Towers

mdoverstreet · 31-Mar-2012, 3:09 AM

Hey ya'll! I wasn't sure where to ask this question, so, I guess, it might need to be moved. For what are these towers used?

In this picture, there is another one just like it across hwy 65 on top of another hill and they look like they are facing each other.

This one is a little hard to see. It is not on anyone's property that I could tell. There's just the tower and a very small building. I thought it might have something to do with the crappy local cable tv service.

This one is beside the road and also has a little building beside it.

Thanks ya'll!

Electron · 31-Mar-2012, 4:27 PM

The top picture , the two black dishes are microwave relay , could be tv signals relay or other communications relay. The picture in the middle is likley a retransmitter for two way communications radios. The bottom picture is telecommunications microwave relay mostly telephone.

Electron · 31-Mar-2012, 4:47 PM

Cable Tv is a sealed distribution system. By that I mean that the signals are contained in the coax wires. Some cable systems get sloppy and have the coax distribution system the trunk lines open or broken and do not do the repairs. This allows the signals in cable tv trunk lines to radiate out in to the big wide world ( called egress ) and also intrefering signals to enter into the cable tv system (called ingress ). Also some cable companies do not do a good job of balancing the system or replacing componets like trunk line amplifiers when they go bad. Some cable companies see the cable customers as a cash cow and won't do any thing until the money starts to run dry or the stink from the irarte customers is so bad that even they cant stand it. Then they send out mailers to the cable customers and the non cable customers saying they are doing system up grades.

mdoverstreet · 31-Mar-2012, 6:00 PM

Cool, now I know. I've been curious about them for a long time. Thanks! Those towers are on top of a hill overlooking the town of Marshall, AR, in the Ozark Mountains, about 80 miles north of Little Rock, AR.

mdoverstreet · 31-Mar-2012, 6:33 PM

The cable co up there is so far behind in the times. They are still an analog system. They have two movie channels, HBO and Cinemax. I know cable cos around Little Rock and such, when they were still analog, the movie channels had a scrambled look if a person didn't subscribe to them, much like the scrambled look of the VideoCipher II days of C-band. The cable co there don't, and never did, have that. They have a filter of sorts that runs interference. The picture can be seen just a little. Its like trying to watch an analog channel from way, way far off. The sound is like an AM station with nothing on it. They could definately do better, especially for what they charge people per month.