I may be the only person who enjoys my little game, but I am enjoying it.
— begin boring details —
First, you need to know that the FCC uses location data that is about 90 years old based on the USGS surveys (NAD27) (Keep in mind the FCC was created in 1934).
Once we had satellites and ultimately GPS, it became apparent that there were small errors in the USGS surveys, so a new more accurate method of locating objects was created (NAD83), which is what Google Maps and GPS devices use.
It is basically impossible to convert the old system to the new system easily as you have to compute the error at any random location, which means you have to know the general mistake in that area (not to mention the ground itself has been known to move in parts of the country in the past 🙂
Noaa has an online utility to do an approximate conversion:
http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/nadcon.prl
The FCC only keeps the coordinates to “seconds” anyhow (1/60th of 1 minute which is 1/60 of a degree) which is about 90 feet, so the FCC data isn’t accurate enough to matter that it is NAD27 vs NAD83- but the tower should be within 200 feet of the arrow in all cases.
— end of boring details —
You can find the tower by looking for the telltale signs – like a shadow pointing generally to the North (depending on the time of day the picture was taken).   FCC rules require the tower to be fenced in to prevent people from wandering too close to the tower and frying their brains.
If the tower is over 200 feet tall (or near the flight path of an airport), the tower also must be white and red and illuminated at night so aircraft won’t fly into it.  Usually there is a small building under the tower that houses the power and/or transmitter.   If the tower is an AM tower, you often will see lines radiating outward which are the buried ground wires (AM relies more on the Ground wave than the antenna to get to you)
Let’s take WICC-AM for an example. It’s a curious antenna in that the only way to reach it is by boat due to local and environmental politics: (An interesting story all by itself – Pleasure Beach at one time was an amusement park – the houses you see were seized by the government and abandoned to create bird habitat for golden kingfish warblers)
The Green pointer is where the FCC says the tower should be (in NAD27), the “A” means little – it is the nearest street address to the point…Â Â if you look maybe 150 feet to the south in between those two points, you clearly see a red and white radio station antenna with a fence around the base, and a shadow pointing almost due North, suggesting the picture was snapped around Noon.
So with that being a prototype of what to look for and the rules, here is Round 1 to test your skills and your eyes
This is supposed to be pointing at the tower of WQMJ-FM, a minority owned radio station in Forsyth, Georgia.  It has no web site and little evidence to suggest it even exists.  It’s been around since at least 1979. In 1995, the owners filed to transfer the license, but the FCC dismissed the request.   The license was renewed in 1996 and 2004, and an application to renew was just filed in November 2011 by a law firm in Washington DC.
The ownership reports indicate the license is 100% owned by MICHAEL A. ROBERTS, who identifies himself as a black man, and lives in a nice house in Lithonia, Georgia.
The antenna is supposed to be about 91 meters high (about 300 feet tall).
I’m pointing out his race because there is a definite pattern at the FCC of lax enforcement of rules against minority owned stations, because the FCC has a mandate from Congress to maximize minority ownership of licenses for “diversity”… and black people can’t be expected to understand and follow rules made by The Man, after all.  The FCC and Congress “know” that black people just aren’t smart enough to do that.
So do you see a tower?
Google Street view has been spreading out – often there will be a street level view that can help to find an antenna if you can’t find it from above.  Dixie Highway has street views – a bit far away, but still possible you might see something in their grainy images.
If you look about half a mile to the NW, there is a water tower and an obvious antenna that you can see in street view
but you’ll notice the top of the tower has a triangular shape, which indicates it is a cell phone tower (it is owned by Nextel).   It also is not painted Red and White because it isn’t over 200 feet tall.
So did the station vanish in 1995 and exists only as a piece of paper?
Another explanation can be that on a fairly regular basis, people move their transmitters (FM transmitters are not often on a tower by themselves – but on a rented space on someone else’s tower) and just “forget” to tell the FCC.  If nobody complains, the FCC generally doesn’t figure it out.
It’s against the FCC rules to hold an AM and FM license and not be broadcasting most of the day, every day.  If you turn off the transmitter and don’t notify the FCC in 30 days, you can be fined and probably will lose your license unless you have a really good explanation.
There is a point to point Studio to Transmitter license pointing to the same empty field:
http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/licenseLocSum.jsp;JSESSIONID_ULSSEARCH=hBWZTsJGMjxf8SwcPnJ4ncpGSpmk8fL9BQnYZws6Lc0DLXHpb3WG!-1164578443!NONE?licKey=991987
It lists the “Source location of the signal as being an interesting multiunit house built in 1880 – in Macon Georgia at 316 college street.
http://goo.gl/6uKa7
It does show an antenna on the building across the street.  The building is located on the campus of Mercer University, about 16 miles away from the transmitter location.
http://g.co/maps/tpedc