Re: Cellphone tower coverage Qs [Telecom]

There's a tower disguised as a fake tree near Bainbridge NY which is twice as high as any of the surrounding trees. Why did they bother?

R's, John

John, that's normal procedure at Ma Bell: you have to plan for future growth. ;-)

Well, yeah. But everything else in Las Vegas is fake too, so why not a fake pine? Makes as much sense as a fake pirate ship in a fake lake, or a fake gondola in a fake Venetian canal.

Neal McLain

They also build a lot of real structures specifically to hide a cell tower inside them. The clock towers and church steeples are the most common, but architectural details like a "Lighthouse" at a self- storage facility are a nice way to hide an antenna. Which you would miss if you didn't pick out the panel antennas on the sides.

But the same storage place is pushing the rule of 'hidden in plain sight' to the absurd when a huge and not very well camouflaged "flagpole" tower popped up at the other end of their property...

Actually, that's what they count on - it doesn't have to be a real good disguise job, it just has to look like a "not-a-tower" to the casual observer. Break up the classic silhouette and it disappears.

Those of us who know what to look for can't avoid seing them. But we are not the norm - that's like asking a cowboy not to spot a stray steer waaaay off in the distance, it becomes ingrained.

You can ask the average person with no telecom or architectural or Ham Radio experience "What's different about that Clock Tower?" and they flat out can not 'see the forest for the trees' till you point out all the little clues you saw instantly. Then you can almost watch that metaphoric little light bulb above their head blink on.

The common solution to that problem is to plant a few real pines or palms or whatever around the fake one (tower) so it blends in.

But that only works where you have a water source available to make it a little Oasis. They do occur naturally, but far more often they were manmade long ago, you find a house and a water well under that patch of green.

Now if you place that pocket forest next to an established rest area or service station (like Halloran Summit to pull one name along the way to Vegas out of my...) it would be believable.

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