what are these strange things this tower?

[sum1sneaky 0]

Three of these look identical and are 10' off the ground, one mounted to each of the three load bearing supports. At night there is a green led looking light inside each sphere. The bottom of each sphere thing looks gold to the eye - but my camera flash makes them look like clear glass. Cable TV type wire comes out of each one.

[hookitt 1]

Look at it through your video camera set to night shot. Tell me what you see.

If it emits infrared you'll see it. If you see it with night shot, it sees you and records it.

That's a guess. I can't tell a thing from the pictures.

My grammar sometimes resembles that of magnetic refrigerator poetry... Ghetto

[Zennie 0]

Yep. They're surveillance cameras... but you probably already knew that.

I like hookit's suggestion to take a look at them with night shot on... so you can see if it has night viewing capability... but my guess is that they probably don't.

Most surveillance cameras are NOT actively monitored. They're generally on a tape loop which is only reviewed if someone notices damage or something else suspicious.

It would be kind of neat if someone could figure out a way to temporarily fog up the domes so that they can't film you. Actually, a water spray would probably work too.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[sum1sneaky 0]

Thanks guys, you've confirmed my suspicions. They also seem to have some sort of proximity function because they would emit clicking noises faster and faster the closer I'd get!

I don't have a video camera but I don't think it's worth it anyway - it's super hot (radiation hot) up there - I could feel it from the ground! I was just curious if people had seen these things before.

I agree they probably don't even watch all the tape those things generate - but it's strange they put them on this tower in the first place - it's just a strange tower all together I guess.

Cheers,

sum1

[Zennie 0]

Quote

They also seem to have some sort of proximity function because they would emit clicking noises faster and faster the closer I'd get!

Interesting, but it makes sense. Only turn the thing on when something gets close.

- Z
"Always be yourself... unless you suck." - Joss Whedon

[LouDiamond 1]

Those are canon VC C4 cameras. They are used for video conferencing and surveillance applications. They are very good cameras and function very well in low light and can turn almost 360 degrees. They can be remote monitored from practically anywhere, even around the world if configured properly. If they are indeed motion activated I would assume that when activated they also begin recording and/or providing live feed to a person monitoring. Chances are you've been recorded on to tape already.

"It's just skydiving..additional drama is not required"
Some people dream about flying, I live my dream
SKYMONKEY PUBLISHING

[base311 0]

Hey man... how are things??

Just looking at it I have to wonder what the hell the person specifying the system was thinking when he thought that three cams were necessary (okay I can understand a little redundancy... but three???? at ten feet?? I mean they have a pretty wide viewing angle - what's with three??) I just think it's weird, that's all. If I saw that at 250-300' plus I'd say it was a tv station that needs a weathercam perspective of some downtown area for the evening weather report.... as we have several of those down here. But the interesting part, to me, is these are 10' off the ground. Either someone had a huge zero-based budget to spend... or someone really wants to keep up with what is going on 10' off the ground at this tower. Who owns it?? put the fcc number into the search engines and see what you come up with. Looks weird to me. It must be a tower engineer that's been burned by someone in the past... I mean come on.. what's the chance of even seeing someone on the camera???

These days we've run across these cams on construction sites. Typically I think they only record during work operations - mainly to solve liability questions in the case of crane operator or ground crew errors... at least that's the impression I get from lurking the crane operator sites. I don't even think these things run at night. That is to say... I don't even think they're intended as a security function (to thwart folks like us....) I think they're more of a documentation tool for the company attorneys of any given construction or running project. That's just MHO

If you say it was hot... how do you know this? Did you see some power output posted somewhere?? Were you wearing a dosimeter?? or are you just in tune with your environ. enough that you can feel the power radiating from it (and this is not a slam as I believe humans can detect shit like that, but have no proof.)?? If it's radiating the countryside with lots of bad stuff, then I wonder what the utility of cameras there would be anyway... how well do they actually record? Anybody seen a tape of their recordings?? Beuhler?? just curious.

I've never seen any tape of evidence recorded by such cams.... has anyone? Could they be dummy deterents? Let's see the tape.

love and coax,
Gardner

[sum1sneaky 0]

Yeah, there's three alright - and you can see in that first pic that they're mounted at the first parallel section of tower (the supports are shown narrowing down towards the base). I think you're right about them being canon security cameras: Canon VB-C10R

I don't know if it's radiation because I didn't have my dosimiter that day, but there's definitely thermal HEAT coming down from above - I could feel the warmth on my face and the backs of my hands as I approached the tower - this is despite the 45 degree night and a 10-15mph wind! Also, after walking around this tower for around 5 minutes I felt a little dizzy and acquired a mild headache that lasted about an hour.

Other strange stuff here:

The signs saying stay out due to high radiation etc... were mounted on the fence to the area as usual, the weird thing is that this fence is nearly 3km away from the tower! There are no "no trespassing" signs anywhere - which I thought was a bit strange. There were 9 unique locks on the chain closing their fence, and someone before me who has a combo lock was a little lazy. But why are there 9 different groups of people that are distant enough that they can't share combos/keys?

After the gate, there's a long road that sees lots of HEAVY truck traffic. I know this because I used to build roads and have been a tracker for some time. I know it sounds strange to track cars, but I do it and I can tell this road is approached often by heavy multi-axle trucks. It is constructed better than most county roads and has no organic material in the dirt - it's a high dollar rock road.

At the top of the road is a large turn around followed by a huge leveled area on the mountain that is approximately 1 acre - the strange thing: it's solid stone that's been blasted away. The entire base is solid rock. Large above ground pipes (8-14 inches dm) run up the mountain and when they get to the flat stone area they become covered by a concrete shelf type thing that goes all the way into the building.

The building is a little different than most too. The building is about 20 yards long, 10 yards wide, 15 feet tall, and it's made of steel! All the walls of the building are metal and have those protrusions to diffuse heat that are used in the big transformers you see outside big buildings. There are no signs on the building, they clearly assume all the danger has been disclosed at the entrance to the compound.

Next to the big metal building is an array of satellite dishes - not like your little cable dish, more like the old ones. There were 5 or 6 different ones, varying a bit in size and look, and a couple looked like they'd just been put there temporarily (they were on portable tripod like stands with just a small insulated wire - sort of like the black cable tv wire - leaving and going into a large locked job box). Some of the wires all bundled together and were terminating in an inverted rubbermaid bin that had a hole cut in the bottom for the wires to enter - I have to say this had me stumped. One of the satellite dishes looked expensive, I don't know much about these things - but it looked way fancier than most I've seen and I just have this hunch it was super expensive.

The tower is not insulated from the ground and seems a little over built. By looking at the base you'd think the thing was 600' tall - it's about 200'. There are larger diameter than the guys on my favorite 640'er, and there's 5 sets in 200'! The stuff up top looked really different than most stuff I've seen too, but my flash didn't reach that far to get pics and I didn't feel like hanging around enough to climb it. You'd think they're expecting 200mph winds or something.

There was not an FCC# posted conspicuously - but I did write down a number found in one place and rubbed the logo found on a pretty fancy lock at the gate - I'll have to do some more research for this stuff.

311's right on, definitely no short budget at this strange tower.

[sum1sneaky 0]

now I feel silly for asking: Videoalarm Superdome Outdoor Wall Mount.
Jeez though, the prices on this stuff are amazing!

[base311 0]

O-kaaaaay... so there's a roughly $10,000 surveillance system at the base of a 200' tower. Aside from the sheer curiosity factor, isn't this a little low to be worth the effort/exposure?? Surely there are better towers to be had elsewhere.

Intriguing description, though. Sounds like some sort of conspiracy to irradiate the populace to me. It couldn't be too much of a coverup, though, 'cause one would figure if the surveillance system was "all that," then captors dressed in black would have jumped out from beneath well-camouflaged secret passageway doors with guns drawn and nabbed you then and there when you took photos of their nifty camera trio. Yup... must not be much of a big deal. Go find something a little taller.

Aviation sectionals are your friend,
Gardner

edit:p.s. the beefy cabling and structure is probably for ice