HFU HF Underground
General Category => General Radio Discussion => Topic started by: myteaquinn on November 03, 2013, 0438 UTC
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My wife and I were taking a nice country drive and I found this antenna. I was wondering what it is.
(http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m493/myteaquinn/DSCN4924_zps484417b4.jpg) (http://s1128.photobucket.com/user/myteaquinn/media/DSCN4924_zps484417b4.jpg.html)
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Very interesting. Was there any indication of what organization owned it, like a sign on the road or whatnot?
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Do you have the location it? Might be able to do a geosearch on the FCC's website.
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I'm going to guess that the horizontal section attaching the two towers makes this a directional array of some sort. The picture reminded me of a post in "Engineering Radio" where two towers had a third, horizontal wire element.
Since I really don't know, I posted a question on that site with a link to this thread.
http://www.engineeringradio.us/blog/2013/10/bucket-trucks-and-landing-craft/comment-page-1/
Paul's site has been mentioned on HFU before and has a lot of good technical info.
Z
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A quick answer from Paul:
That is an interesting photograph. The closest tower has a 2 bay FM antenna near the top, above that are some VHF or UHF whip antennas, likely two way radio. There is a cell site and a couple of microwave dishes and between the cell provider and the FM antenna are some WIFI antennas.
As for the two towers tied together; they do not have base insulators, skirt wires and the guy wires are not broken up (in non-resonant lengths) by insulators. Thus it is not MF or HF. Guessing by the “house” type building, this probably started out as an FM transmitter site. The station owners decided to make some extra money leasing out tower space to paging and two way companies. At one time, that cross section was probably filled with those type antennas. Since commercial two way (excepting government e.g. 911 dispatch, highway department, etc) and paging have all but disappeared, the antennas were removed leaving the mostly empty towers still standing. The fact that they straddle the house would make it very difficult to take them down.
That is my guess.
Thanks Paul 8)
Z
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I'm sorry that it took so long to get back to this topic. I'm not sure how to find the coordinates for the antenna, however if you enter "1550 Vesta Rd, Wakeman, OH 44889" in Bing maps (Google maps shows a different location) you should see the antenna.
No sign other than a no trespassing sign.
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It used to be common for cable TV headends and microwave providers with large antennas to have cross-supported towers like that. You don't see them much anymore, but there are a few out there. Also note how there is nothing mounted on it.
+-RH
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I'm sorry that it took so long to get back to this topic. I'm not sure how to find the coordinates for the antenna, however if you enter "1550 Vesta Rd, Wakeman, OH 44889" in Bing maps (Google maps shows a different location) you should see the antenna.
No sign other than a no trespassing sign.
Yeah... Google shows too far north of the antennas, just pan down Vesta Road south and you will find the site... A different prospective but not as good.
73
Vince
ka1iic
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Thanks everyone for the information, it just seemed out of place.