tower also means an icon on the landscape will return.
“When people talk about Garden City, they think about the towers,” Bjerke said. “When those two towers disappeared, it definitely changed the landscape.”
Two KDLO towers in Garden City were destroyed in an ice storm on Dec. 14, 2022. Baier said the smaller tower, an 800-foot-back-up tower, will not be replaced.
“When the towers did come down in the ice storm, it was a very eerie feeling,” Bjerke said. “When the first one came down, the locals were coming out to look at it. A couple hours later the other one came down.”
Although there was no loss of life such as when the Twin Towers were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York City, the fall of the TV towers prompted memories of 9-11, Bjerke said. To see large structures destroyed, it stirred “a lot of emotion,” Bjerke said.
Building a new 1,705-foot tower takes time. Employees from Precision Communications LLC of Grove, Oklahoma, reached a 560-foot mark in late November, Precision president Sean Wenger said in a Nov. 30 KELOLAND News story.
The tower is being built in 20-foot sections. When the tower is too tall for a crane, “we create our own crane,” Wenger said in the Nov. 30 story.
The antenna is 100-feet long and is in two-sections of 50-feet, Baier said.
The steel antenna is being made by Dielectric of Raymond, Maine. Baier said he believes it is being constructed in Maine. Baier said he estimated a 27-hour trip from Maine to Garden City, based on internet mapping.
The batwing antenna must be built to the accurate wave length and size for KDLO, Baier said. The antenna can’t allow the TV broadcast interfer with broadcasts from other TV stations, Baier said.
“We are licensed to run at a certain power as to not interfere with other stations and the antenna is tuned to help ensure a proper broadcast pattern,” Baier said.
The old KDLO tower transmitted KELOLAND to towns such as Watertown, Sisseton, Aberdeen, Huron and Redfield. The transmission was a roughly 60-mile radius
