Off topic, on Titahi Bay radio mast.

Tallest structure at 220 metres in NZ before the Sky Tower. it feed National Radio, short wave and some comerial sattions. i think also ship to shore, and telephone to the USA proir to cable. The recevinng masts are 80 Km up the coast at Himatangi.

Febuary this year they started doing it up. saying they would finish September. 45-minutes to climb to the top. 2 years ago they water blasted it and found it in poor condition. this year thye were going to water blast, sand blast and paint. some bits would be brought down fro painting. their resorse consent siad the had to shelid the mast tp prevent sand going all oveer the place. in April the local paper called it a condom on the mast, just the top section. thhe it blew out, and only today are they climbing up again while i watch. they were also going to put a light on it, it has neever had one before, yet it is on the direct runnway path to Wellinton Airport.

Here in Titahi Bay, it is bad news, geting into telephones, when i moved here, i changed the old dail phone to a push button. so much static in the air, every time i tried to push a button to dial out to telecom fro help the connection crashed. I now have suppressors on the line from Telecom, recent new locals complain that telecom charges fro the suppressors now, but i got 1 for free back in 1993 when i first moved it, and a 2nd when got a dial up ISP in 1997.

I am told they have large sheets of copper in the ground to provide a decent earthing, nad only about 2-3 years ago, did they replace their stand by generator. the original geenerater and diesiel was intended for a USA submarine in WW2 but we got given it when the war finished and it was not neeeded.

elswere on F1 i have posted about a slow Jetstream conncetion accesing F1, it is not the radio mast as everything else works fine. with dial up, i had a very fast connection amazing Paradise Net when they got me to ping. this si because i rewired my whol house with seilded cable, nad having a 2nd line with only a modem hooked up helped too.

You should talk nicely to the contractors and see if you can mount a Wifi access point and high gain antenna up there. You'd get wicked coverage, and you could brag about having the highest wifi node in NZ

I managed to press the buttons on hte phone with a 400-mm dowel, to call out, as everytime my finger went near the buttons, i could hear radio, yet holding the hand set did not cause proboblems.

When it is wet, my voice line picks up radio quite well, i would say i had my own music on hold fro free. now with a digital cordless phone, and no other phones plugged in, i have a clear line. I was looking froward to Clear bringing in firbre optic, 5 years they brought the cable in from up north along the sea bed, then inland over our beach to Wellington city and then seabed to the south island, we neevr even got to tap into it. We had a cable ship off the beach fro a while, they buried the cable, it cma every close to our Telecom Exchange, i think it quite likely Telecom gets to lease some capacity on it, for our local exchange, or even a sharing agreemnet if theTelecom cable is cut.

There were pix published from the top, line of sight up north along the coast into kapiti, from driving up there each weekend i would guess you could get Levin but because of the range of hills along the coast, you would get a narrow band only. I do not think you could cover Wellington city very well because of the height of the mountin barrier. it would cover Porirua bissness area, and parts of the city and suburbs. i hear they can bounce off reflecters if no direct line of sight but with some problems.

great idea Pete, but can it be done if that mast is live with some many radio transmissions?

There can be advantages living near to a high powered transmitter.

It reminds of the story from about 50 years ago, of a bloke who lived very near to the long-wave, 1500 metres, 200Kcs ( In those days Hz, Hertz, were unheard of it was cycles per second, Kcs, Mcs, etc) transmitter at Droitwich Spa in the UK. This had been built in the 1920s, it was very powerful, but forget the actual power.... hang on... my 1954 Collins Radio Diary says 400KW.

This bloke built himself a frame aerial and drew off enough power from the magnetic field component to light his entire house.

He had free power for quite a while until the BBC engineers were able to find out why their meters were behaving in a funny fashion.

I used to get the radio on my phone when I live in Titahi Bay.

Free hold music !

It's on the direct path into runway 16 at Wgtn as it is the approach radio beacon locator (NDB ), the start of the automated approach system (ILS), and also the start point of the TY holding pattern. Aircraft know it's there as they use it to find the airport

Ask them to move the airport!

Get some glow in the dark paint, it would look funky. Add a strobe light and you could have a Titahi Bay disco.

The 2YA transmitter is 250 KW, so the field strength should be pretty good. ;-)

It's probably a mistake to sandblast the tower --- it's likely to be held together by the rust. More (thick) paint is about all you can do after a certain point.

Graham L..... Is that why some women wear so much face paint ????????? PJ