AM tower layout

[runnit]

I was wondering if anyone knows much about how AM towers are designed/laid out. Or knows someone who knows someone...

I've been looking at some nearby antennas and I'm 99% certain that they're all for the one station (so just the 1 freq), but the strange thing is that there are 4 towers in 2 pairs. The towers in the pair are about 200 - 250 m apart and the pairs are about 1 km apart. From what I can tell from the ground, they're identical and about 150 m tall. The station is 891 kHz and I've seen the power listed as 5000 W although I don't know how reliable that is.

So, does anyone know why there would be 4 towers for just the one station? I can't imagine it would just be for redundancy (seems like an expensive way to do it). It's a national station so could it be some sort of re-trans configuration and one of the towers in the pair is only receiving? Any other ideas?

Is there anyway of finding out if a tower is live without becoming crispy or glowing green and spewing?

The towers are in a sweet location and 1 1/2 hrs closer than my current 'local' A so I'm hanging on to the dim hope that at least one won't be active.

Cheers

BJ

[kiki32]

I do internet research.

fcc.gov and towerlocate.com to start.

[Mac]

Originally Posted by runnit

Is there anyway of finding out if a tower is live without becoming crispy or glowing green and spewing?

I had a bunch of As near me, so I called up the Technical Director of the company (found his details on the company website) and said I was an antenna & pylon enthusiast (yes they exist). I quoted a couple of websites and people that were dedicated to the love and lust of antennas and pylons, to give me some credibility, and he was very open to talk about his job and the antennas I was interested in, including which were live and which were decommissioned.

[mknutson]

There is a BASE Wiki page for [[Antennas]].

If there is any additional information, would someone mind adding this to that page?

[hamsandwich]

AM towers don't have dishes, transmitters, or other antennas hanging on them, the structure itself is the antenna. There will be insulators at the base of each leg.

I'm not sure about this, but I was told multiple towers are sometimes used near each other on the same frequency like a yagi antenna so that the direction of the transmission can me controlled. I thought it was for redundancy.

Throw a cat or use an INSULATED ladder to go from the roof of the control room usually located close by.


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[mknutson]

Originally Posted by hamsandwich

Throw a cat or use an INSULATED ladder to go from the roof of the control room usually located close by.

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Why would you potentially waste a perfectly good ladder? Just throw the cat...

Or maybe re-write the Groundcrew section here to include this duty ;-)