I retired from AT&T ten years ago. The generator is a Detroit Diesel 471-N either 60 to 75 kw set depending on the alternator. Inside the "camel back" the item you referred to as batteries are actually the set mounted molded case main breakers. It looks like the automatic transfer switch and start batteries have already been removed.I serviced and maintained many of these "Texas Tower" as we referred to them, Microwave sites. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
At 6:30 mark this is the air dryer system, it blows dehydrated air through the microwave waveguides to pressurize them, as well as the horns, and keep moisture out of the system. At 8:30 those round jobs are mercoid switches. They detect loss of pressure in the waveguides and activate an alarm if pressure is lost.
Yep. The Mercoid's are pressure switches. Don't know about AT&T, but at Ma Bell we used to charge the lines with nitrogen to keep moisture out of the conductors. The pressure switches would set off alarms if the charge was lost. They are VERY sensitive and usually work in inches of water or hg ranges. (Why they are so large in diameter.)
It's to bad the analog backup structure is being replaced. It's smart and easy enough to get up and running in a bad scenario. Ohh and that scenario is an emp. Which is where America is completely weak. The facilities were designed to connected hardened facilities accross the US. Some especially way in the mtns. Are stocked up just in case. As long as stupid vandals and breaking and entering explorers stay out.
Did electrical work for a FM broadcaster with equipment at the Crescent City FL AT&T Long Lines tower. Alot of the old electrical equipment had just been bypassed so it was there to see, wish I had pictures. The fuse based electrical distribution panels were the largest I had ever seen. Rusted for sure, but with about 2 days of wire brushing, new fuses & terminals I could get it to work. Your image of the brown board at minute 6:02 "Fuse Board" near the door was were they kept all the spare fuses, because in a nuke blast they knew they would need to replace all the fuses due to EMP. Your Detroit Diesel generator looks to be in far better shape, and the open panel on the top is where the T1 T2 T3 three phase terminals are connected from the building. Interesting factoid, those were designed to run for months after a nuke, and our site had the maint manual on how to perform a "Running Oil Change" without shutting down the generator! Fascinating 1950's engine design the 2-stroke diesel was supercharged. Question: In the corner of the Crescent City bunker there was a 3 foot square metal plate covering an access hatch to the underground water cistern collection system. Do any of the other sites have that? We shine our flashlights down there and it looked like it spanned the full length and breadth of what we would otherwise consider a crawlspace. I was told it was designed by the Army Corp of engineers and was potable. I have been in a bunch of shelters across central Florida and mold is nearly ever-present, however at this site, and in the cistern we observed zero mold. Our site had an addition built out on the east side. I think it was because Crescent City had "live aboard" crews who would check-in/check-out for the week living in the bunker. The other neat factoid was that Crescent City had a little more of the 1950s-1960s era artifacts. Stuff like the 2 phone handsets. The Black colored phone was for ordering pizza and calling Aunt Bea and went out the copper pairs underground and into town. The Brown phone was for calling Washington over the bullhorns top-side over the AT&T LL in the event of a nuclear attack. Amazing. The Crescent City bunker looked to have a concrete roof that was at least 2 feet thick. The walls seemed to be at least 18 inches. The door was not as thick as I would expect, maybe 3 inches solid steel. For as advanced as the site was, they only had an outdoor outhouse in the back. Interesting.
Thanks so much for this video tour. I've always stared at these communications towers as I've travelled the highways and wondered what the inside of those buildings looked like. Now I have a great idea.
Great video very cool to see. A word of warning if you try to get that generator fired up to cover the top plate at 7:30, these terminals aren't for the battery they're the AC supply straight off the alternator and will give you a hell of a whack if it was running. Hopefully its been locked out when its been decom'd.
Long Line sites are always so cool. My first encountering one was up in a backcountry area (but is relatively easily accessible.) I was able to see a lot of this gear up close and it's utterly bonkers the scale of everything. That location still had all the feed lines to the horns on it likely I suspect due to it's remote location is why they were left. Very cool to see it all.
8:33 those are Mercoid pressure switches. Those copper leads aren't wires, they're actually small tubes that feed pressure into the bottom of that housing. If I read right, it seems you set one contact on the gauge inside to the pressure you want the switch to activate at (or deactiate when pressure drops below a certain threshold). Some I have seen allow for temperature ranges. It is evident that this Mercoid switch had many different applications in its hay day so there are many different ones built to many specifications. If those still work, they're easily worth $500 per valve fixture at least.
In 1990/1991 AT&T was replacing these sites with fiber. A friend of mine is leasing a storage lot (for storage of vehicles, he owns a towing company) which started life as an AT&T storage yard for spools of fiber in 1990. AT&T had the entire thing paved in concrete! I guess they could afford that when they charged 30 cents a minute for long distance. (Unknown exactly when AT&T stopped using the site, but I heard they only used it for 3-4 years at most). Some of these sites continued in use until the late 1990s using digital modulation, according to FCC license info I found on the FCC website back then. They originally used AM modulation, with each voice channel modulated on it's own carrier.
....would be fun to re-use these old longline horns for a wifi link :-) should have enough gain on 2.4 ghz I think (somewhere I found a datasheet of those western electric horns)
I am down the road from the Ripley NY site. They took the big feed horn antennas down, built the same and I think that tower is 250 ft or so. It is the only tower left at that site, there were 4 towers. I am 68 and I even remember it as a small child. They use to have some Ham repeaters at that location. DE N2JYG
Pretty cool seeing your setups across the pond, especailly a AT+T long line station. Shame they removed all the old kit for the MW kit, bet those waveguides feeding them were monsters!!! Still a few sites left over here with the long redundant BT Cellnet (now Virgin Media O2) E-TACS kit inside.
That's pretty cool. Those big horns are pretty interesting, don't see those around any more but there are the odd ones in my area. That system at 6:25 might be an air dryer/compressor system, I believe wave guides are kept at a certain pressure to keep any moisture out.
So I have a question that you, as someone in the industry, may have some idea about. I noticed on goggle earth that at the Uniontown long lines site, that at some point (between 2013 and 2015) someone reaimed two of the horns. Is this something that may be done because it interferes either with the cell antennas or the backhaul, or would someone ever think of using those old horns for something?
The horns were apparently reoriented to communicate with another site. I spent 10 years as an AT&T Long Lines Technician and then spent several years traveling the Mid-West doing the instrumentation portion the antenna orientation and cross-polizerization discrimination alignment. I then moved on to other companies and engineering work. Long Liners in those days were something special. Without Long Lines there would have been no Transcontinental Television and Norad would not have had access to the Radar from the Dew Line. The horns are actually a section of a 40 foot parabola and were designed by Bell Labs. Fiber Optic and digital technology made them obsolete in a hurrry.
That old Detroit would probably do well. Definitely would probably need a general service. But it’d be as reliable as anything that’d replace it. Would definitely get a tech in there to service it and get it running,
I would think if you can bar the engine over, it should be gold other than a look at the wiring that critters may have gnawed on or just age on insulation. Sitting there dry and out of the sun etc I wouldn’t expect much.
Thanks for the trip down memory lane. And I learned something. That you apparently run optical from the shack to the antenna now. That I imagine saves a lot of trouble shooting potential interference on the transmission cable / if conversion at the radio head 👍. Not to mention signal loss. Plus lighter weight etc.
These sites were owned and operated by AT&T Long Lines. They provided the country’s microwave backbone prior to the advent of fiber. The layout was as follows: 12 voice channels = 1 “Group”. 5 of these Groups comprised a “Supergroup” which was 60 voice channels. 10 Supergroups = 1 “Mastergroup” which was of course 600 voice channels. These “Mastergroups” were wired to a “FMT” ( frequency modulated transmitter) which modulated 1 channel of the microwave transmitter. At the receive end, it was exactly the same except it had an FMR, FM Receiver. As I recall , their were 10 microwave channels, A, B, C ,D,E, F,G,H, + X, and Y. X & Y were the protect channels and would not be used unless one of the channels failed. When I was involved, I worked in tv network transmission. 4 of the lettered channels were assigned to NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS. (FOX didn’t exist back then.) I would use “X” & “Y” for NFL games which was risky since it left no “protection” channels available in case of equipment failure. Weekends were really crazy back then, with multiple switches occurring to make sure the right tv station got the right NFL game❗️
Pretty cool tech. And stabile. Not fast in comparison to it's little brother system. But in the event of an emp related attack or anything emp related. It would fair much better than the new Junk.
There could be severe internal corrosion from the old coolant. You would want to get a sample tested at a lab to see how bad it is. Then change it. Test the fuel also.
@@michael931 why not just flush it a few times or fill it with citric acid? In my experience most blocks has corrosion to some degree in the water jackets or is it hooked to up some heat exchanger or something?
Everthought about donating a couple of antennas spots to the local ham radio clubs in the area to help with emergency communications. They would be very appreciative of the space.
Wow, I run a extended LAN with two line of sight wireless bridges in them and a wired ethernet 1gigabit ( probably 800 Mb/s) line between the bridges, with an 80mghz wide channel for the bridges.. I get I get 194 Mb/s across the wireless bridges, which is more than enough to carry the full bandwidth of my 60 Mb/s Comcast connection between me and my neighbor. Run the web version of Okula Speedtest off my phone just like that to diagnose them. I was like pfft, that generator that hasn't gotten maintenance since 91 is going to need some serious TLC before it runs again... and then when the camera panned to your 19 inch rack with 1u fiber optic ethernet switches in it I was like, hello! What's this my little friend... I recognize those old fiber connectors. I built some line of sight quad dipoles (aka my own flat panel antennas) once but don't need them any more. Bought some Yagi antenna to replace them but they were fake from China. I've climbed up our Windmill before, it ain't exactly fun. Their tower needs some fresh tower paint. I'd mount the hardware up off the floor, in case the floor ever did flood or get a puddle in it from a leak in the roof, or it seems just metal sitting on concrete tends to rust out at the bottom.
T really knew how to build them back in the day. ('tho I'm sure the gubment was in the details) Those are indeed some tough towers. Even with ATC's lack of maintenance, it's holding up very well. (paint chipping off, ground wires missing, rust in loads of places, etc., etc.) I'm surprised the old microwave cones are still up there. I guess it's not worth the scrape to take 'em down. Shocking there's no telco battery pack in there. As for the generator, you could get a smaller, more efficient one these days from Sams club. (of course none of it would last a week out there before some nutjob stole it.)
i got one of those long lines tower right in the middle of downtown where i live its i never knew what it was for untill a few months ago i knew it had something to do with at&t cause the building it was hooked up to
Is “pressurizing a feed line” comparable to stress testing a system’s connections or interfaces? How much do you have to be an electrician or do you work in tender with the electricians?
These towers used wave guide to feed the horns at the top. Wave guide is just a hollow tube to direct the signal to the antennas. Pressurized air was blown into them to keep moisture out if any of the connections leaked.
Fuel and the tanks would have been removed years ago. American Antenna as the new site owner would not want to have any environmental remediation risk if/when the tanks started to leak. I would not be surprised if AT&T removed them for the same reason before the tower site was sold. The gen sets were probably abandoned in place due to the cost of removing them.
Old diesel fuel actually stays good for a long time. You can find all sorts of videos on youtube of people dragging old diesel powered equipment out of the bush that's been sitting there for 20 years, and if everything else on the engine is good (aka fuel pumps and injection pumps are working), it will run just fine on 20 or 30 year old diesel. Gasoline would be a completely different story, especially any modern gasoline with stupid ethanol in it - it attracts water and gums everything up if it sits for any length of time
@@gorak9000actually ethanol is harmless. It’s the additive put in the ethanol to make it too bitter to be consumed that attracts water and gums up equipment. Stand-alone companies like Ignite racing fuel that isn’t regulated by the us government (because it’s purely off-road fuel) is good for a long time without attracting any water. I recommend looking up Cooper Bogetti on RU-vid and finding his video on the owner of Ignite race fuel. They sit down and talk about what goes into it and common myths and misconceptions bred by misinformation.
The diesel tanks were buried. When the sites were sold to ATC, Ma filled them up with concrete first. The Underground sites had 60~150 thousand gallons on site to run 2~3 weeks after WWIII started. A auxiliary microwave site such as this was {guessing} a few thousand gallons.
@@gorak9000 Old diesel is certainly more stable than newer cracked blends, but they all grow sludge. (algae) The fuel filter will keep it out of the engine (injectors) for a while.
@@crowsnestbroadband I'm a utility locator that looks like a fiber optic handhole, not from pa but i looks like power is 1st energy 3ph according to prints in that area? looks like Verizon has a 1000 pr copper. looking agen at 10:05 power is fed from overhead like my prints show. maybe someone ran empty duct and hasn't pulled fiber yet iv seen that happen.
As a tower manager anything that does not have a lease comes off the tower, the old AT&T Horns and Dish would be removed to save loading on the tower and the junk generator would be haiuled off as well.
Junk genset? Really that’s a GM Detroit Diesel hard to tell but it looks like a 471 from the brief glimpse I got. That is one of the best gensets you can get! We run these older units 24/7 in the marine industry and they are damn near bulletproof! This one looks absolutely mint, the exact opposite of junk. Those GM Delco alternators are great alternators as well.
As a retired AT&T tech, that installed copper T1, then fiber T1, and then fiber 1 or 10G backhaul to towers, and in general, if it was owned by AT&T , and it was going to cost money to remove, unless the space was needed, it was "Retired in place" , as, they didn't want to spend the dinero to do a removal if they didn't have to. To this day, this is evident, as when new "joint owned" pole leads are replaced in my area, AT&T is the last to transfer the cable attachment to a new pole, and you would see a section of the old pole with the through bolt, and AT&T cable hanging next to the new pole. The bureaucratic sloth involved in drawing up a job to do the work, not to mention the requests for funding, was, and I am betting, still is, astounding.
You start the video by just spouting Somerset and Bedford counties as if everyone in the world knows where those are. I'm going to assume you're in Pennsylvania as that's my state too, but really you should not assume everyone can read your mind.
@@the_gold_canopy negative. I l was taught hands on. Started 13 years ago as a PBX installer in school districts. Any certifications I have are industry specific and taken on the job.
