WRST marks a milestone on Sept. 17.

On that date in 1973, the station turned on its present Gates-brand FM transmitter. In the past 45 years, it has provided reliable service to radio listeners in the Oshkosh area.

When the station debuted in 1966, it was a monophonic 10-watt outlet. The 1973 upgrade to the current transmitter increased power to 960 watts and allowed for stereo broadcasting. In June 2017, the unit’s “odometer” indicated it had operated for 300,000 hours.

The 1973 unit is the oldest transmitter of all the radio and TV stations licensed to the UW Board of Regents and is the oldest of the 34 radio stations in the Wisconsin Public Radio network. However, it remains among the most reliable units of either organization.

Since it was turned off briefly to replace a component in August 2013, it has been off for only eight hours. Moreover, six hours of that total was for upgrades to its logging interface and during tower maintenance, which requires the unit to be shut down for safety reasons.