Anyone know about the light on cellphone towers?

[Wade Lippman]

I have googled this and found absolutely nothing.
There is a tower about 2 miles away from me. Once or twice a month the light on top is red; the rest of the time it is white.
Why?

[Malcolm McLeod]

Lights are required for any tower >200ft tall, IIRC. Red lights are for night time viz only, and so require the tower be painted alternating orange/white for daytime viz. White lights (strobes) are for day & night, and I think allow the tower to be unpainted.... or at least one color. Brain dump complete. ;)

Not sure why a tower would have both types....??

[Jason Roehl]

Lights are required for any tower >200ft tall, IIRC. Red lights are for night time viz only, and so require the tower be painted alternating orange/white for daytime viz. White lights (strobes) are for day & night, and I think allow the tower to be unpainted.... or at least one color. Brain dump complete. ;)

Not sure why a tower would have both types....??

Any structure over 200' has to be lit (can be from the ground). Any structure over 500' has to have a light on top of certain specs. How do I know this? The courthouse where I am the maintenance tech is 212' tall, and we are not too far from an airport. While a contractor was part way through upgrading all the exterior lighting to LED, we were, um, "reminded" of the need for the dome to be lit. Cue a scramble to get things powered up...

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

Our township has what must be the smallest public airport in the country. Runway is 1200 ft x 50 ft. Because it was given public status, (lots of rumors of bribes) every structure within a few miles that is over 30 ft high must have lights all night. Farmers forced to put lights on silo's etc. I once had a copy of a letter that told a farmer that his corn crop was a hazard to air traffic because it was within 250 feet of the runway. They threatened him with fine and arrest if he didn't remove the corn. When he switch to raising hay and baled round bales, the airport owner had the state aviation inspector there within an hour or two about the round bales being a hazard to navigation. The airport invited a model airplane club to use the air port and two of the RC club members used their $2,500 toys to chase the farmers sheep across a pasture. About the third time, there was a loud gunshot and a plane blew into bits sort of like a clay pigeon at the skeet range. The RC club members tried to claim they were exempt from trespass laws as air traffic, but PA has an Air traffic trespass law that they violated anyway. A year later, the farmer noticed two paragliders chasing deer across the fields. The Game warden happened to be close by and nailed them. They tried to claim they weren't chasing deer, but both the farmer and the Warden had video proof. I never took notice what color the lights on the silo's, communication towers, etc are. I do know the TV tower a few miles away has red lights at 4 or 5 places going up the tower. Once in a while there is a strobe light flashing. (it drives our dogs crazy) Never noticed any particular hours for the strobe light except that I only see it at night.

[Tom M King]

If the light changes from red to white, I would expect (and hope) it has to do with sky illumination levels. Red preserves night vision, whereas bright white works against it, but the red wouldn't be as visible in a bright sky.

[Mark Bolton]

I went round with this extensively many years back. Have a large piece of property that is high on a ridge and there is a line-of-sight tower about a mile away that had a string of issues with the white/white strobe not cycling down to low/medium intensity at night. The day light high intensity strobe from that distance would illuminate the inside of the house (remote so no shades/curtains) like it was daytime. If you were outside it would light up the surroundings as bright as auto high beams that shined everywhere.

Some years back with pressure from the tower companies the FAA allowed white/white on many of the lower class towers (I think towers run from class A down to like class F). The white/white require a high intensity strobe in the day and then must cycle to a medium or low intensity white strobe in the night and I was told that some of the older towers being retro-fitted for white/white still had a red that kicked in if the low/medium failed. This tower didnt have the red so when the low/medium strobe quit the high intensity stayed on all night.

You can google cell tower FAA lighting or something to that effect and you will likely find a bunch of charts that show every tower configuration (even massive radio towers Class A) and what their allowed lighting options are.

[Bill Dufour]

My wife claims the blue light sat the airport only come on in the fog.
Blll D

[Matt Schrum]

My wife claims the blue light sat the airport only come on in the fog.
Blll D
.. or when they are running specials.

[Mark Bolton]

My wife claims the blue light sat the airport only come on in the fog.
Blll D

Airport runway lighting has zero connection to tower lighting. But good information. Wonderful.

[Bill Carey]

.. or when they are running specials.


LOL - good one

[Mark Bolton]

I'd bet the FAA would provide the teeniest bit of dispute to this 'zero connection'? :D

(I think they spec both.)
If you want to argue semantics have at it. Ground runway lighting is not classified in any remote connection with cell and radio tower lighting. Are you arguing that the FAA is going to spec some high power blinding strobe on a runway approach light? Or that the runway lights arent also governed by the FAA?

Good god man,.. look into tower lighting regs... you will not find a document that covers towers and runway lights in an intermingled conversation?

Whats your point?

[Kev Williams]

I found this:

http://www.engraver1.com/redwhite.jpg


So I'm thinking "the need for painting the tower is eliminated" is the key here...

[Mark Bolton]

to state the obvious.

The question to your answer is... "why"?

[Bill Jobe]

.. or when they are running specials.

Bob to the front, please.

Did you know blue LEDs can cause permanent eye damage?

[Bert Kemp]

I don't know where you get your info from But the FAA has total control over airspace . City's Have no say at all as to airspace restrictions. They can write up what ever laws they want but there basicly unenforceable. And the guy who shot a RC aircraft could be locked up for years and thousands of dollars in fines for shooting down an aircraft. Totally against Federal Law to shoot an aircraft out of the sky.

[Jason Roehl]

I don't know where you get your info from But the FAA has total control over airspace . City's Have no say at all as to airspace restrictions. They can write up what ever laws they want but there basicly unenforceable. And the guy who shot a RC aircraft could be locked up for years and thousands of dollars in fines for shooting down an aircraft. Totally against Federal Law to shoot an aircraft out of the sky.

If someone's drone is hovering window-level over my property, you can bet it's coming down.

[Frederick Skelly]

If someone's drone is hovering window-level over my property, you can bet it's coming down.

Yup. At my home too. Or if that drone/model is chasing my livestock like happened to that farmer.

If your model airplane is just flying over my home, I understand the law protects that against trespass and agree. If the drone is obviously snooping or playing pranks like chasing the dog relentlessly - that's my definition of trespass and I'll let the judge sort it out and take my lumps if I'm wrong. Without getting political, I believe very strongly in the old saying "Your rights stop at the end of my nose."

Sorry for going off topic, OP. The post about that model airplane club harrassing that farmer really stirred me up. ;)

[Curt Harms]

Back on topic (;)) we have a cell phone tower less than a mile from our bedroom windows. Red flashing at night, white strobe during the way. About as unobtrusive as i can imagine. Blue lights at airports are taxiway lighting, they're on any time runway lights are on. There may be exceptions but i don't know about them.

[Larry Edgerton]

The courthouse where I am the maintenance tech is 212' tall

Whoa! Must be a "High crime area"

[Myk Rian]

I went round with this extensively many years back. Have a large piece of property that is high on a ridge and there is a line-of-sight tower about a mile away that had a string of issues with the white/white strobe not cycling down to low/medium intensity at night. The day light high intensity strobe from that distance would illuminate the inside of the house (remote so no shades/curtains) like it was daytime. If you were outside it would light up the surroundings as bright as auto high beams that shined everywhere.


Similar to a tower on M59 in Howell, Mi . It got fixed. I don't doubt it interfered with the airport nearby.
That was one bright light.

[Wade Lippman]

Back on topic (;)) we have a cell phone tower less than a mile from our bedroom windows. Red flashing at night, white strobe during the way. About as unobtrusive as i can imagine. Blue lights at airports are taxiway lighting, they're on any time runway lights are on. There may be exceptions but i don't know about them.

I can't see a light during the day, but it is either red or white all night long.

[Jason Roehl]

Whoa! Must be a "High crime area"

https://www.google.com/maps/@40.4182147,-86.8937598,3a,75y,6.87h,106.6t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s9GjPdt5KG-Lnuib2djcTWQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpa noid%3D9GjPdt5KG-Lnuib2djcTWQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dma ps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100% 26yaw%3D107.7594%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13 312!8i6656

It's busy--10 courtrooms. County population is just shy of 200,000, but we're on I-65 between Chicago and Indianapolis, so there's that.

[Scott T Smith]

I have googled this and found absolutely nothing.
There is a tower about 2 miles away from me. Once or twice a month the light on top is red; the rest of the time it is white.
Why?

Wade, I have subject matter expertise in this area (albeit it is a bit dated...).

Per the FAA, ALL towers in excess of 200' must be marked and lit. Daytime markings are alternating bands of orange and white, with night time red lights.

As an alternative, towers may utilize either medium intensity or high intensity strobe lighting day and night. The use of daytime strobe lighting eliminates the need for painting, which saves the tower owner considerable expense.

Towers over a certain height (700' range as I recall) must use high intensity strobe lighting; shorter towers may use medium intensity.

All strobe lighting systems have daytime and nighttime modes, with nighttime being about 1/10 the intensity of daytime.

In certain areas, the FAA may require that a tower use strobe lighting during the day, and red lighting at night so as to minimize distraction to local neighborhoods.

When a high intensity strobe lit tower is stuck on day mode at night, you can see it from MILES away.

Some modern strobe systems include both red and light strobe lights (strobe lights last much longer than the older style incandescent lights), with the low intensity red strobes being operational at night.

In some instances, the FAA may requires towers less than 200' to be marked/lit if they are within an aviation corridor and near an airport.

In some instances, towers grouped together in a field may have shorter towers exempt from lighting if they are in the "shadow" of a taller tower.

This is a photo that I took 1800' up a 2000' tower in White Lake, NC back in 1990. I was replacing parts of the lighting system that had been damaged by falling ice.

425785

[Jim Koepke]

In my younger days climbing my brothers antenna freaked my mother the first time she saw me do it out the kitchen window.

It was only natural for me to become a 'telephone man.'

Now climbing up a short ladder seems to induce a mild vertigo.

jtk

[Ole Anderson]

Once had a project to give alternative lighting to a 100' cell tower/flagpole with a red light on top of it. Located on top of a hill next to a 6,000,000 gallon water storage reservoir. Township supervisor was receiving complaints from a friend, who wasn't even in the township, that the red light was too bright and bothering him (what??). Why he caved, I don't know. Long story short, the tower was close to the local airport so FAA had jurisdiction. I came up with an alternative which was approved which simply lighted the tower and flag from the ground with white floods and provided a certain minimum level of lighting, don't remember the number.

[Wade Lippman]

It was red last night for the first time in at least a month. Valentine's Day?

[Curt Harms]

Once had a project to give alternative lighting to a 100' cell tower/flagpole with a red light on top of it. Located on top of a hill next to a 6,000,000 gallon water storage reservoir. Township supervisor was receiving complaints from a friend, who wasn't even in the township, that the red light was too bright and bothering him (what??). Why he caved, I don't know. Long story short, the tower was close to the local airport so FAA had jurisdiction. I came up with an alternative which was approved which simply lighted the tower and flag from the ground with white floods and provided a certain minimum level of lighting, don't remember the number.

The neighbor could have taken a more direct approach like a guy near an eastern Kentucky airport, don't remember which one. The rotating beacon (green/white rotating light) illuminated his bedroom. Not being one for beating around the bush, he took the most expeditious course of action - he shot it out. Beacon was repaired and he shot it out again. They finally decided it was cheaper to NOTAM the beacon out of service.:)