Added new tower to the stable

Added new tower to the stable - updated 2/15

Our current tower (leased space) is on the right, OUR (as in ownership) tower is on the left.



It stands at 580' tall and it has 6 1/2' faces, the thing is HUGE. Originally built for wireless cable access, but the company folded and the tower has been locked in a legal battle for 5 years until Decemeber when it was auctioned off and we purchased it (wont give exact #'s but more than $100k).

Unfortunantely whomever built the tower did not properly ground it nor the building, also years of neglect have taken it's toll on the building itself. I spent most of yeesterday and part of today just cleaning. I have a lot of work ahead inorder to get the building into somewhat of a NOC friendly shape.. Grounding, halo, racks, getting rid of all the cable tv equipment, ladder racks, lighting, heating, cooling, battery backup, generator, alarms, antennas, radios, build backhaul connections, move access points, move the 80 some customers to the new access point & re-aim customer antennas, etc.. Oh and it all has to be done by April because our lease is up on the other tower

I have started working on the interior of the building, I fixed the lighting and added another set of fixtures, began tracing some of the wiring issues, started on the internal halo, and built a couple racks so I can start getting an idea where everything is going. Ladder rack will be in Friday or Monday so I can get that hung.. Already have all the 2.4ghz antennas (3 vertical and 2 horizontal sectors). We will be using Redline 5.8ghz radios for the backhaul. We are also putting in some 700mhz and 900mhz equipment as well..

A few more pics:
Tower base
Cable TV eq.
Channel in floor, I couldn't figure out a good use for it so I concreted it in.
Halo
Halo junction closeup

Some carnage from past lightning strikes:
Scorch mark on wall
Couldn't figure out why the AC didn't work...
Or the phone...

If there is interest I will update this post with progress pics of the buildout.

Sure, post pics of it. Pics are good.

What City and state is this?

Looks good man! You got a heck of a deal on that thing, even at 100k or so. You will be pleased with 580', what used to be the challenge of getting high enough, now becomes dealing with picking up to much junk from being to high... Just something we all have to deal with.

Our main feeder tower is 550', with our 2.4 and 900 equipment sitting on top, and then tons of backhauls along the sides of the tower shooting off to our various other rural towers. Im not sure what your highest tower was using 900, but we are able to get a coverage area of 40 miles in any given direction from our main tower at 500' with 900mhz.

Have fun climbing

here are some pics from our beast that I put all our equipment on

I love climbing

ashenfang said:

Looks good man! You got a heck of a deal on that thing, even at 100k or so. You will be pleased with 580', what used to be the challenge of getting high enough, now becomes dealing with picking up to much junk from being to high... Just something we all have to deal with.

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BINGO! That is really the problem we have in our area, it is highly competitive, Wireless, Cable, and DSL is now available. There are a total of 6 WiSP's in this area and one in particular that absolutely has illegal equipment (over wattage). We cannot deploy within about 1 mile of their tower because we cannot penetrate their RF spewage. I can see one of their ap's INSIDE of my office without an antenna at 7 miles away.. We have a 300' tower in the middle of no-where that we bought to do our backbone, from that tower we can see 2.4ghz AP's that are over 30 miles away

The height is a blessing and a curse, just have to find a happy middle ground..

Our main feeder tower is 550', with our 2.4 and 900 equipment sitting on top, and then tons of backhauls along the sides of the tower shooting off to our various other rural towers. Im not sure what your highest tower was using 900, but we are able to get a coverage area of 40 miles in any given direction from our main tower at 500' with 900mhz.

Have fun climbing

here are some pics from our beast that I put all our equipment on

Click to expand...

I only have one 900 ap (waverider) and it is at 70' in the middle of town, we have dense foliage cover (canopy at 60'), so we are only getting about 1-1.5 miles with an antenna stuck in the window, and about 4-5 miles with an external antenna. I can't say we have been overly impressed with the cost of the waverider gear, it is really just too pricey for the market that we are in ROI on the radio alone is 15months and thats before install costs or bandwidth costs..

What 900 gear are you using?

We have not decided on what type of 700mhz gear we are going to put up, We purchased a 20mhz chunk of the lower 700 spectrum for most of southern Missouri and we are also with a group that owns more areas in central & northern Missouri. The radio manufacturers are claiming that it will be possible to service customers with an indoor antenna at up to 30 miles, and that it will be possible to achieve a 30Mb over-te-air throughput.. I will believe it when I see it, I cannot see 30megs being packed into a 10mhz wide channel at 700mhz..

I wish our community pictures looked like that. We have fairly sparse population density, most towns are 2-3k and 4-10 miles apart, so we have a bunch of small towers to service communities and a chain of larger towers for our backhaul.

900mhz Omni, 2.4ghz (now a 5.8g, old picture) backhaul, and 2.4 horizontal omni. Ignore the AP beeing taped to the tower The other admin broke both mounting brackets somehow, but it's since been replaced.


View from tower 200'r, not many houses..


View from 300'r (one mentioned above) closest town is 10mi.




And what most of the areas I cover look like (yes there is a town there) also 200'

Wow I thought we had a lot of trees

We are using modified versions of canopy (cyclone) for our AP's and Backhaul units, all in 2.4ghz and 900mhz (horizontally polarized)

You have AIM or other messenging service?

ashenfang said:

Wow I thought we had a lot of trees

We are using modified versions of canopy (cyclone) for our AP's and Backhaul units, all in 2.4ghz and 900mhz (horizontally polarized)

You have AIM or other messenging service?

Click to expand...

My aim is BPSRob11

Our 900 is vertical, I would have liked to have gotten a horizontal omni, but at that time the antenna was over 3k, the vertical was about half.

I didn't know cyclone (lastmilegear?) had the 900's available.

I forgot to answer the question above to where we are at, We service the BootHeel area of Missouri.

Racks are now in place. I set them 46" from the back to the wall and 30" from the side to the wall. This should allow me to get a ladder beside & behind once equipment is there.

Rack with Isolation pad


Both racks mounted and leveled. The piece of equipment infront of the rack will be moving.

Ladder rack showed up late today so I didn't get too much done..



OX-Bar temprarily secured to rack and angle iron attached to wall. The racks are 100% isolated. Also notice the AC and vent fan have been removed.


OX-Bar mounting hardware, notice the isolators to keep the bar from contacting the rack, and the sleeves to keep the u-bolts from contacting the bar.

Looking good! Do you have a pipline in there, or are you backhauling it in?

This will be backhauled, for the time being we'll use Redlines, but we are looking at some licensed 6ghz stuff, we are also looking at the posibility of bringing in 3 wireless DS3's, but the eq cost is about $25k, $2500/mo transport per DS3, and $80/Mb. Our prices have really began to plummet in this area, about a year ago I was quoted $3500/T1, now I can get a 20Mb/s pipe for $5k/mo.

I was able to enlist the help of the CO Tech. today, I kinda felt bad for getting his hands dirty

I wasn't able to finish today, got a late start and they sent me the wrong j-bolts to attach the ladder rack to the braces.

I like this ladder rack a little better, before at all junctions I had to make a short jumper of #6 to bond the pieces together, now they have set screws that make the connection.

East wall braces in place, also cable entrance is done.


South wall, and the CO Tech., I owe him a beer or five for giving me a hand today.


Ladder rack set ontop of braces.


I still have a few pieces to set, the ladder rack will also be isolated from any other metal object. After the rack is done the next thing to do is all the bonding so that any surge goes where I decide..

Ddruid_SMP said:

This will be backhauled, for the time being we'll use Redlines, but we are looking at some licensed 6ghz stuff, we are also looking at the posibility of bringing in 3 wireless DS3's, but the eq cost is about $25k, $2500/mo transport per DS3, and $80/Mb. Our prices have really began to plummet in this area, about a year ago I was quoted $3500/T1, now I can get a 20Mb/s pipe for $5k/mo.

Click to expand...

you let me bring a chair and a desk and minifridge & microwave and I will be a 24/hour watchguard for bandwidth as salary.

9mmCensor said:

you let me bring a chair and a desk and minifridge & microwave and I will be a 24/hour watchguard for bandwidth as salary.

Click to expand...

Rofl, I may be right beside you. Once complete I imagine that the building wont be too bad to work in. Hopefully we can get some of the tower space leased pretty quickly..


Starting to look like a cable rack..



Closeup of the isolation pads and sleeves for the j-bolts.

Thanks for this post!
Very interesting to see this stuff.

turd said:

Thanks for this post!
Very interesting to see this stuff.

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Thanks,
To me this is the fun part of my job, designing and building networks from the ground up (though I prefer to work in new construction rather than remodels).

I figure we'll start hanging antennas in a couple weeks, I have a TON of grounding/bonding work to do first though. When they constructed this site they drove 3 - 8 foot ground rods for the tower using #6 copper and they drove 1 rod for the power, but they never bonded the tower ground to the power ground. Every time the tower got hit by lightning it was being directed through the equipment and into the power system due to the ground potential difference... I will be building a ground ring around the tower and building, I will likely have 6 around the tower and 8 around the building, all will be 30' long and tied together using 4/0 copper. In addition all 6 of the guy points must have 2 rods driven each.. I am trying to get out of doing that task though, I hate driving ground rods and 26 30' ground rods do not sound fun at all, but you watch, I'll be posting a pic of me on a ladder with a jackhammer driving ground rods and slinging 4/0



Progress is slowing down a bit, I am mostly done with the cable rack until tuesday. Today I put on my electricians hat and started tearing out some of the old wiring. I've not decided just how much power I will run to each rack, going by our current load from the other tower (13amps) a single 20amp circut will suffice, but I am leaning towards running 2 20amp circuts per rack..

Before:


After:

turd said:

Thanks for this post!
Very interesting to see this stuff.

Click to expand...

I second that!

That 4/0 hard copper must be tough to work with.