Waterbuffalo
08-10-2008, 11:26 PM
http://www.columbian.com/news/localNews/2008/08/08112008_Off-Beat-Effort-to-earn-cell-tower-revenue-never-flags.cfm
Monday, August 11, 2008
O say, can you see the cell tower?
If you visited the Clark County Fair this year, maybe you looked up to admire the impressive new American flag standing out against the blue summer sky.
The flag is waving from a new 150-foot flagpole that is towering over the fair’s grandstand and the carnival rides.
“Towering” is a very appropriate word, as it turns out. That’s because the new flagpole is doing double duty.
“It’s a working cell tower disguised as a flagpole,” said Justin Kobluk, executive director of the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds.
Cellular equipment is getting compact enough now to fit inside a relatively narrow space, without a bulky dish or antenna marring the skyline, Kobluk said.
The new Old Glory is an eye-catching 38 feet wide by 20 feet deep. That’s the biggest flag they could install without having it hamper cell-phone service.
A bigger flag would flap even more energetically in a strong wind. That, in turn, would create a swaying at the top of the flagpole, and, “That would interfere with the cellular signal,” Kobluk said.
There are other aspects to the flagpole/cell tower, Kobluk said. It provides a new landmark along Interstate 5.
And, it’s a nice source of income for the event center, with AT&T paying $18,000 a year for the site.
Camou-flagged
This has become something of an art form, according to a story a few years ago on the networkworld.com Web site.
Writer Denise Dubie noted that, “About a quarter of the estimated 130,000 cellular towers across the U.S. are camouflaged, some as trees, others as flagpoles and still others as church steeples.”
There’s another disguise that is popular in some parts of the country, but the Clark County Fairgrounds is not really the place to “plant” a towering concrete cactus.
Monday, August 11, 2008
O say, can you see the cell tower?
If you visited the Clark County Fair this year, maybe you looked up to admire the impressive new American flag standing out against the blue summer sky.
The flag is waving from a new 150-foot flagpole that is towering over the fair’s grandstand and the carnival rides.
“Towering” is a very appropriate word, as it turns out. That’s because the new flagpole is doing double duty.
“It’s a working cell tower disguised as a flagpole,” said Justin Kobluk, executive director of the Clark County Event Center at the Fairgrounds.
Cellular equipment is getting compact enough now to fit inside a relatively narrow space, without a bulky dish or antenna marring the skyline, Kobluk said.
The new Old Glory is an eye-catching 38 feet wide by 20 feet deep. That’s the biggest flag they could install without having it hamper cell-phone service.
A bigger flag would flap even more energetically in a strong wind. That, in turn, would create a swaying at the top of the flagpole, and, “That would interfere with the cellular signal,” Kobluk said.
There are other aspects to the flagpole/cell tower, Kobluk said. It provides a new landmark along Interstate 5.
And, it’s a nice source of income for the event center, with AT&T paying $18,000 a year for the site.
Camou-flagged
This has become something of an art form, according to a story a few years ago on the networkworld.com Web site.
Writer Denise Dubie noted that, “About a quarter of the estimated 130,000 cellular towers across the U.S. are camouflaged, some as trees, others as flagpoles and still others as church steeples.”
There’s another disguise that is popular in some parts of the country, but the Clark County Fairgrounds is not really the place to “plant” a towering concrete cactus.