Looking For History of Tower

[93QClassic.com]

Anybody know the history of the old freestanding tower located about 3 miles north of downtown Houston? If you are at 610 and 45 headed north, you can't miss it. See pic...




Although antennasearch.com says it was built in 1970 and is 330 feet tall, it's actually a couple of inches shy of 200 feet now (measured with a laser measure). Locals vaguely recall a top part falling (blew over in a storm) many years ago. The lights haven't been on since 2007 when copper thieves struck, and apparently nothing radio-related has been on it since 1989.



I'm asking because the property this one sits on was recently donated to a ministry I work with. We were going to put an LPTV on it, but that's in limbo and may never happen. We're fundraising for a new church to be built on the property, but what to do with the tower is undecided. Anybody know what it used to be used for? Any ideas what to do with it now?

 

[Unregistered]

Lease it

Looks like a click to the southeast American Tower has a guyed stick that's a bit top heavy. Undercut their rates and grab their tenants. Or find a cell company needing another site.

 

[FortBend]

IIRC this was a Rohn 330 ft self supporting tower that had too much load on the top. Hurricane Alicia either bent or fell it about where the taper stops. They removed the antennas and cut off the damaged part. It was owned by Tom Turner and the tower was right above one of his Sigmor gas stations. I vaguely recall he owned some radio stations, but don't know if any were ever on this tower. KA79142 was the last licensee to use it, and that expired fifteen years ago. If what's left of the tower is over 200 feet, you will have to either get it painted or get a medium intensity stobe on it ASAP. At night you'll need red beacons. If less than 200, don't worry about it. Cell companies might be interested, but they tend to prefer the lower monopoles. I'd offer it out to LPFMs and HAMs. Even at just 200 feet, its close enough to downtown to easily cover half a million listeners.

 

[purpledevil]

Since we're discussing these old towers that seem to sit unused, what can you guys tell me about the one right next to I-45 at Patton St. behind the Pilot truck stop. I've often wondered what its purpose was/is. It stands at least 200 feet itself and has been there as far back as I can recollect.

 

[ContinuousWave]

That tower at the truck stop is 500 feet and is owned by American Tower (was a former Bowen and Smith site, iirc and was loaded with paging, 2way, etc back in the 80s-90s)...it has gotten empty over the last decade...

 

[ContinuousWave]

IIRC this was a Rohn 330 ft self supporting tower that had too much load on the top. Hurricane Alicia either bent or fell it about where the taper stops. They removed the antennas and cut off the damaged part. It was owned by Tom Turner and the tower was right above one of his Sigmor gas stations. I vaguely recall he owned some radio stations, but don't know if any were ever on this tower. KA79142 was the last licensee to use it, and that expired fifteen years ago. If what's left of the tower is over 200 feet, you will have to either get it painted or get a medium intensity stobe on it ASAP. At night you'll need red beacons. If less than 200, don't worry about it. Cell companies might be interested, but they tend to prefer the lower monopoles. I'd offer it out to LPFMs and HAMs. Even at just 200 feet, its close enough to downtown to easily cover half a million listeners.

If thats the tower I am thinking of, it used to have a 500 ft stick right next to it which was taken down in the late 80s/early 90s...the self supporter had lights on it in the 80s but they slowly went off (first the beacon and then the sidelamps)...It has not been serviced in decades....it was bare back in the mid 1990s...(I stopped by it one day in 94-95 and took pics of it then..it was EMPTY)

 

[93QClassic.com]

If thats the tower I am thinking of, it used to have a 500 ft stick right next to it which was taken down in the late 80s/early 90s...the self supporter had lights on it in the 80s but they slowly went off (first the beacon and then the sidelamps)...It has not been serviced in decades....it was bare back in the mid 1990s...(I stopped by it one day in 94-95 and took pics of it then..it was EMPTY)

You are right about long time no service. Here's what it looks like at ground level.

 

[FortBend]

You are right about long time no service. Here's what it looks like at ground level.

View attachment 464

Oh boy, this picture what a sense of de ja vu. I think I worked at this site one day in the late 70s, but can't remember why or for what. There used to be a concrete building on the slab directly underneath the tower.

 

[ContinuousWave]

All I remember ever being on that tower was two way, paging, etc....and the 500 ft guyed one next to it...the sidelamps are still on the self supporter...the lights were illegally off for over a decade...

 

[Former Clear Channel]

Cell companies might be interested, but they tend to prefer the lower monopoles.

As the demand for Cell Phones increase without more frequencies being made available, you have to make the cells smaller by using larger numbers of shorter towers. I heard an industry insider say that eventually there will be a cell station every 1000 meters.

 

[ContinuousWave]

Originally, AMPS (Advanced Mobile Phone Service or 800MHz analog cell service) called for towers about every 12 miles or so..these days with 700-800 and 2 GHz in use, the towers are already less than a few miles apart...Phones have gone from 3 watts out to 600 milliwatts out...
As they wish to load more users in a given area which may require reuse of frequencies, sector antennas and beam tilt as well as lower towers to prevent interference is a given....(which is one reason why cells would not work well on aircraft at 30k feet!! The antennas no longer look "up"!)

 

[93QClassic.com]

Well, as directed by the FCC, ministry volunteers put a fence up around the tower today. Next comes the lighting. The strobe and red globes are still up there, but haven't been on since 2007. The conduit and wiring appear to be intact from 30 feet on up. We just have to replace the electrical conduit and wiring from 30 feet down, which was stolen by copper bandits. You can see where it was cut in the second photo.

All I remember ever being on that tower was two way, paging, etc....and the 500 ft guyed one next to it...the sidelamps are still on the self supporter...the lights were illegally off for over a decade...

CW, the other antenna is actually about two blocks away. It's still there, and fully loaded.

 

[93QClassic.com]

More information has since been discovered about this site. As previously stated, the location had a Sigmor Gas Station up until the mid-70s. When Metro came through a couple years ago building the commuter rail in front of the property, they dug up dirt with fuel deposits. In other words, while the USTs (Underground Storage Tank) were filled with sand when the gas station closed, when it was still operational the tanks were leaking the old lead-based regular fuel. The site is now considered an EPA low priority cleanup site.

According to the EPA, Valero is the predecessor in interest responsible for the USTs (e.g., Sigmor sold to Diamond Shamrock, which sold interests to Valero). Recently, after I had a brief discussion with one of their executives in San Antonio about getting the USTs removed, their lawyer called asking to buy the property. They don't want to pay to clean it up. Its cheaper to buy the contaminated land and let it sit contaminated. The property is NOT for sale!

Our ministry's cleanup of the trash and debris on the property continues. You can now see the concrete slab the service station was once on. Depending on the weather, we're supposed to have someone out this weekend to try to resurrect the old light flasher system.

 

[93QClassic.com]

And I have a question for the electrical whizzes. Anytime I get near this tower to try and take pictures, they come out blurry. Try and take video and it comes out with wavy lines. Could this mean its not properly grounded? Wind friction generating fields of current? There is currently no power or coax wires running to the tower. No grounding other than the four legs set in concrete pylons that goes who knows how deep into the ground. I'm baffled.

 

[stan]

A long overdue update to this thread. Volunteers -- myself included -- have spent countless hours cleaning up this abandoned tower site. The adjacent metal warehouse is going to become a nondenominational church. Another structure will become a neighborhood food pantry. And we have rebuilt from slab up the building beneath the tower. See pic. Engineers will love working here. How many "radio shacks" come equipped with a lounge, kitchenette, and a bathroom with shower facilities?

The tower, which currently reaches 197 feet, is going to eventually be repainted and restored to its original height of 330 feet. The FCC recently issued two construction permits for TV channels to move to this tower, and a translator may also soon relocate here.

How can a low power station assigned to Woodville, TX have its tower in Houston? How does it cover its city of license?

 

[ContinuousWave]

Remember the example of Werlinger jumping a translator from Simonton to Missouri City. Translators can be moved large distances in small hops. You can't hop your tower outside of your current contour. Each time you hop to a new tower, that new tower must be somewhere --even at the very edge -- in the contour of its previous tower. Apparently that's what was done with Channel 4. I forget all the hops, but it was moved to Mt Belvieu, then a cell tower on the east side near BW8, then to Chase Tower, etc. They turn that little LPTV xmtr on for a few hours, then file for silent again.

It is my understanding that the COL on this one is being changed to Aldine, which currently qualifies as nothing is licensed there. The buildout has already started.

It is a lie and a POS...never been built and on the air...they filed a license to cover saying they were on the air at the tower in Baytown..I went to the site and found NO 4 RF signal there.....or antenna or equipment...guess its time to file another Petition to Deny.....they dont deserve the license....lying sack of crap

and good luck getting that tower increased to 330ft..An increase in height means it MUST meet EIA G standards and that stick never will.....its too old....

 

[ContinuousWave]

Here's another mystery that I haven't been able to solve. We have two 1970s era Scala yagi antennas that were removed from the tower. The heavy coax that went up the tower connected to a small divider that split the signal to much smaller coax running to the antennas. One was pointed toward downtown, the other toward the southwest. Both vertical.

At first I though these were for two-way radio, but an engineer calculated the tuned frequency based on the length of the second element. Appears its centered on approximately 212 MHz, which is TV Channel 13. The Scala antenna folks were nice enough to provide service literature on these old relics. These 10 element yagis are for the VHF High Band, with a maximum rated power of 250 watts each. One engineer told me they should be placed in a TV museum.

I contacted folks at KTRK, as well as engineers at 8 and 11. Nobody can recall having an auxillary transmitter at that location. Anybody have any ideas?

Those antennas were likely used on a 216-220MHz telemetry system and had nothing to do with TV broadcast.

 

[rageradio]

Here's a video I recorded at the top... https://youtu.be/6qc6thyyKwg

You can tell from the way those top rails and beams are bent that something fell off of that tower.

 

[purpledevil]

After 10 years of darkness, the tower on Neyland Street is once again electrified and lit up. https://youtu.be/pvKh1R6xRmM

Because it is not painted, it is strobe white light during the day and soft white light at night.

I was going to PM you about this. Noticed the whites beaming from Neyland on the ride home from dinner. You also answered why it's illuminating white lights now, as opposed to the red LEDs on the newer tower just down the road. Way back when, and I'm really dating myself here, you used to have a clear view of the Neyland tower sticking up from behind Northline Mall as you sat in the lot facing the screen at the Airline. My God, that's been over 35 years ago now. Kind of makes me wonder if you can sit in the parking lot of that office complex and still see Neyland at night, given the obstructions that are likely there in the line sight of view now, plus the reduction in height of the tower itself.

Has the tower ever been painted, Joe? I don't remember it ever being a candy cane, but I strongly remember it once faded up and down with red lights back then.

I've noticed the 911 tower is also flashing a white strobe on top, instead of the normal red LED. This has been going on for around 3 weeks, and they keep alternating between white and red every couple of days.