those cables are all connected to the antenna "elements" (the various rectangular white parts) via weathertight connectors. they need to be disconnected at times, for repairs and/or upgrades. if the connectors were inside the supporting structure, it would be a lot more work to disconnect and reconnect whatever needed it. furthermore, the elements need to be specific distances from the supports, and oriented in a specific direction; the cables have to have enough slack to reach from the support to those positions.
Ahaaa! I figured somebody would know :) That actually makes perfectly good sense ... it looks very messy and unkempt every time I wheel past it on the way to the park.
And unlike the one in your icon, it is sadly not purple. Maybe they'll paint it one day?
a lot of cell phone towers are "disguised" to look like a certain type of pine tree. they don't fool anyone, because the "branches" are arranged far too symmetrically, and they're usually taller than any of the real trees. those have brown-painted trunks and branches, and completely ornamental green stuff (representing long tufts of pine needles) hanging down from the branches.
but a lot of the time they either don't care, or can't afford, to disguise the towers. (and in other cases they just mount them on tall smokestacks, or water towers, or the tops of buildings, or existing radio towers purpose-build plain towers.
Churches. A *huge* proportion of churches are on the tallest available local hill, and then have a handy pointy bit at the top with a structure on top that you can wrap an antenna around... Most of those are disguised as best you can.
i've read about churches causing controversy within their congregations, or consternation among their neighbors, by trying to rent the use of their steeple to a cable company. but i've never actually seen a church steeple that appeared to have such an antenna attached. i'm not sure whether this is because many churches in this part of the US are on level ground and have only modestly tall steeples (~30 meters), or because i tend to actively ignore churches most of the time.
I get the impression that most of our church going population is not as... err... "passionate" as your lot. :-)
Locally church congregations and revenues have been dropping steadily for a good long time now, and heaps of church buildings have been sold off and converted to housing. I'd expect most congregations (if they're even aware of it) to be mostly happy about an external source of revenue that they don't have to actively run a fundraiser for.
And yes, if a mobile company is trying to, they can do a pretty reasonable job of hiding the antennas. You wouldn't spot most of them if you just glanced past the cross - you need to actively look at it. If you do go looking it's not very hard to spot any that are there.
while "mainstream" churches are losing membership, the more "passionate" ones are relentlessly proselytizing - and fund-raising. i don't know of any churches that have been converted to housing, although i do know of a restaurant and a firehouse that have been converted to evangelical churches. obviously, neither of those have steeples at all :-)
and many of our churches with steeples don't have crosses on them. most of the Protestant denominations have their roots in Calvinism and/or Puritanism, and began by stripping their worship of anything not directly commanded by the Bible. no music, not even hymns; no colorful stained-glass windows; no soft cushions on the pews (and Sunday worship service lasted all day). the very first thing the did was to take the torture victim off the stick - to this day, many denominations use only a plain geometric cross, not a crucifix. but some of them decided that any visual symbol amounted to "idolatry", and made their churches as plain as possible, with maybe one crucifix behind the pulpit.
i'll have to try to overcome my aversion to these varieties of Christianity, and look at their steeples as i pass by. but i'm sure i'll still find that the fake pine trees are more numerous than the cell-phones-for-jesus steeples :-)
The length of the cable may also be a factor (and depends on its exact construction, so a replacement cable may be a slightly different length). When you're receiving weak signals from tiny cellphones, you really want to do everything you can to avoid signal loss to impedance mismatches. Oh, and bending the cable alters its impedance, so while you don't need mathematically precise bends or anything like that, you want to avoid the kind of tight kinks you'd be likely to get if you tried to bundle the cables or route them through the supports.
And, just as an additional bit of annoyance, even with shielding you're asking for induced signal in the cable if you nest it inside a tube which is being exposed to other signals (since there are transmitting as well as receiving antennas in the structure).
RF engineering is fun....
(If they could come up with a good way to avoid having those cables hanging out, they would; sunlight is almost as bad for cables as water is.)
i wasn't going to bother getting into the technicalities of RF impedance, other than "the antenna elements have to be a specific distance from the support" (and each other, etc.) - largely because i was falling asleep at the computer. but you're entirely right, of course.
i'm a mostly-retired broadcasting technician myself (First Class license, which rolled over to a General when the FCC reorganized the license classes), and i've dealt with AM and FM transmitters all the way up to the 50 KW maximum, in NYC and on Long Island. i've seen what happens when a dry-nitrogen-pressurized transmitter feed becomes porous from weather ("why are the meter alarms going off again?") :-)
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jeshyr
no subject
Date: 2013-06-20 05:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-20 06:23 am (UTC)And unlike the one in your icon, it is sadly not purple. Maybe they'll paint it one day?
Love you
r
no subject
Date: 2013-06-20 06:34 am (UTC)but a lot of the time they either don't care, or can't afford, to disguise the towers. (and in other cases they just mount them on tall smokestacks, or water towers, or the tops of buildings, or existing radio towers purpose-build plain towers.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-24 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-24 08:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-06-24 08:25 am (UTC)Locally church congregations and revenues have been dropping steadily for a good long time now, and heaps of church buildings have been sold off and converted to housing. I'd expect most congregations (if they're even aware of it) to be mostly happy about an external source of revenue that they don't have to actively run a fundraiser for.
And yes, if a mobile company is trying to, they can do a pretty reasonable job of hiding the antennas. You wouldn't spot most of them if you just glanced past the cross - you need to actively look at it. If you do go looking it's not very hard to spot any that are there.
no subject
Date: 2013-06-24 11:41 am (UTC)and many of our churches with steeples don't have crosses on them. most of the Protestant denominations have their roots in Calvinism and/or Puritanism, and began by stripping their worship of anything not directly commanded by the Bible. no music, not even hymns; no colorful stained-glass windows; no soft cushions on the pews (and Sunday worship service lasted all day). the very first thing the did was to take the torture victim off the stick - to this day, many denominations use only a plain geometric cross, not a crucifix. but some of them decided that any visual symbol amounted to "idolatry", and made their churches as plain as possible, with maybe one crucifix behind the pulpit.
i'll have to try to overcome my aversion to these varieties of Christianity, and look at their steeples as i pass by. but i'm sure i'll still find that the fake pine trees are more numerous than the cell-phones-for-jesus steeples :-)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 03:48 am (UTC)And, just as an additional bit of annoyance, even with shielding you're asking for induced signal in the cable if you nest it inside a tube which is being exposed to other signals (since there are transmitting as well as receiving antennas in the structure).
RF engineering is fun....
(If they could come up with a good way to avoid having those cables hanging out, they would; sunlight is almost as bad for cables as water is.)
no subject
Date: 2013-06-21 07:33 am (UTC)i'm a mostly-retired broadcasting technician myself (First Class license, which rolled over to a General when the FCC reorganized the license classes), and i've dealt with AM and FM transmitters all the way up to the 50 KW maximum, in NYC and on Long Island. i've seen what happens when a dry-nitrogen-pressurized transmitter feed becomes porous from weather ("why are the meter alarms going off again?") :-)