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Thread: Anyone know about the light on cellphone towers?

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Upstate NY
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    3,789

    Anyone know about the light on cellphone towers?

    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?

  2. #2
    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....??

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Feb 2003
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    Lafayette, IN
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    Quote Originally Posted by Malcolm McLeod View Post
    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...
    Jason

    "Don't get stuck on stupid." --Lt. Gen. Russel Honore


  4. #4
    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.

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Lake Gaston, Henrico, NC
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    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.

  6. #6
    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.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Sep 2016
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    Modesto, CA, USA
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    My wife claims the blue light sat the airport only come on in the fog.
    Blll D

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Dufour View Post
    My wife claims the blue light sat the airport only come on in the fog.
    Blll D
    .. or when they are running specials.
    Licensed Professional Engineer,
    Unlicensed Semi Professional Tinkerer

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Dufour View Post
    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.

  10. #10
    Join Date
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    Ingleside, IL
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Schrum View Post
    .. or when they are running specials.

    LOL - good one
    Stand for something, or you'll fall for anything.

  11. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Malcolm McLeod View Post
    I'd bet the FAA would provide the teeniest bit of dispute to this 'zero connection'?

    (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?
    Last edited by Mark Bolton; 02-06-2020 at 2:36 PM.

  12. #12
    I found this:




    So I'm thinking "the need for painting the tower is eliminated" is the key here...
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  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Malcolm McLeod View Post
    to state the obvious.
    The question to your answer is... "why"?

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Matt Schrum View Post
    .. or when they are running specials.
    Bob to the front, please.

    Did you know blue LEDs can cause permanent eye damage?

  15. #15
    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.
    Last edited by Bert Kemp; 02-06-2020 at 10:48 PM.
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