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San Francisco's Big Antenna - Sutro Tower

spartanmanor said:
Yeah, It's the only shot I had from a 30's vintage postcard. You have to look for them now. The trees and city have grown a lot since this shot was taken.
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No wonder I've never seen those... pretty cool.. gonna have to go look for them now..
 
So have you ever wanted to pack a BASE chute and take the easy way down Saltwater?

I know I sure would want too... amazing views..
 
I can no longer climb a 6' ladder without breaking out in a sweat. My hat is off to you. As a kid I'd go on the slate roof on our 6 story apt building to tune my ham antenna but forget it now. I get vertigo. I'd love to put any of the antennas pictured here in my back yard.
 
If the WIMZ antenna was accessible, & I could DO it, I'd love to hook up one of my R-390As to it....THAT would be something, I'm sure..Talk about a DXer's dream...
 
markthefixer said:
I was really impressed with the density of equipment up on Mount Wilson when I was there in the mid 90's... I always wondered just how powerful the RF fields were, up there...

But little else can compare to that SF tower....

All they do around here is stick them on top of the tallest buildings like the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center...


If it's tower sites you are interested in check out Scott's site www.fybush.com
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I put up the fricking MOTHER LODE of tower sites, with pictures of transmitters and studios to boot, and NOBODY notices....:D

and here's a good source of base jumping videos http://www.vertical-visions.com/stockvideo.php

But with antenna jumping, I have one question:

WHAT about the guy wires??????

saltwater: when I saw your third picture, looking DOWN at an ICY tower, I cringed.........
 
Sutro

I was in the 82nd Airborne during the Vietnam War and there is no way I would climb that tower. My hat is off to you guys! When I lived in SF in the early 70's I would sometimes catch a buzz, crank up KSAN and take a drive in the morning fog in the hills near Sutro. That thing gave me the willys from the ground!
 
Bah, whats that saying, "Mind over matter". Base jumping off a tower is just plain NUTS! About every hundred feet the damn wind changes speed, and direction. If its to windy you dont go up, raining, colder than a witches tit. (unless its an emergency job) youd have to be nuts to jump off a tower, and one thats tall, like over 1000ft. Those guy wires get to be over an inch thick, bridge strand. cut you in half if your chute didnt open in time. we did one 1000ft (erected it) and we used a 30 ton hydrolic, 5 inch stroke come along, to put the required tension on it. slips my mind what it was, but it was an insane amount. also i got a sb104 ham radio setup at one old tower site, guy had a beam on top and suspended wires hangin off all over. lucky me we got clean the tower off and i asked to have the setup. Got like 300 ft of the coax, hell thats all i neded. I didnt want to hijack this thread... condolences...
 
Great thread.. as an ex Navy ET.. spent a lot time aloft working on antenna's, booth tied to the pier and emergeny repairs under way. Was less that 200 feet, can't imaging working on a 1000+ foot stick. Was 20 years ago, now I have problems climbing my 35 foot mast to work on my APS13.
 
markthefixer: Mr. Fybush's site is one of my faves...and I really enjoyed the link OvenMaster posted to the necrat site...pored and pored over the section on the Empire State Building. Hard to believe that the antenna mast was constructed over 60 years ago!
 
In the early seventies I lived (very briefly--only three years) in Cleveland Heights, an eastern suburb of Cleveland. The local FM station had its studios, transmitter and tower on Lee Road, which is the main street of town; I lived only about a third of a mile (more or less) from the tower and could hear the station on channel 6 on my TV, between the local stations on my cheap stereo FM radio and every other FM radio I owned, and even on my dad's Ampex Micro-88 stereo cassette tape deck. (I could also see the tower lights from my third-floor bedroom window after dark; that's how close I was to the station.) The local station's tower was directly above the studio building. I hate to think what would have ensued had the tower collapsed or when ice fell off it after an ice storm. Heaven help anyone who would happen to be driving near that tower when those huge chunks started falling after a thaw. :yikes:
 
saltwater said:
third is a 900 ft in quincy illinois, WTJR channel 16. Im pretty sure its a rohn...
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I used to live in Quincy and remember this site being quite interesting. The radio station WGCA 88.5 is co-located there. Their transmitter is housed in an old refrigerated semi trailer that was originally brought in there as "temporary," but, it ended up that trailer was used as not only to house the transmitter, but it also had an office, a production room and a studio room in it. Everything obviously crammed in there. For many years they broadcast from that trailer and referred to it on air as "the meat truck." They have a studio downtown now though, and I think the original Gates FM20H3 has been replaced by a new Harris solid state transmitter.

I remember there being railroad track that crosses the road near the site, and is close enough to the tower that it goes underneath one set of guy wires.

There also used to be an old modular home that was on the property that the radio station employees and anyone out working on the site used as a bathroom, breakroom, etc. but it burned to the ground from an electrical fire.

Lastly, there were a few junked cars on the property, i think a couple of amc gremlins and some old vans if I recall correctly
 
There are several tall towers in Missouri City, Texas. One of them collapsed in the early eighties while under construction. Alot of pictures of the aftermath here, and some shaky footage of the tower pieces, and workman, coming down. Big time law suits. This is long, but an interesting read.
 
matt_s78mn said:
I remember there being railroad track that crosses the road near the site, and is close enough to the tower that it goes underneath one set of guy wires.

Cant recall this but you could be right, the tracks arr bye one side of the guy wire but not sure if the go under the guy wire.

There also used to be an old modular home that was on the property that the radio station employees and anyone out working on the site used as a bathroom, breakroom, etc. but it burned to the ground from an electrical fire.

Got a concrete building now.

Lastly, there were a few junked cars on the property, i think a couple of amc gremlins and some old vans if I recall correctly
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Cars no more, totally cleaned up.
 
Interesting thread. I lived 1/2 mile from the tower that's listed in Holiday Florida. There are houses right up next to the tower base less than 200 ft from it. When I lived there I was selling real-estate and it was hard to get financing for people that wanted to buy there. I did a lot of research to get a paper that showed that guyed towers fall on a circle that is no bigger than 10% of there height. It was from the military dated 1968. One day at a closing the person handling the closing said to me "Ed this guy on the paper has the same name as you" I just smiled and said nothing. I wrote the report in 1968 when I was a contractor building antennas for NAS listening stations. I quoted some other paper as I was never involved with anything over 200 ft tall. The guy wires on a tower weigh hundreds of times more than the tower and they pull it down in a tight circle. Two hurricanes can close when I lived there and it is amazing how much the guy wire move in the wind.Also they make a very loud noise in high wind.It sounds like a jet is circling the tower.
Ed
 
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