Is there a way or external link to show the tower locations?

[breadtrk]

Is there a way to have the towers appear as you zoom out on a map, progressively showing more towers the more you back off?

Perhaps someone knows how to get the data as an overlay in Google earth?

 

[w8jjr]

Is there a way to have the towers appear as you zoom out on a map, progressively showing more towers the more you back off?

Perhaps someone knows how to get the data as an overlay in Google earth?

There is one for Michigan. (see MPSCS in database) It could be done in Google Earth, as location of each site is in FCC database.

 

[fineshot1]

Is there a way to have the towers appear as you zoom out on a map, progressively showing more towers the more you back off?

Perhaps someone knows how to get the data as an overlay in Google earth?

Although it is not a map the FCC website has a "Antenna Structure Registration" DB you can search
based on a variety of parameters for towers that are FCC registered.

ASR Registration Search

 

[breadtrk]

I have found the FCC data base but do not know how to make a GE overlay with that data. The RR database has the maps I want but they only show 1 county at a time. I figured that since someone here knows how to do that, that maybe they would know how to make the surrounding counties towers appear as you zoom the map out.

Am I making sense?

 

[fmon]

Is there a way to have the towers appear as you zoom out on a map, progressively showing more towers the more you back off?

Perhaps someone knows how to get the data as an overlay in Google earth?

This overlay was created by someone in Virginia (sorry, I forget who).

Some are listed via the call sign in database for conventional frequencies or site name for trunk systems. Click the tower and do Proximity Search to produce lat lon.

 

[mdulrich]

FCCInfo - Now on Google Earth!

AntennaSearch - Search for Cell Towers, Cell Reception, Hidden Antennas and more.

Mike

 

[qlajlu]

Is there a way to have the towers appear as you zoom out on a map, progressively showing more towers the more you back off?

Perhaps someone knows how to get the data as an overlay in Google earth?

There is a way using the RR Database, but it presents a much more narrow view than what you want, perhaps.

When you are in the frequency section of a system in the Database, you can click on the Site name (which will be underlined) and that will take you to a separate window giving you some more information concerning that site including the Call Sign of the site and if the Call Sign is underlined click on it. This will bring up a third window with pins showing the tower location on a Google Map which you can zoom in and out. If there is more than one tower in the system, such as a simulcast system, all the towers will be shown as you zoom out.

What is cool about this is that you have a satellite view option so you can zoom in and see the actual tower itself.

If you are looking for all kinds of towers (other than those used in the systems in the Db) then this information is useless to you.

 

[breadtrk]

I have found the view you speak about qlajlu, I want that view to also show the public service towers in surrounding counties as you zoom out to see the counties. Seeing more towers on one page like that would help in determining where to aim a yagi. Say there were 3 towers to the west with one being a station of interest, then take just 1 tower to the north of interest. I would choose the west with a yagi of a bit more gain in hopes the out of county traffic will fill in the dead spots from the primary channel. This is possible now but you have to either have multiple tabs open, switching back and forth, or do as I have done and print all the counties of interest, after spending hours trying to get the scale the same on all of them and them paste them to a poster board. Real PITA.


mdulrich, Great linkage, but no PS towers. I don;t use my $500.00 scanners to listen to AM, FM, ASR, or TV stations. I wish there a way or tutorial somewhere that I could use to learn how to that but add Public Service towers into the mix.

Great responses so far, we are getting closer I think.

 

[mdulrich]

mdulrich, Great linkage, but no PS towers.

On AntennaSearch.com some PS towers are listed. Most PS stuff is shown under antennas.

Mike

 

[loumaag]

I have found the view you speak about qlajlu, I want that view to also show the public service towers in surrounding counties as you zoom out to see the counties. ...

While I understand what you are looking for, you have to understand that the site can't support it. Indeed no one can; as no one knows what you (specifically) are looking for except you.

Consider this from a general viewpoint. You want to find the towers that deal with a specific agency; these could be either a TRS or a conventional system. Since the likelihood is that separate locations have separate licenses, the license based tower representation that we already supply will not work for your purpose, as you point out. That said, just what other licenses would you have us show? How do they get limited to only the entity that you are looking for since all of that information is license based?

If everything is included, you end up with the same thing that AntennaSearch (linked above) supplies, we wouldn't want to duplicate that effort. Just for an example, I took my boyhood home address (a suburb of New Orleans) and ran it through AntennaSearch. In the 4 mile radius it returned 122 towers and 653 antenna locations taking about 2.5 minutes to process. The result you are looking for (if you used this data) would be included in the list of 653 emitters, and since they are listed in distance from center-point order, it would provide you with what you wanted; however, you will have to go though the list picking out the entity that you want.

An additional couple of factors that you may have not considered are ERP and directivity. If the tower you want to point at is a directional emitter away from you, pointing a Yagi at it may prove useless. Also, if the ERP of the tower you are interested in is very low, you may be disappointed with the results.

 

[breadtrk]

We have a misunderstanding. I could care less about non PS towers, I'm not looking for that AM station in Tupelo. I only want the PS towers in my county and a few surrounding counties to show on one page. Not each counties PS towers on their own pages. They are already here in the database, would it really be that much resource intensive to show them on one page for the min TN area rather that 7 different pages, one for each county?

307X7 Ground Radio 20 yrs USAF, I understand ERP. I also understand that if my main tower of interest is not transmitting at any particular moment, the next tower in the capture area of my antennas might be broadcasting something of interest, better than dead air. I run my audio through a couple Radio Design Labs FP-ALC2 so weak station, strong station, they all sound the same to me.

 

[loumaag]

We have a misunderstanding. I could care less about non PS towers, I'm not looking for that AM station in Tupelo. I only want the PS towers in my county and a few surrounding counties to show on one page. Not each counties PS towers on their own pages. They are already here in the database, would it really be that much resource intensive to show them on one page for the min TN area rather that 7 different pages, one for each county?

Not to be rude, but did you read my comments above? I didn't say anything about an "AM station in Tupelo." I said we can't do what you want. You are the only one who knows what you want. We can't put every PS antenna (and emitting antennas is what you want, not towers) on a map for two very good reasons:

1. There are too many of them.
2. The process would be a resource hog.

If you would run an AntennaSearch you would see the reason we won't do it. And since you keep harping on AM, FM, TV, etc., it is obvious that you haven't taken the time to run a search based on your address since the majority of every search will result in very few (if any) "broadcast" results.

 

[breadtrk]

Oh I have run Antenna Search, it found the 7 AM/SW towers in my back yard. heh, try listening to anything with a 50kw SW stations 1/2 mile away, but thats for another time.

Rude or not, you have been the one saying that I didn't know what I want. I do. All I was asking was if more than one county of ALREADY in your database published towers could show at on the same screen. I'm not asking for anything that isn't already there. You have done a great job with the database, the towers, emitters, antennas, whatever you want to call them are already there.

Someone put them there, somehow, someway. I was asking that if RR could not have them show up when you zoomed out on the map was instructions or how I could achieve that on my own, either with instructions or a link to a tutorial.

Can't get that here. No problem, I'll take my not knowing what I want, non RF knowledgeable self somewhere else where the ego's are not so big or easily bruised.

 

[loumaag]

Oh I have run Antenna Search, it found the 7 AM/SW towers in my back yard. heh, try listening to anything with a 50kw SW stations 1/2 mile away, but thats for another time.

Rude or not, you have been the one saying that I didn't know what I want. I do. All I was asking was if more than one county of ALREADY in your database published towers could show at on the same screen. I'm not asking for anything that isn't already there. You have done a great job with the database, the towers, emitters, antennas, whatever you want to call them are already there.

Someone put them there, somehow, someway. I was asking that if RR could not have them show up when you zoomed out on the map was instructions or how I could achieve that on my own, either with instructions or a link to a tutorial.

Can't get that here. No problem, I'll take my not knowing what I want, non RF knowledgeable self somewhere else where the ego's are not so big or easily bruised.

Okay, I will try this with numbers and maybe, just maybe you will understand. I will only consider your county, which is not what you asked for but I suspect it will illustrate my point. If you were to want to see the just the PS antennas in your county alone, just which one of the 922 of them did you want to see on the map? All of them, that is what apparently you seem to think we should generate, I am sure you will have no problem what-so-ever in determining which little map pin to click on. And if we allow you to zoom out to include the adjacent counties the problem will only be worse.

Wait...did the thought that you didn't want to see ALL of them, just certain ones, just flit through your mind? Well that is what I have been trying to point out, only you know what you want to see. Seeing all 922 of them, for your county alone, on a map does no one any good. Since you know what you want to see, click on the license that you want, look at the map and do your figuring.

BTW, you must think anyone reading your above quoted reply pretty dense if you think anyone is going to buy your story that you only got 7 returns on an antenna search and they were all AM or SW emitters. You are using the "antenna" result and not the "tower" result I assume, since the vast majority of all PS antennas are not mounted on towers owned by the PS entity; indeed I am willing to wager that the majority of all PS antennas are not mounted on towers at all but on other structures.