Thursday, November 19th, 2009
Not that you’d really be able to tell, though. Sutro Tower Inc. has just finished a project that had some of the digital TV broadcast antennas (not “antennae” – that plural term is only used for bugs in our silly English language) gaining a higher altitude.
Not much howver, maybe a seven-percent increase, max. Does that make a big difference? No, not for most people, but at least STI is trying.
Here’s the antenna of KPIX-TV (OMG, that’s the home of Eye on Blogs – big ups, Brittney Gilbert!) a way up top, like 1700 feet above sea level. Now Channel 5 is as high as possible:
Click to expand
The Future is Now, and what’s labeled “CURRENT” is history:
From this:
To this:
Well, they were still wrapping the KPIX, KRON, KTVU antenna assembly, but you get the idea.
So it looks like we’re all set with the Great Digital TV Conversion of 2009. As long as Sutro Tower doesn’t get hit by a shooting star….
…we’ll be all right.
Tags: 11, 12, 14, 2, 2009, 29, 30, 34, 4.4, 41, 42, 45, 5, 65, 66, 7, 9, ABC, analog, analogue, antenna, antennae, antennas, association, auxilliary, AZT, bay area, broadcast, c. w., cable, cbs, channel 2, channel 4, channel 5, channel 7, chronicle, Chronicle Publishing, clarendon, conversion, Cox Broadcasting, digital, dt, DTV, emf, Examiner, Forest Knolls Neighborhood Organization, forrest, Forrest Knolls, Forrest Knolls Neighborhood Organization, fox, gump, High, hill, home, Improvement, inc. sutro tower inc, incorporated, ion, KBCW, KDTV, KFSt TEL, kgo, KGO-TV, KKPX, KNTV, KPIX, kqed, KRON, KTNc, ktvu, law school, low, Midtown Terrace, Midtown Terrace Home Owners Association, mount, nbc, neighborhood, nimbies, nimby, nimbys, Owners, pbs, Peace and Love and Noticing the Details, pelosi, power, radio, re-scanning, red, rescanning, ronald, San Francisco, scan, scanning, Stephen R. Barnett, STI, sutro, sutro tower, Sutro Tower Inc, television, tons, tower, TV, twin peaks, Twin Peaks Improvement Association, UNI, USF, Westinghouse Broadcasting, white
Posted in TV | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, August 12th, 2008
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches 5
and then moves on.
Carl Sandburg
The formerly-controversial Sutro Tower, as seen from the northwest through the window of an Emirates Airbus A380 super jumbo jet.
See the entire Sutro Tower mise-en-scene here, courtesy of Telstar Logistics’ Todd Lappin.
Tags: 2, 4, 5, 7, ABC, airlines, channel, chronicle, Chronicle Publishing, clarendon, Cox Broadcasting, emf, emirates, Examiner, fog, foggy, kgo, KGO-TV, KPIX, kqed, KRON, ktvu, little cat feet, radio, San Francisco, STI, sutro, Sutro Tower Inc, television, Telstar Logistics, Todd Lappin, tower, TV, twin peaks, Westinghouse Broadcasting
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off
Friday, May 2nd, 2008
Local writer Anne Herbert, famous for coining the phrase “practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty,” recently announced on her blog:
The closer I live to Sutro Tower, the more I think it isn’t dangerous.
O.K. then. But who says Sutro Tower is dangerous? Well, for starters, the people who live around it in the Twin Peaks area, in small neighborhoods like Clarendon Heights and Midtown Terrace. Among other things, they worry about EMF radiation. They worry that the tower might fall down.
Sutro Tower at night under a shooting star. Looks safe enough:
But there’s not much they can do about it. The time to do something would have been back in the 1960’s when it was being planned.
So, let’s take a trip down Memory Lane and check out this 35-year-old piece from Stephen R. Barnett. He alleged:
…the project was cloaked from public view by a media blackout, a conspiracy of silence hatched by the TV stations that own the tower and joined by the Chronicle and Examiner.
Them’s fighting words, don’t you think? You might not agree with his conspiratorial tone, but we all can appreciate little nuggets such as:
“It is ridiculous to assume the FCC will require the entire tower to be painted with alternate stripes of white and orange.” Wheat declared. It “will doubtless be painted a neutral color consistent with the surroundings,” he assured the Supervisors.
As you can see, it’s white and orange to keep the FAA happy. Note the newish 125-foot-long, 10-ton auxiliary antenna mounted vertically
More recently, a movement was afoot to prevent the tower from going digital, but that didn’t work out.
There are updates for the digital future slated and there’s a lot of life left in this structure, so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
The sun always shines on TV.
Tags: ABC, channel 2, channel 4, channel 5, channel 7, chronicle, Chronicle Publishing, clarendon, Cox Broadcasting, emf, Examiner, kgo, KGO-TV, KPIX, kqed, KRON, ktvu, law school, nimbies, nimby, Peace and Love and Noticing the Details, pelosi, radio, ronald, San Francisco, Stephen R. Barnett, STI, sutro, Sutro Tower Inc, television, tower, TV, twin peaks, USF, Westinghouse Broadcasting
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
