Basejumper.com - archive

Was wondering what kind of tower this was, am or fm, also am i going to lose my testicles with those white things on the side?

Thanks

that thing sucks dude.... too many ornaments on the tree.. i think thats a cell fone array near the top...

The "dishes" are microwave arrays. Like directionnal ovens, if you like. You just don't want to sit in front of them. Further up, there are some cell phone arrays. The maintainance crews don't even shut them down before working on them... Seems pretty jumpable... Even if it looks a little low for me to really enjoy.

Hi,

Belive it or not but that piece of kit is actually called a Base Station, most cellular networks have thousands of them spread out around the country. Base stations pick up the signal from cell phones & send it back to the central network using microwave links.

The arrays at the top are sectorised transceivers -if its in the states its probably 1900 MHZ, Europe 900MHZ / 1800 MHZ - nothing hugely dangerous about them, except they're not load bearing structures.

The white dishes are Mircowave links & depending on the time of day, number of people making calls & radio traffic its generally not considered a good idea to spend any time in front of them - especially if you don't want the fillings in your teeth to rapidly heat up & expand.

The hut at the bottom on the left will have a backup generator & WILL BE alarmed, more than likely connected to the local cop shop. They're usually built on the cheapest land so I'd imagine the landing area ain't the best either.

hopes thats of use.

You stated that it wasn't load bearing. Would it bear the load of me doing a static line, or will I bring the tower with me

Hi,

The tower itself should be find, they're usually fairly solid. just pick a good solid point on it for exit & attachment of static. Checks the struts & bolts for rust etc. Its the transceivers that I wouldn't lean on. I've marked them in the pic attached. They're not load bearing & they're in use 24/7.

Don't hit any of the mircowave transmitters (white dishes) , they work on line of sight, if you move one of them more than a fraction you'll break the link. Typically this'll pop up on an operators screen straight away. Normally they just sent out a field engineer to fix it. if you move one and then another one - they'll know somebodys arsing up their base station & it won't be the engineers they'll be calling.

If the base station has been vandalised before chances are there will be alarms around the hut, bottom of the tower or on the access gate - just have a good look, you'll spot them easily enough - after all its not Fort Knox.

Enjoy ...

 
......

Just a little story regarding microwave dishes that might make you think twice about jumping past them. There may be a few facst I remember wrongly, but this is how it was told to us when a whole bunch of management was sacked.

I used to work for NYNEX UK as a network engineer and two of the franchise areas that we worked on were kent and the solent.

Right by Cuckholm wood in Kent there is a hill called Bluebell hill I think, and there is an airfield by it that is used by light aircraft. Its pretty high up.

Anyway there was a police helicopter that flew past the hill and down through the valley on what was apparantly a regular flight path, when the electrical system failed and the helicopter started to stall due to loss of power.
A few seconds later the power was restored and the very shaken crew landed at the airfield.
The copter was stripeed and nothing wrong was found, but the next week the same thing happened.

A big investigation followed and the cause was found to be that NYNEX had installed a microwave dish array on a radio mast on the top of the hill to link the Kent franchise area with another close by.

The helicopter flew right through the microwave beam and it caused all the electics to fail untill the helicopter passed out of the beam when it recovered.
The shit that hit the fan was quite impressive...

Anyway. If it can do that to a chopper, what it can do to your body if you pass through the beam could be quite unpleasant.