Sears Tower Getting Ready to put Antenna Back

[Tom Line]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

As a followup to my last post on the Sears Tower Antennas, here are a few pictures and some updates. The new antenna is scheduled to go back up next Sunday morning. As prep was being performed on the roof, broadcasters shifted operations to the west tower. That allowed me access to the roof for a few minutes with the people working on the prep. This is a rare occasion due to the RF exposure on the roof.
The EastTowerladder.jpg is the maintenance ladder for the East digital antenna mounts that are accessed on the outside of the tower. The ladder is attached to that assembly.
The eaststeerable.jpg shows our steerable truck pickup microwave in the center of the picture. The antenna is inside the weather housing and rotates via remote control from the studio. It can pickup most of the area except those in the lakefront Grant Park area. For those locations we switch to a horn antenna mounted on the east side of the east tower.
The Easttowerdigant.jpg shows the second digital antenna structure on the east side of the east tower. If you look closely, you will see what appears to be a walkway above the pipe. This is more for ice protection that will fall off the tower above. This prevents damage to the pipe which is actually 6 1/8" hardline coax. Our east facing horn antenna is in the center of the photo.
The last photo, westtowerfull2.jpg, shows our digital main antenna to the left of the tower with a "hat" on top. Again that is ice protection, not an RF assembly. The picture is taken through all of the two way radio antennas mounted on the roof garage. Since all of the broadcasters were on that tower, we could not cross the center line of the roof.
The blue lighting is support for Women's Cancer Awareness.

You know you are a true tech geek when you end up on top of the Sears tower, and the only pictures you post are the ones of the radio antennae.