I remember these as a kid in the 1970's. I wouldn't see them often, but when I did, they always intrigued me. Particularly the horns at the top. Just remember being fascinated with them.
My grandfather decommissioned a few of those. He worked for att and had been with them since they were Western Electric. I have all kinds of awesome WE meters and some old school rectifier diodes the size of coke cans.
I live in Southern California, and there is a huge concrete tower in downtown Los Angeles that has many of these horn microwave antennas mounted around the top and even some lower. I knew they were for telephone, but did not know they were no longer used for landline service. The huge horn antennas look rather alien, and knowing they were built during the Cold War era and were supposed to withstand a nuclear blast makes them that much more fascinating and creepy. I have seen videos of these things at other abandoned sites where the horns are badly deteriorated or have been removed altogether. It’s also cool this service was used for the military’s Autovon phone service. When I worked for the Us Navy in Ventura County, CA, all employees had their own phones and separate phone numbers. We each had a commercial number and Autovon number. The Autovon system was later renamed DSN (Defense Service Network or Defense Switching Network). It would be nice if the government would declare some of these old sites which are in good condition as historical sites open to the public to visit and experience.
The "soccer ball" enclosure on top is most likely a traffic control radome housing for the FAA. It could also be a weather radome, but not very probable. Many of the Long-Lines towers were purchased by private companies for communication towers (they are amazingly well built for the age). Ham radio operators like them, too. Rumor has it that some microwaves are still being used, but not for voice. Mostly private backhauls. Thanks for sharing!
My dad maintained these towers from when they first started through the 70s. He would (agents company policy) take me wok work with him once and a while. This brings back memories. Thanks!!!
The microwave towers were primarily built to carry TV networks, with radio and telephone also sharing the bandwidth. Many of the microwave towers -- including this one -- were originally built as concrete silos, due to the scarcity of steel during and after WWII. Google "34 Jumps to Chicago" (with quotes) for a great article from 1949 about the network. Notice the lack of Interstate highways on the maps in the background -- they didn't exist until the '50s!
I have a strange fascination with communication towers. We have a huge red and white tower on a nearby mountain (Quirauk mountain) owned by the government for the pentagon. "Site C" is the name. Every Christmas season they put a big lighted star on the top, except for the last year or so for whatever reason.
I live in northern nj and the att building near me has two of those microwave horns built into the side of the building. Still there in 2021. I think they look cool
The radar dome isn't NEXTRAD, the nearest WSR-88 is in PA. Can't be TDWR either, the nearest is in North Jersey. It's most likely radar for Newark Airport. As far as security at the sites, they'd been deemed imperative to US communications infrastructure. They carried not only commercial, residential and normal military traffic, but support SAGE traffic, many sites also hosted Echo-Fox systems and were integral in the CONUS operation of AUTOVON.
+George Atlas Radomes are also used to secure sensitive antennas against the elements. AT&T carried communications for the U.S. government also, including secure communications for the president's plane, Air Force One.
+billyboi57 Most radomes used to secure sensitive antenna are repurposed for that mission, any system in government or industry use is going to have been properly hardened and grounded antenna. Yes, AT&T carried nearly the entire bulk of Gov't communications from the 1940's into the 1980's to include SAGE, AUTOVON/AUTODIN, and DSN over their "Long Lines" which consisted of C-band 4, 6 and 8 GHz microwave horn transmitters and receivers. Until it was replaced by fiber-optic and satellite communications. Yes, Echo-Fox is the Presidential HF Communications System, notice I covered that in my first comment. However, Echo-Fox wasn't and isn't maintained by AT&T, it's maintained by the USAF (which also maintains HFGCS which is a parallel military HF system used to tramsmit information of varying degrees including FDM and EAM). AT&T Long Lines sites provided useful because they where already at the highest geographic points in their respective areas and where properly secured and hardened.
The "old" AT&T aka "Ma Bell" also owned and maintained three HF shore stations for communicating with ships at sea. These stations were capable of covering much of the world and were basically the only communications lifeline with land These stations were WOO at Ocean Gate, NJ. and Manahawkin, NJ. WOM at Plantation, FL and Pennsuco, FL. KMI at Dixon, CA and Point Reyes, Ca. These stations were manned 24/7, 365 days a year. Satellite communications rendered these stations obsolete and AT&T ceased operations on November 9, 1999.
The article "34 Jumps to Chicago" from the Sept. 1949 Long Lines magazine (as found on long-lines . net) shows a photo of a 101-foot concrete silo being constructed at Martinsville, so unless they mislabeled the photo, I think that part is true, and the silo was replaced by the metal structure in later years. American Tower has many detailed photos of the current Martinsville tower on their web site.
Those are Western Electric horn reflectors, and I agree with Grassulo that it looks like a TD-2 relay site. The antennas appear to have the nuclear blast hardening kit installed on them, designed to protect against a 5 MT blast at 20 miles distance I think. Microwave antennas tend to stay up long after the radios have been turned off because you need to relinquish the frequency when you take down the antennas.
We have two of these sites where we live in Seattle. I always wondered what this was. These towers would send info from one to another. At first they were switched manually, but then phone numbers became a thing and allowed for automatic switching the path that the call made. They stopped using them in the 80s, and many were unplugged.
@@MrWolfTickets That’s the only site that fully remains with the antennas intact anymore. The other one is a brick building on pike between 17th and 18th avenue, just south of the radio towers on Capitol Hill. The antennas are gone as of spring 2018, but the metal structure, including the square holes into which the antennas were installed, still remains standing on top of the building to this day! The only antenna installed on the top of that building is a modern one that was installed when they removed the old horn shaped ones, which, fun fact, were basically just a segment of a parabolic dish antenna.
A good way to see the Capitol Hill site from when the antennas were intact would be to go on Google map street view: you can view imagery from different times, often all the way back to 2008.
I actually worked there in the mid 80's. The Silo went away, I believe, in the mid-60's. The steel tower & building were built next to it, the pad was right outside the back door. Obviously after the new tower was put in service the silo was dismantled.
I used to see these things out in the rural areas , probably in VA where i grew up... cant remember seeing any recently. But i used to always wonder what they were. Looked like big speakers so i thought they were warning emergency sirens or something
There was one of these not far from where I live. Not too long ago they removed the horns. Now, it's just a big glorified cell phone tower. It's this big red and white heavy duty tower, with these tiny little cell antennas on the top.
Thanks for the video. There is one right down the road from my home in NW Florida. Been there all my life. We used to hunt the land around it. Because it has always been there I guess I just took it for granted.
The dome is simply weather protection for whatever kind of antenna is inside it. Whatever's inside could be anything. If a structure has a dome on it, it may very well be some kind of antenna, but it could be anything--not just a radar antenna. Many are for satellite antennas. There's actually no such thing as a "dome radar" because the radar antenna would be hidden inside the weather-protecting dome, and could be a dish or some other style antenna.
@vwestlife Thanks for posting that vid! I worked in microwave (telecom) most of my Engineering career and it's neat to see one of these old towers. I would point out that microwave relays were not only in use well beyond the 80's there are still many in service both in more rugged areas of the U.S as well as around the world. You need 'right of way' to string optical cable as well and that is not always an option. I found on/off keyed optics soo boring I went into mgmt ultimately ;-)
Is there a way to tell which microwave relays are still in use? There are a few of these towers I see relatively frequently. One is on a funky looking tower on the ATT building in downtown Rome, GA. The tower has 4 spaces for antennas, but only on antenna is in place, pointed at Cartersville, GA. When I look at the old long lines maps I don't see Rome as a relay site which makes me think it was an endpoint instead of a relay site. The one antenna still has its waveguide going down the tower. The other ones I'm curious about are Dahlonega 1 and Dahlonega 2 in northeast GA. I understand that they're so close together due to having to thread signals through the mountainous terrain, but I notice several of the antennas still have their waveguides and thus I'm curious if any are still in use.
I should mention, my grandfather and dad were both telephone men. My grandfather was a lineman and my dad worked in the Long Lines maintenance center. After the breakup he worked at a couple of the baby bells, ending up at Bellsouth doing business phone system design and then moved on to VoIP at a competing company. So even though I am in enduser IT, fascination with telecom is in the blood.
I used to work for a local shop that installed those giant home satellite dishes to get "cable" TV back in the 80's. C-band TVRO is what it was called. We did several installations that were "under" those microwave beams, which reeked havoc with the sat signals! We called it "TI"...Terrestrial Interference. Funny that about the same time the industry came out with the now familiar tiny dishes, Ma Bell phased out those big microwave relay stations. LOL.
Have you ever seen the one off of i-287 & Rockland New York?I'd say it's about five miles or so after the Palisades Mall if the mall is on your left and you were driving away from New Jersey.I remember it used to be orange and white and had for corns one in each quarter of the platform at the very top in the 1990 s but they were removed sometime around the 2010s I believe.do you know anything about that one it's still there and over Pete was stripped off now it's a silver kind of color
The tower you are thinking of is located in Tallman, and had the AT&T facility name of AIRMONT. This was a special facility in that it had an underground bunker, and I believe it was also a repeater sited for buried cable also referred to as "L-Cables".
Is it still up since the recording of this video? In my old hometown of Amarillo, TX, there was one of these towers along Amarillo Bvld. / Route 66. The last time I was home, the microwave horns had been taken down, but the tower remained.
@vwestlife I really want to know what that big radome on the top of that tower was for, checked google, came up with nothing other than that tower was originally a TD-2 (big square horn) microwave site, but no mention of a radome. There has to be someone out there on youtube who knows.
wow I didn't know they had microwave telephone towers in the 40s! that seems like something they'd use now! actually cell phone towers are also microwave, I wouldn't want to live near one though!
I have no doubt they would be fired up if needed. Those towers will still perform at worst the tx and rx box on the thing would need to be connected in but I thing those horns would still perform.
The closest AUTOVON switch was in Netcong, NJ, and had the AT&T facility name NETCONG. For whatever reason, even though it was only 20 miles distant, and no obstructions, Netcong did not have a direct microwave relay link to Martinsville.
AT&T facility name was HALIHAN HILL. This was a very large relay facility with microwave relay links to 9 other sites in the region. I wouldn't be surprised if the former IBM facility in Lake Katrine was linked into it somehow as well. There was also another site close by in Rosendale on old Rt 32. You could see it from the NYS Thruway driving northbound. ROSENDALE was also an AUTOVON switch for DOD.
Wow! That thing is amazing looking. I believe that is a radome on the top? They just took the feed horns off the relay tower in Waco last year and I was sad to see them go.
***** Waldorf, MD? I live in the area too. The Microwave towers I know of in the county are only 3. Waldorf's double towers, Bel_alton, and Bryan's Road. Recently the tower in Bel_Alton was completely stripped of the relays, and Waldorf lost all but three of it's relay's on the large tower. I am upset at that actually because I love those things. What, if anything do you know about the towers???
Unlikely that a microwave route like this was would be used as a backup. There are so many more parallel "loops" of fiber optic lines than there ever were microwave routes, and most fiber lines have tons of extra capacity. Communication could be rerouted the long way around the world in the unlikely event that there was no other choice. Non-time-sensitive data (anything but financial trades) tends to just go whichever way is most convenient at the instant it is sent.
This is very true, although the use of microwave back-haul from cell sites is on the decline. Typically, cell sites will use fiber optic cables for connecting back to their upstream central offices. The use of microwave to communicate directly with cell phones is due to the need to make antennas in the phones smaller. The higher the frequency, the smaller the antenna--the lower the frequency, the larger the antenna. And everyone *has to have* their tiny little cell phones...
Spherical radomes like this are used near my area for Doppler weather radar, so that's one possibility. This wouldn't have been part of AT&T's microwave installation, but that top platform housing it does look like original structure, so I wonder if there had been additional horns up there at one time, since removed to make room for the radar. As others have said, I was fascinated by these unusual structures as a kid. The one in my hometown, though long out of service, kept its huge horns until sometime in the 90s, when they were taken down to make room for cellular antenna racks. It now hosts Verizon on the upper level, and T-mobile lower down. Compared to most cell sites, the sectoral antenna placement looks a bit off-balance due to the ex-microwave tower having a square rather than triangular cross-section.
so thats what those are for? i have always seen these just 20 miles outside of town or when traveling to another town from san antonio to corpus christi and would see like three of these things. i thought these thing were something to do with the government. i know the globe is a storm radar.
M. Fortas, I have no idea what your point is. AT&T Security has a vested interest in the security of their sites, so naturally they'll request no photos be shown As for ARTNVACKT20, there's no mystery there to anyone who has the intelligence to look up a CLLI code. And there's nothing sinister about Arlington #2, it's just a CO that happens to handle some circuits for the Feds. Certainly not the only one of AT&T's to do so.
They're part of an emergency backup system, so they're mothballed, but FEMA will have a clearance to reactivate them if a disaster of sufficient scale occurred.
the original AT&T that owned these is defunct. SBC corp. bought AT&T in 2005 and changed their name to at&t (note lowercase) so SBC definitely doesn't care about their towers.
Caddy 1983 Yes, they did. But it wasn’t located inside the horns, rather inside the building (or in many cases the bunker). Also, the horns were constantly pressurized to keep the humidity out for maximum efficiency.
The people that brought a home in that development are crazy. I'm sure those towers are now covered with cell tower antennas, as they are doing that every where, you can no longer get away from them.
Then why are many maintained here in Colorado, next to NORAD, etc?? And why, then, does AT&T security ask pictures not be taken of some when posted on the internet. Hmmmm? Hmmmm? Google ARTNVACKT20
What an incredibly moronic statement. Without these “icky structures” TV and cell phones wouldn’t be available to intelligent people such as your self. 🤡
@@TheGermanHammer I think you missed the sarcasm in the comment I posted 7 years ago. I clearly don't find the old AT&T Long Lines towers "icky", I think they're not only impressive and beautiful in their own right, they also represent some amazing cold war communications history. They have extremely little to do with cell phones, by the way--they were mostly built in the late 1950s and 1960s, and cell phones were barely a glimmer in the eye of some engineer.
I remember these as a kid in the 1970's. I wouldn't see them often, but when I did, they always intrigued me. Particularly the horns at the top. Just remember being fascinated with them.
I always find old structures and machinery like this to be fascinating, I'm glad that you have shown us this!
My grandfather decommissioned a few of those. He worked for att and had been with them since they were Western Electric. I have all kinds of awesome WE meters and some old school rectifier diodes the size of coke cans.
There‘s a sat-dish in the upper sphere on the tower for sat-uplink to telstar.
I live in Southern California, and there is a huge concrete tower in downtown Los Angeles that has many of these horn microwave antennas mounted around the top and even some lower. I knew they were for telephone, but did not know they were no longer used for landline service. The huge horn antennas look rather alien, and knowing they were built during the Cold War era and were supposed to withstand a nuclear blast makes them that much more fascinating and creepy. I have seen videos of these things at other abandoned sites where the horns are badly deteriorated or have been removed altogether. It’s also cool this service was used for the military’s Autovon phone service. When I worked for the Us Navy in Ventura County, CA, all employees had their own phones and separate phone numbers. We each had a commercial number and Autovon number. The Autovon system was later renamed DSN (Defense Service Network or Defense Switching Network). It would be nice if the government would declare some of these old sites which are in good condition as historical sites open to the public to visit and experience.
The "soccer ball" enclosure on top is most likely a traffic control radome housing for the FAA. It could also be a weather radome, but not very probable. Many of the Long-Lines towers were purchased by private companies for communication towers (they are amazingly well built for the age). Ham radio operators like them, too. Rumor has it that some microwaves are still being used, but not for voice. Mostly private backhauls. Thanks for sharing!
Nick Carpenter
The dome encloses/enclosed a Doppler weather array.
My dad maintained these towers from when they first started through the 70s. He would (agents company policy) take me wok work with him once and a while. This brings back memories.
Thanks!!!
Ok I admit it, I'm a radio nudnick. I think this thing is beautiful.
Mike D same.
The microwave towers were primarily built to carry TV networks, with radio and telephone also sharing the bandwidth. Many of the microwave towers -- including this one -- were originally built as concrete silos, due to the scarcity of steel during and after WWII.
Google "34 Jumps to Chicago" (with quotes) for a great article from 1949 about the network. Notice the lack of Interstate highways on the maps in the background -- they didn't exist until the '50s!
I have a strange fascination with communication towers. We have a huge red and white tower on a nearby mountain (Quirauk mountain) owned by the government for the pentagon. "Site C" is the name. Every Christmas season they put a big lighted star on the top, except for the last year or so for whatever reason.
Budget sequester.
I remember those towers as a kid. I thought I was the only one that was fascinated, if you will, with them.
MMID303 I'm 16, and I've always been fascinated in communication towers
I live in northern nj and the att building near me has two of those microwave horns built into the side of the building. Still there in 2021. I think they look cool
The dome on top is the WNBC News 4 Nexrad weather radar
The radar dome isn't NEXTRAD, the nearest WSR-88 is in PA. Can't be TDWR either, the nearest is in North Jersey. It's most likely radar for Newark Airport.
As far as security at the sites, they'd been deemed imperative to US communications infrastructure. They carried not only commercial, residential and normal military traffic, but support SAGE traffic, many sites also hosted Echo-Fox systems and were integral in the CONUS operation of AUTOVON.
+George Atlas Radomes are also used to secure sensitive antennas against the elements. AT&T carried communications for the U.S. government also, including secure communications for the president's plane, Air Force One.
+billyboi57 Most radomes used to secure sensitive antenna are repurposed for that mission, any system in government or industry use is going to have been properly hardened and grounded antenna.
Yes, AT&T carried nearly the entire bulk of Gov't communications from the 1940's into the 1980's to include SAGE, AUTOVON/AUTODIN, and DSN over their "Long Lines" which consisted of C-band 4, 6 and 8 GHz microwave horn transmitters and receivers. Until it was replaced by fiber-optic and satellite communications.
Yes, Echo-Fox is the Presidential HF Communications System, notice I covered that in my first comment. However, Echo-Fox wasn't and isn't maintained by AT&T, it's maintained by the USAF (which also maintains HFGCS which is a parallel military HF system used to tramsmit information of varying degrees including FDM and EAM). AT&T Long Lines sites provided useful because they where already at the highest geographic points in their respective areas and where properly secured and hardened.
Great piece of history I hope they never tear it down.
The "old" AT&T aka "Ma Bell" also owned and maintained three HF shore stations for communicating with ships at sea. These stations were capable of covering much of the world and were basically the only communications lifeline with land These stations were WOO at Ocean Gate, NJ. and Manahawkin, NJ. WOM at Plantation, FL and Pennsuco, FL. KMI at Dixon, CA and Point Reyes, Ca. These stations were manned 24/7, 365 days a year. Satellite communications rendered these stations obsolete and AT&T ceased operations on November 9, 1999.
billybo, but satellites don't exist, what really replaced them and what's really broadcasting the supposed satellite signal?
The article "34 Jumps to Chicago" from the Sept. 1949 Long Lines magazine (as found on long-lines . net) shows a photo of a 101-foot concrete silo being constructed at Martinsville, so unless they mislabeled the photo, I think that part is true, and the silo was replaced by the metal structure in later years. American Tower has many detailed photos of the current Martinsville tower on their web site.
Those are Western Electric horn reflectors, and I agree with Grassulo that it looks like a TD-2 relay site. The antennas appear to have the nuclear blast hardening kit installed on them, designed to protect against a 5 MT blast at 20 miles distance I think.
Microwave antennas tend to stay up long after the radios have been turned off because you need to relinquish the frequency when you take down the antennas.
We have two of these sites where we live in Seattle. I always wondered what this was. These towers would send info from one to another. At first they were switched manually, but then phone numbers became a thing and allowed for automatic switching the path that the call made. They stopped using them in the 80s, and many were unplugged.
One of them just got the antennas replaced with a newer communications antenna that I don’t believe to be microwave.
I was just working at a house on Queen Anne and was enjoying the view of the one on Galer at the central office. Where's the other one around here?
@@MrWolfTickets That’s the only site that fully remains with the antennas intact anymore. The other one is a brick building on pike between 17th and 18th avenue, just south of the radio towers on Capitol Hill. The antennas are gone as of spring 2018, but the metal structure, including the square holes into which the antennas were installed, still remains standing on top of the building to this day! The only antenna installed on the top of that building is a modern one that was installed when they removed the old horn shaped ones, which, fun fact, were basically just a segment of a parabolic dish antenna.
A good way to see the Capitol Hill site from when the antennas were intact would be to go on Google map street view: you can view imagery from different times, often all the way back to 2008.
@@djijspeakerguy4628 right on. I wonder when they'll pull the Queen Anne horns.
I actually worked there in the mid 80's. The Silo went away, I believe, in the mid-60's. The steel tower & building were built next to it, the pad was right outside the back door. Obviously after the new tower was put in service the silo was dismantled.
The neatest one is Lyons, NE where there is a 2-story hardened shelter underground for the long lines AUTOVON system. Tower and horns are still there.
Should be made into a registered historical place.
I grew up near this thing and now as a broadcast TV IT technician I had really started to wonder what it was. Thanks for the insight.
Matt T What state & town is this? Looks familiar.
Surprisingly enough, the one in my town is fully functional, but it only goes to one place and one place only, the place that supply's our power.
I used to see these things out in the rural areas , probably in VA where i grew up... cant remember seeing any recently. But i used to always wonder what they were. Looked like big speakers so i thought they were warning emergency sirens or something
Time for a follow up
The globe at the top looks like a weather radar like doppler
There was one of these not far from where I live. Not too long ago they removed the horns. Now, it's just a big glorified cell phone tower. It's this big red and white heavy duty tower, with these tiny little cell antennas on the top.
Thanks for the video. There is one right down the road from my home in NW Florida. Been there all my life. We used to hunt the land around it. Because it has always been there I guess I just took it for granted.
The dome is simply weather protection for whatever kind of antenna is inside it. Whatever's inside could be anything. If a structure has a dome on it, it may very well be some kind of antenna, but it could be anything--not just a radar antenna. Many are for satellite antennas.
There's actually no such thing as a "dome radar" because the radar antenna would be hidden inside the weather-protecting dome, and could be a dish or some other style antenna.
i have no idea why but i am fascinated with those microwave towers.
@vwestlife Thanks for posting that vid! I worked in microwave (telecom) most of my Engineering career and it's neat to see one of these old towers. I would point out that microwave relays were not only in use well beyond the 80's there are still many in service both in more rugged areas of the U.S as well as around the world.
You need 'right of way' to string optical cable as well and that is not always an option. I found on/off keyed optics soo boring I went into mgmt ultimately ;-)
Akileze lol 9 years later and there all gone.
Is there a way to tell which microwave relays are still in use? There are a few of these towers I see relatively frequently. One is on a funky looking tower on the ATT building in downtown Rome, GA. The tower has 4 spaces for antennas, but only on antenna is in place, pointed at Cartersville, GA. When I look at the old long lines maps I don't see Rome as a relay site which makes me think it was an endpoint instead of a relay site. The one antenna still has its waveguide going down the tower. The other ones I'm curious about are Dahlonega 1 and Dahlonega 2 in northeast GA. I understand that they're so close together due to having to thread signals through the mountainous terrain, but I notice several of the antennas still have their waveguides and thus I'm curious if any are still in use.
I should mention, my grandfather and dad were both telephone men. My grandfather was a lineman and my dad worked in the Long Lines maintenance center. After the breakup he worked at a couple of the baby bells, ending up at Bellsouth doing business phone system design and then moved on to VoIP at a competing company. So even though I am in enduser IT, fascination with telecom is in the blood.
Some have underground bunkers that go multi-stories down.. That's where all the equipment was housed.
Looks like a frickin shield generator on a star destroyer.
I used to work for a local shop that installed those giant home satellite dishes to get "cable" TV back in the 80's. C-band TVRO is what it was called. We did several installations that were "under" those microwave beams, which reeked havoc with the sat signals! We called it "TI"...Terrestrial Interference. Funny that about the same time the industry came out with the now familiar tiny dishes, Ma Bell phased out those big microwave relay stations. LOL.
Have you ever seen the one off of i-287 & Rockland New York?I'd say it's about five miles or so after the Palisades Mall if the mall is on your left and you were driving away from New Jersey.I remember it used to be orange and white and had for corns one in each quarter of the platform at the very top in the 1990 s but they were removed sometime around the 2010s I believe.do you know anything about that one it's still there and over Pete was stripped off now it's a silver kind of color
The tower you are thinking of is located in Tallman, and had the AT&T facility name of AIRMONT. This was a special facility in that it had an underground bunker, and I believe it was also a repeater sited for buried cable also referred to as "L-Cables".
Is it still up since the recording of this video? In my old hometown of Amarillo, TX, there was one of these towers along Amarillo Bvld. / Route 66. The last time I was home, the microwave horns had been taken down, but the tower remained.
Yes, that radome is probably a weather radar antenna, maybe for a local TV station.
This passed winter the removed the sphere or large ball looking icon from the top what a difference it made on the skyline.
Theres a Tower In High Point NJ In Sussex Co Now Its Used By NJSP fro there radio system
From microwave tower to cell phone tower
that round ball at the top is a working weather radar the horns are all disconnected and i see no cell phone equipment on the tower .
@monicatov Your conspiracy theory is about 25 years out of date, as these large microwave horns haven't been used since the 1980s.
Ya, I'm some they just stuck some cell receivers on it and left it there. It is way too expensive to take them down.
@vwestlife I really want to know what that big radome on the top of that tower was for, checked google, came up with nothing other than that tower was originally a TD-2 (big square horn) microwave site, but no mention of a radome. There has to be someone out there on youtube who knows.
wow I didn't know they had microwave telephone towers in the 40s! that seems like something they'd use now! actually cell phone towers are also microwave, I wouldn't want to live near one though!
This Is SO INTERESTING
globe is weather radar likely
I have no doubt they would be fired up if needed. Those towers will still perform at worst the tx and rx box on the thing would need to be connected in but I thing those horns would still perform.
Is there an AUTOVON switch nearby?
The closest AUTOVON switch was in Netcong, NJ, and had the AT&T facility name NETCONG. For whatever reason, even though it was only 20 miles distant, and no obstructions, Netcong did not have a direct microwave relay link to Martinsville.
their is a microwave tower a crossed the Hudson River in Kingston, NY
AT&T facility name was HALIHAN HILL. This was a very large relay facility with microwave relay links to 9 other sites in the region. I wouldn't be surprised if the former IBM facility in Lake Katrine was linked into it somehow as well. There was also another site close by in Rosendale on old Rt 32. You could see it from the NYS Thruway driving northbound. ROSENDALE was also an AUTOVON switch for DOD.
Wow! That thing is amazing looking. I believe that is a radome on the top? They just took the feed horns off the relay tower in Waco last year and I was sad to see them go.
What is in the "globe thing" on the top was a radar dish.
Ball in the middle looks like an X-band missle sniffer or doppler radar.
LOL, looks like the Empire's next plan of attack. Cool stuff.
That globe on top looks like the domes used for Doppler weather radar. It's kinda low to the ground for that, though, isn't it?
***** Waldorf, MD? I live in the area too. The Microwave towers I know of in the county are only 3. Waldorf's double towers, Bel_alton, and Bryan's Road.
Recently the tower in Bel_Alton was completely stripped of the relays, and Waldorf lost all but three of it's relay's on the large tower. I am upset at that actually because I love those things.
What, if anything do you know about the towers???
We have similar tower outside of town that was part of the NORAD radar defense system that protected us from nuclear air attack by the Russians.
There's one by my house in new tripoli Pennsylvania there's a hiking trail going right past it
That tower was used for MCI telephone in the 90's that station was built in 1982, I seen it from the highway a couple of times.
There are few down here in southern Georgia
Unlikely that a microwave route like this was would be used as a backup. There are so many more parallel "loops" of fiber optic lines than there ever were microwave routes, and most fiber lines have tons of extra capacity. Communication could be rerouted the long way around the world in the unlikely event that there was no other choice. Non-time-sensitive data (anything but financial trades) tends to just go whichever way is most convenient at the instant it is sent.
This is very true, although the use of microwave back-haul from cell sites is on the decline. Typically, cell sites will use fiber optic cables for connecting back to their upstream central offices.
The use of microwave to communicate directly with cell phones is due to the need to make antennas in the phones smaller. The higher the frequency, the smaller the antenna--the lower the frequency, the larger the antenna. And everyone *has to have* their tiny little cell phones...
What a beast!
Dome on top is a RADAR, likely a NEXTRAD.
Globe thing on the top more than likely a weather radar. Seem them elsewhere
I appreciate your having never changed your overall presentation.
I suspect that the structure on the top is a geodesic dome.
Spherical radomes like this are used near my area for Doppler weather radar, so that's one possibility. This wouldn't have been part of AT&T's microwave installation, but that top platform housing it does look like original structure, so I wonder if there had been additional horns up there at one time, since removed to make room for the radar.
As others have said, I was fascinated by these unusual structures as a kid. The one in my hometown, though long out of service, kept its huge horns until sometime in the 90s, when they were taken down to make room for cellular antenna racks. It now hosts Verizon on the upper level, and T-mobile lower down. Compared to most cell sites, the sectoral antenna placement looks a bit off-balance due to the ex-microwave tower having a square rather than triangular cross-section.
Thanks for the info, good video.
Today you get charged a ton of money for wired phone, and it takes weeks if you need repair service.
The globe houses a television station's Doppler radar.
Doppler radar??
so thats what those are for? i have always seen these just 20 miles outside of town or when traveling to another town from san antonio to corpus christi and would see like three of these things. i thought these thing were something to do with the government. i know the globe is a storm radar.
M. Fortas, I have no idea what your point is. AT&T Security has a vested interest in the security of their sites, so naturally they'll request no photos be shown
As for ARTNVACKT20, there's no mystery there to anyone who has the intelligence to look up a CLLI code. And there's nothing sinister about Arlington #2, it's just a CO that happens to handle some circuits for the Feds. Certainly not the only one of AT&T's to do so.
Is that ball on top of it a weather doppler radar?
beautiful!
@@trueearthdesign3816 I think it's lovely..
Guess it's still standing
They're part of an emergency backup system, so they're mothballed, but FEMA will have a clearance to reactivate them if a disaster of sufficient scale occurred.
Does it have any sort of aircraft lighting?
No. It's too low.
@@vwestlife aw man
the original AT&T that owned these is defunct. SBC corp. bought AT&T in 2005 and changed their name to at&t (note lowercase) so SBC definitely doesn't care about their towers.
That's a mind control tower to the 9nth degree.
Did the AT&T long lines microwave towers use Klystron tubes inside the horns to generate the microwave energy?
Caddy 1983 Yes, they did. But it wasn’t located inside the horns, rather inside the building (or in many cases the bunker). Also, the horns were constantly pressurized to keep the humidity out for maximum efficiency.
The people that brought a home in that development are crazy. I'm sure those towers are now covered with cell tower antennas, as they are doing that every where, you can no longer get away from them.
ah i love it!
looks like Nikola Teslas Death Ray invention 😨
Y cant that be in my backyard
Sugar Scoops ❤
How many miles is it?
Do they still work
August 4 1966
The glove on top is probably a unclear blast detector to be used during the cold war.
Then why are many maintained here in Colorado, next to NORAD, etc?? And why, then, does AT&T security ask pictures not be taken of some when posted on the internet. Hmmmm? Hmmmm? Google ARTNVACKT20
An old dinosaur.
M. Fortas, do you have *any* clue what those horn reflector antennas do?
Or are you simply adjusting your tin foil hat here?
That's a MONSTER TOWER EWWWWW YUCK.
Yes, it's an icky structure that helps you watch TV. Totally gross. Just turn away and look at your cell phone or something.
What an incredibly moronic statement.
Without these “icky structures” TV and cell phones wouldn’t be available to intelligent people such as your self. 🤡
@@TheGermanHammer I think you missed the sarcasm in the comment I posted 7 years ago. I clearly don't find the old AT&T Long Lines towers "icky", I think they're not only impressive and beautiful in their own right, they also represent some amazing cold war communications history. They have extremely little to do with cell phones, by the way--they were mostly built in the late 1950s and 1960s, and cell phones were barely a glimmer in the eye of some engineer.