Any idea what this radio structure is for? (Elgin County near Aylmer)

[hotpocket]

It’s near the intersection of Imperial Road and John Wise Line, about 2 blocks down (if you were measuring using city blocks). It’s a 2 mast structure that has a large dish at ground level and then on the top it’s got what appears to be microwave antennas, as well as some dipole antennas, and a few small panel antennas. It seemed particularly unusual to me just because I’ve never seen a radio structure with 2 masts like this that are joined together


Link to images

 

[Enjoi19]

Not sure what the satellite's for, but the TAFL has this spot registered to "Elgin Fire Communications Central Corp" with a variety of VHF frequencies licensed.

 

[jwt873]

Looking at the tower, you can see some some small microwave dishes and panels attached.

I used this site: Canadian Radio Spectrum Licence Search to search for all licenses in the area covering from 400 MHz to 10 GHz within 5km of the site.

The map below shows a few stations within those frequencies. The only site operating in the GHz range is a nearby Bell cell tower. Nothing at the Elgin Fire site is licensed for microwave.

The dish looks very old. I'm going to guess that some outfit was leasing space on the site (Perhaps an old CATV cable TV receiving station?) and whatever it was used for, it's no longer in service. They just haven't removed the equipment.

 

[mmckenna]

Those style towers were often used by Western Union as part of their microwave network.

The microwave dishes were at the bottom of the tower pointing straight up and there were passive reflectors at the top the beam bounced off of.

Those systems have long since been shut down and the towers either removed, or sold off to others. Looks like they have a couple of tenants up on it.

 

[kf8yk]

Here's what the top would have looked like with the microwave reflectors:



And at the base would be microwave dishes pointing straight up to bounce off the reflectors:

 

[hotpocket]

Those style towers were often used by Western Union as part of their microwave network.

The microwave dishes were at the bottom of the tower pointing straight up and there were passive reflectors at the top the beam bounced off of.

Those systems have long since been shut down and the towers either removed, or sold off to others. Looks like they have a couple of tenants up on it.

Here's what the top would have looked like with the microwave reflectors:

View attachment 180236

And at the base would be microwave dishes pointing straight up to bounce off the reflectors:

View attachment 180237

Wow, thanks guys for all the insight. I often go to Port Bruce to go fishing and drive by it, and I’ve always been curious . That’s actually really cool to know the history of it and how they worked

 

[exkalibur]

That site I'm 99% sure used to be a CATV head end. I used to live down there ages ago and remember this tower used to have quite the array of horizontal yagi-style antennas mounted on those vertical poles in between the two towers.

 

[buddrousa]

One of its sisters is in Dyersburg Tn was the Cable TV Tower.
The Left Hand Tower seems to have a FM Hot Stick for a FM Radio Station Transmitter we have 2 near me with the old Red Dual 720 Watt beacons that I have swapped many times when I was several years younger.

 

[kf8yk]

The Left Hand Tower seems to have a FM Hot Stick for a FM Radio Station Transmitter

I think the antenna sticking up above the left sided tower is a 4 bay VHF dipole. This would match the TAFL result for a operations at this site on 151.97 and/or 164.91 MHz. The TAFL license lists a Sinclair SD214 antenna which is a close visual match.

 

[buddrousa]

The tower is 48 inches wide it is over 300 foot the antenna is larger than a DB 224 or VHF Sinclair.



The Dyersburg Tower I have been on it also crossed the top joining section.