Columbus, NE-Heartland Tower Site

[WHJ]

Besides myself, there is one other Nebraska site currently reporting to TV Band Scan: Columbus, NE-Heartland Tower. Heartland Tower is a commercial tower company which owns 72 towers and has several of their sites reporting to Band Scan. Curiosity finally got the best of me and I decided to visit the site to see if I could figure out how high they have their Band Scan antenna mounted.
A picture of their tower is below.

It was obvious that finding their Band Scan antenna might not be easy. I took a bunch of zoom shots, but I have yet to locate their receive antenna. While I would not expect the Band Scan antenna a to be on top of the 218-foot tower, a picture of its top antennas is below.

The Columbus, NE-Heartland Tower receptions can be reviewed at TV stations received at Columbus, NE-Heartland Tower tuner0 (rabbitears.info)
There was another tower around a quarter mile away. I saw the sign below on the building’s door at the tower base.

Its channel gives away its minimum age. How many others have received KCAZ-LP? Admittedly, I have a huge advantage in receiving that. It was an analog translator owned by PAPPAS TELECASTING which never upgraded to DTV and was last on the air on November 21, 2007.
KCAZ reminded me of a bunch of low power transmitters with a tower site not far away near Linwood, NE. It had 17 low power transmitters operating as a pay TV option. The calls of those stations which I received were:

K17DW USA Network [moved from K55HX])
K21ES Family Network
K24ED Discovery
K28EN Pay per view
K31EN Pay per view
K33EM WGN
K39EK Weather Channel
K44EJ Nickelodeon
K46EE ESPN
K48FF A&E
K50EG CMT
K52EX CNN
K54EU TNT
K59FT TNN
K63FQ TBS
K65GE Disney
K69HF A&E [moved to K48FF]

Not a bad set of networks...

[chmod755]

When I lived near Gretna, NE in the late 90s and early 2000s, I used to try to receive those Linwood transmitters as well as a few of the other elusive LPs in the area (like one simultaneously licensed to Fremont and Omaha). A couple times I thought I was able to deduce something on one of the LPs but never had any positive ID. I think I saw KCAZ-LP once or twice when KAZO-LP was down. There were some other fun ones in Lincoln and Omaha that would occasionally pop into Gretna, sometimes even in color... 18, 22, 24, 45, 52, 53, 54, 56, 61, 65, 67...

Based on reception, I'd be surprised if the receive antenna on the Heartland Tower site is more than about 15 feet up on the tower, if not even just mounted onto the transmitter building itself. It really doesn't pick up much, especially in comparison to your Garland setup or the recent-but-former Manley bandscan.

[WHJ]

Yes, there was both KCAZ and KAZO (K57GY when I first received them) on channel 57.