WRDC - TV Tower

TV Tower

In 1986, WPTF erected a 2,000-foot (610 m) tower near Auburn, North Carolina, in an attempt to increase its signal coverage to include Fayetteville and other cities located south and east of Raleigh. That same tower collapsed in December 1989 during an early morning winter ice storm that also claimed the nearby tower of WRAL-TV. WPTF managed to get back on the air several hours later by rebroadcasting its signal on both WYED-TV (now WNCN) for the Raleigh-Durham area and WFCT-TV (channel 62, now WFPX) for the Fayetteville area.

A month following the WYED/WFCT simulcast, WPTF reactivated its old tower near Apex, which it had used from 1978 to 1986, allowing the station to resume its broadcasts on Channel 28 as usual. That same tower was dismantled several years later and then donated to classical radio station WCPE-FM, who reassembled it at a spot near its studios in Wake Forest, North Carolina in 1993. WPTF would eventually return to the newly-built broadcast tower completed in early 1991 near Garner, which also included the transmission signal for WRAL-TV and WRAZ-TV, as well as WRAL-FM, WQDR-FM, and a couple of low-power TV stations in the area. In the early 2000s, the digital signals of WRAL-TV, WRAZ-TV, and WRDC-TV signed on from an adjacent 2,000-foot candleabra tower, which also includes the antennae for WLFL-TV and WNCN-TV.