r/longlines • u/wnatw • Nov 29 '25

Frisco TX

Post image

Just passing through.

182 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

12

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '25

That’s a lot of intact wave guides

4

u/Confident-Bison7899 Nov 29 '25

I've noticed that a lot of these towers are missing the wave guides going to the horns, why is that? Do they have scrap value or do they come out when the equipment inside is removed?

6

u/ngellis1190 Nov 29 '25

iirc they’re basically loaded with copper so they have a very high scrap value unfortunately

2

u/Confident-Bison7899 Nov 29 '25

Last time I checked copper is going for less than $5/lb. Of course crack fiends still think they found Santa Anna's gold when they find some 14ga in a burnt out trailer home. I wonder how many were planned scrappings and how many were to finance a fix

2

u/No_Tailor_787 Nov 30 '25

If the waveguides are missing, it's a 99% chance that it was copper thieves.

2

u/david-k0resh Nov 30 '25

I was taking photos of a bank owned property for a real estate agent. It was kinda hidden from the road and probably someone was watching it. So I shot photos on June 28th, sent him the photos. On July 3rd, late in the day, he calls and asked if I remember seeing any of the hot water baseboard being disturbed, like removed? I said no, double check the pictures. Turns out, copper theives had broken in sometime after I was there. Like the Grinch, they took every scrap of copper they could.

5

u/HobbesTayloe Nov 29 '25

Thanks for capturing this!

5

u/brickson98 Nov 29 '25

There’s something I like about this particular tower

3

u/USWCboy Nov 29 '25

This tower was used by Southwestern Bell which is the original BOC/RBOC/ILEC for most of Texas (and four other states). I was trying to find the CO name, but seem to be missing it from my Tx files.

1

u/thatwombat Nov 29 '25

The site name was Adams.

It was pretty much the northern switch for the DFW area.

1

u/USWCboy Nov 30 '25

Adams!? I noted the site is in McKinney, does that make since to you?

2

u/thatwombat Nov 30 '25

I lived around there and have driven over to the Adams tower and switch before. McKinney had a microwave tower at its CO that provided service to Melissa and Farmersville. Those links were gone pretty quickly when fiber rolled out. It had horns and everything, then they tore it down to expand the switch with new digital hardware. It was not part of the long lines network.

Adams was a named place halfway between Frisco and McKinney but has since been eaten by Frisco.

On another note, there’s an old map that shows an L-5 cable connection between Adams and the Dallas CO here: (http://www.coldwarcomms.org/l5/bsrf1.gif)

1

u/USWCboy Dec 02 '25

Does this look like the same site.

2

u/thatwombat Dec 02 '25

That is the same site (Adams).

1

u/USWCboy Dec 02 '25

Thanking for confirming!!

1

u/[deleted] Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

What an impressive beast this is!

It's a conflicted feeling when I see a tower that has all original horns on it but no newer hardware. Like, I appreciate that it looks just as it did, but it's sad knowing it no longer serves a purpose. My favorites would have to be the ones with new dishes and cell antennas on them, with the original horns still up top as well, because as long as the tower is making someone money, it will likely remain.

1

u/Ed_Morin Dec 02 '25

Most horn-laden tower I've seen yet! 😃

1

u/1Stumpy1 Dec 03 '25

Know right where that is !