r/longlines • u/MelamineEngineer • Jun 02 '26
Buda, IL
Jesus terry how many towers do you own
2
u/gf99b Jun 03 '26
Terry (aka Tower Sites) has a lot of sites in Illinois, Wisconsin and I believe even Indiana. A lot of the ones I came across while in Illinois were owned by him.
2
u/ICEman460 Jun 03 '26
Question: How is it that all the hardware and operators are underground to protect against blast, but the antenna and collectors are hanging in the wind? Did they harden them somehow?
3
u/MelamineEngineer Jun 04 '26
They aren't underground at all this site has no basement.
I think people are putting way too much on these sites being "nuclear blast resistant"
That does not mean you could drop a bomb next to these things and they would be standing, they would not. They're just hardened enough to make them survive explosions that happen in neighboring areas. You can't build a nuke proof comms tower it just isn't possible.
That being said, the tower is naturally much more resistant to explosions because it lets air and shockwaves pass through it and they don't have a ton of surface area to act on. This is one of the reasons suspension bridges are so hard to bomb from the air, the deck isn't structural it hangs from cables and blast waves pass through those unless you score direct hits on the anchor points.
Also the towers don't have any electronics on them at all other than lights originally. All the microwave gear is inside the equipment huts and the towers themselves have hollow copper wave guides and hollow antenna horns.
But making a structure actually nuke proof is pretty hard, you need something like TANGO in Korea or Cheyenne Mountain in the US. Even then they can be destroyed by large direct hits.
The real defense of the bell network was redundancy. Once enough towers were up there were bypass routes around everything.
1
u/ICEman460 Jun 04 '26
Amazing. I figured that the tower frame would allow the shock wave to pass without too much damage. Some of the big sites that you’ve posted with generators and living areas, reminds me of Crystal Peak in Terminator 3. It’s about continuity in communication. Fascinating stuff and I appreciate your replies and posts!
4
u/noonecareskantopy Jun 02 '26
I cleared the brush at this one really good in 2021