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Vanishing Mobile Phone Masts
babycakes writes "The BBC has an article about the concealment of mobile phone antennae in the UK, where the masts have been disguised as clock face hands, chimneys and so on. The company behind them, The Undetectables (flash site) aim to 'eradicate this architectural acne' - pics available."
How am I supposed to know to be pissed off when I'm standing right under one and still not getting any reception?
paintball
We have these horribly fake looking metal palm trees all around my house. The first time you look at it you have to do a double take. They're so strange looking that the birds will fly around them. I'd rather look at the triangle antenna.
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Sounds to me like these guys are just trying to make money for doing something totally useless. It almost seems like a kind of a trend right now.
Lalala
There must be some appropriate gesture....
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
They're making them look like big ass trees. The best one is on the PA Turnpike near Willow Grove. It's in the middle of a wooded area. It looks good except, it's easily three times the size of normal trees, oh, and in the winter, it's the only one with leaves on it!!!!
In my town, they've put the antenna on top of the church tower... and put the cross on top op the antenna. Really, that looks horrible. I guess they've done it for the money the get from the network provider.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
This antenna cannot be seen. Unfortunately, it has chosen a rather obvious piece of cover...
BOOM!
This sort of thing is more useful in the UK, as there are numerous historical preservation zones where you can't even have a visible satellite dish. In the middle of a town, it's much easier to get permission if the mast is invisible. That, and the local schools won't start bitching about the unreasonably high rate of student's brain tumors if the masts are invisible.
After all, in this post 9-11 time, who would object to a big flag flying atop a big flag pole?
I saw a picture of one that was a cactus in the Wall Street Journal. I am pretty sure cactii that tall do not exist
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
When i saw the headline i was almost happy to see that SA is not the only country where damn near everything gets stolen ... damn ... nevermind.
I mean, I never thought attennas were that much of an eyesore. While I'm all for making them smaller and whatnot, I sure as hell wouldn't make them all cute and crap if I lose performance.
Chicago2600.net more than a lifestyle, its a survival trait.
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But that hasn't stopped Microsoft from trying.
"All art is quite useless." -- Oscar Wilde
Wouldn't it be possible to mount these antennas to real trees? This would seem more natural to me...
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
Down in Cape Cod in Wellfleet, there is a cell phone antennae inside of a church steeple (I forget which one). The church gets paid something like 50,000-100,000$ a year to hold the antennae. The church doesn't do anything with the antennae, they just rent out the space to hold it.
I wish some phone company put an antennae in my chimney. I could quit working.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
.. they decided to throw some fake looking tree branches on a HUGE tower just outside of NYC.
Here is the article, but unfortunately I can't find a picture. Article
I guess it would have slightly blended in if it wasn't 100' taller than the tallest tree.
Live web cams
What would happen if they disguise one so realistically that everyone actually gets deceived by them. Say a mast disguised as a tree, gets used by lots of birds to build their nests and eventually when some thing goes wrong and they have to repair it, what would happen to all those birds????
Or more seriously children think of it as normal trees or street signs and play around them and knock one down. Then they will have some serious explaining to do....
So how can you hang you unmentionables on them undetectables?
The BIG downside to these techniques is cost. At least one network in the UK have said "no more 2G cell sites" due to cost and finite return on 2G.
That does leave 3G antenna to mount, however they will tend to be at building level, not above and a cleaver paint job can make the antenna nearly indistinguishable from the brickwork, or concrete, behind it.
Two tins of paint are 100 to 1000 times cheaper.
They use them in residential areas and national parks. If I find a link, I'll post it.
Ok, flash site is one thing. Has so many useless little files that it throws the browser into spasms where the stop button and mozilla logo blink at around 1 Hz site is a little more annoying. Perhaps their precious little flash animations don't do so well against a friday afternoon slashdotting....
I found one that is similar here
Live web cams
Wouldn't it be possible to mount these antennas to real trees?
Cellular antenna and microwave dish alignment are critical. When the tree grows, you lose that.
Yoda of Borg am I! Assimilated shall you be! Futile resistance is, hmm?
There are many options and it is great NOT to see these ugly antennas everywhere.
Here is some examples, fake tress, a fake window, or a cross on a church tower.
my sig
but what's GRP?
And were chimneys disguised as something else when they were invented?
As the towers get much more numerous and hidden as these are 911 operators should be able to trac emergency cell phone calls to the nearest tower to get EMT crews disbatched quickly. Though it could have other uses too.....
If a cellular tower disguised as a tree falls in the middle of a deserted forest, does it make any noise?
paintball
The fake palms I've seen in the San Jose/Santa Cruz area aren't so bad. The fake pine tree I saw somewhere was butt ugly. I've known for ages that these things have been being hidden anywhere high, one example being a church getting a nice piece of change for placing one in their belltower.
This must be a slow newsday, for an article like this to come up, though.
Funnier was this about face: Opteron To Support Palladium Had me an anxiety attack for a moment there...
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I thought trees grow only on the ends - the top, in this case. If you place a sign on a tree two meters above the ground, you come back ten years later, will the sign have 'climbed'? No.
Other reasons I can think of: The leaves getting in the way, the instability of the tree (compared to normal masts), the fact that they have to stick out of the rest. But who knows what the future will bring...
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
What you see in that picture is quite clearly an advance covert intelligence unit of Saddam Hussein's dreaded Republican Guard, scouting out the territory for the coming invasion of New York City. We must strike them now, and strike them hard!
I have seen the fake trees they have tried to use in Pacific NW, actually all the way to the Bay Area in CA, and they look pretty fugly. They jump out at you while you're driving and such. But the ones on their site were pretty impressive. I am just wondering how often they are going to have to repaint the things.
Anyone know how well paint on GRP holds up?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
I do not think it is useless. It keeps the original "view" of a certain place. I live in a country that is about completely covered for cellphone usage, but I never have seen a cellphone mast...at least not like the one the pictured in the article. I don't want big ugly towers every 35km, if they can make them invisible it is worth the cost.
Anyways, the cell-phone users are paying the extra expense anyway and I'm happy with that.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
no kharma coming my way for such a brief post, but this is old news. i saw a news brief on this in some TLC program months ago.
/.er ;-p
gotta have some cynical posts if i want to be a "true"
A couple years ago, the city I grew up in (Pipestone, MN) repainted (or otherwise maintained) their water tower. While the guys were up there, they took down some antenna, because neither they, nor anyone at city hall, could figure out why they were there.
Turned out to be a repeater installed twenty years ago by the local radio station, with city permission.
So now I'm imagining some roofer coming down off the roof and telling the homeowner "Uh, listen, you have a chimney up there which doesn't connect to anything. I think it might be causing your leak, do you want me to get rid of it?"
I think a giant penis might be what you are looking for.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.
Will I still need to wear my tinfoil hat to defend against the mind-altering rays?
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Where my family lives they have no cell reception. There is an old microwave tower with no dish anymore, and the local telephone company doesn't want to install cell service on the existing tower.
I want to be buffeted by EM when I go home, damit. EM isn't just for city folks nowadays.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Better lay off a while, you're running a little low there.
They've discovered that, when they disguise themselves as a local telephone monopoly, the US government mysteriously develops a perfect blind-spot to whatever they're doing.
Iraq itself is preparing to take advantage of this phenomenon by entering merger talks with Verizon.
I don't know about any of you, but when I loaded up their site in Moz 1.0.1, their welcome page just flickers about 2 times per second as it tries to reload itself over and over really fast! It looks like it must be using a horrid amount of bandwidth.
Bwahaha...
My Moz is:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20020826
Is it just me, or is this site absolutlely freaking out Mozilla 1.1 on Win2K, but it's OK in MSIE? IE opens the flash right away, Mozilla starts some crazy loop.
Looks like this command:
Is making it go berserk refreshing as fast as it can. Am I the first/only to see this?
# Erik
seems to be putting more, small recievers on top of utility poles. Reaps several benefits, increased revenue for an already cash straped goverment, and better reception for Portland wireheads.
Here's a quote from the Willamette Weekly, a local paper, "Health skeptics may protest, but cell-phone users may be headed toward better reception. New cell-phone towers may sprout on utility poles all over the city under a new proposal, spearheaded by Commissioner Sten's office, in which cell-phone companies would pay the city for the privilege."
josh
Well, come on, don't you think that's being a bit unfair? :)
btw: I am looking for a girlfriend
In LA, they have cell phone towers than look like palm trees. They have a very good job with them, too. You really have to stare at them for a while to notice. They are the most noticable on the 405 when you're stuck in traffic.
Actually, the best place to hide from the waves is under the antenna. The energy is transmitted sideways, so you get the lowest dose if you stand right under it.
Teenagers these days don't have as much sex as they want each other to think they do.
A company named Signal Tower sells cells towers disguised as a tree. You can see pictures of this at the web site.
P.s. sorry if this was mentioned on the site in the original story. I could not get to that site due to crap flash.
man
No manual entry for
If a cellular tower disguised as a tree falls in the middle of a deserted forest, is service area lost?
paintball
A town in Mississippi with a notoriously strict mayor has forced some stuff like this. In one case the mayor didn't like the idea of a cell tower, so she ordered it be made into a pine tree. Except it's about 50' taller than the tallest pine tree around and looks more like an overgrown pipe cleaner. It's uglier than a cell tower.
In another case, though, a church wanted to build a steeple too tall for the mayor's liking, so they stuck a cell tower in it and got around it.
True stories.
On the Hutchinson Parkway leading into NYC there is a tower made to look like a white pine. It is butt ugly and is distinctly not an improvement. It reminded me of a vegetarian friend's Thankgiving dinner. She had made a "Turkey" out of tofu. I much prefer things look like what they are. Generally its best when form should follows function
Very soon, we will start seeing home computers disguised as a nice plant (apple will take a lead). Then the network router, cable/dsl modem, speakers, amp and other ugly electrical items too!
there is a cell tower in the clock tower of my high school. There are also just 2 classrooms right below the room that contains the equipment. Every once in a while you'll be sitting in class and some guys from the phone company or whatnot will walk through the front of the class and up the stairs to access the equipment.
It's been done here in the States for some time now. What's the big deal? Where do I sign up to pay you guys so I can keep reading all this fascinating stuff?
Ibelca
__
Sig: Marine Stock Photos
It's nice to know that here in the UK we have the good sense to hide the antennas in something inconspicuous.
I have read stories of amatuer radio operators playing games with their antennas so they would be harder to see. If QST a few years back they showed a picture of an antenna painted brown to blend in with the trees, no leaves on it however. This also reminds me of the person who used their clothesline as an antenna until the neighbor accidentally touched it while the guy was transmiting....
Dunno, but there was an old Twilight Zone about a guy who took a bet that he would stop talking for a year.
There's a church by my moms house that sits on top of the highest hill around. On top of their large building they stuck a big cross. And the cross? It's outlined in neon red. Blight on the landscape advertising their cult. My dream is for a strip club to open up accross the street with a big red neon sign of outlined naked girls
and see them try to argue. That or get out the bb gun.
I have a nervous disposition to clocks (usually because I get up late). I like mobile phone masts, but hate clocks. they are an eyesore, and raise my stress levels and body temperature. As I am a member of this minority group I feel that our needs are not being met. This blatent discrimination will be taken up with the european court of human rights very shortly.
Undetectables website is now undetectable.
If you are on I-95 in the NYC Yonkers area you'll see a cell phone tower rigged on top of a yellow brick chimney like that. I saw it a while ago and it was a wierd technology meets old-school type of feeling.
Tree we did up in Philly
a clock tower- the hands are the antenna
ooh, ooh... that aint what you think it is are we good or what?
this was a government job
As you can see, I am not impressed. When something that people just havent noticed over years and years becomes news of the day, it's evident that people are just a bit too egocentrical to notice anything outside of their own little worlds. Sheesh. Hidden antennas.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
...is the media-fed hysteria going around in some countries, arguing some (never proven) effects in human health. Where I live (Spain), some parents took their children away from school because there were cell masts nearby. Even after the mobile operator disconnected that base station, there were some diehards who did not allow their children go back to school -well, then it must have been antenna aestetics.
Of course, media have never realised that there are much powerful transmitters of electromagnetic signals everywhere... starting with their very own broadcast signals.
Take your idiotic fanaticism elsewhere, bunghole.
What if I want to know that I'm living right near a cellphone tower? Now they're hiding them? What if I choose my housing based on a place that's not right near a broadcast space?
I've seen plenty of antannae on the sides of existing buildings, water towers, silos, and other tall structures that were already there. Great idea. Why litter the landscape with poor camoflauge when you can just tack some gear inconspicuously on the side of something that's been there 50 years?
Helps the the local economy too - if I were a farmer I'd take $500/month to rent the top edges of my silo. Found money, basically. And it's gotta be cheaper than construction, zoning changes, etc. that the phone company would have to shell out.
Raiders of the Lost Ark quote
"Monday, 16 September, 2002, 11:44 GMT 12:44 UK"
I know you're 5-8 hours behind us over there, but still. CATCH UP!
'News for people who have been away all week'
We get palm trees and pine trees. But no, they never look out of place -- they're just as fake as the tits on a B-list starlet...
Dog is my co-pilot.
Ever wonder where those growth rings in the cross section of a tree trunk come from ?
yes. If you nail a sign to the side of a tree it will rise higher. If it dosn't seam to that just because that tree is growing realy slow.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Dan Bricklin has an interesting writeup on cell towers in his weblog, here, complete with some pictures.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
I was in California recently and saw disguised towers around Los Angeles. They were made to look like palm trees. They were OK, but you could definitely tell that they were fake. However, if you went over the mountains and into the desert, they were still disguised a *green* trees. The really stood out compared to the desert area.
Your password has expired, please login to change it.
There is a company doing this antenna concealment stuff out of Charleston, SC (They do it all over the US of A). Their URL is www.stealthsite.com.
Thought you might like to know. The only reason I do is because I did some network admin stuff for them...
Well, I wish them much better luck. In Northern NJ, along the G.S. Parkway, they tried to decorate one up as a tree. Let me tell you- it draws my eye much more than a normal one would. I guess I'm just so used to seeing them.
LOL
-Richard L. Owens
I find, that in many cases, actually being able to see the "cell" towers is a reassurance that, if something were to go wrong, or if someone needed to call you, or someone at your damn work doesn't know how to reboot, you would have coverage, and consequently, would be available to take the call, just my humble opinion. Conversely, on the other hand, (yes redundant I know), in an urban/historic setting, it would be more prudent to obfuscate the "cell" towers.
I hate sigs.
make a flash only website ?
One article I read was about some woman who lived 100m from a tower, had lined her entire house with tinfoil (!) and complained that her pet mice were getting sick from "the radiation". In her mind, there was no difference between the tower and a nuclear blast... :P
Here is a URL about media scares.. http://www.psandman.com/articles/chapman1.htm
That'll make it stop refreshing the site (obviously), and the Flash will load. Worked for me, at least.
My IP is 192.168.1.100 Hack it if you want.
Which is what I've seen at the cellular 'flagpoles' in our neighborhood. Three side by side by the way...
only fags drink coffee, fag
"mysteriously develops a perfect blind-spot to whatever they're doing."
Sounds like a genuine SEP-field (Somebody Else's Problem). Cloaking for the regular people...
--- Hindsight is 20/20, but walking backwards is not the answer.
One near my house is shaped like...
a rock.
a big eight foot tall rock. You actually have to look to notice it.
There has been a little distress selling on the stock exchange.
-- Thomas W. Lamont, October 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday)
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We're mortal -- which is to say, we're ignorant, stupid, and sinful --
but those are only handicaps. Our pride is that nevertheless, now and
then, we do our best. A few times we succeed. What more dare we ask for?
-- Ensign Flandry
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A traveling salesman was driving past a farm when he saw a pig with three
wooden legs executing a magnificent series of backflips and cartwheels.
Intrigued, he drove up to the farmhouse, where he found an old farmer
sitting in the yard watching the pig.
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was swimming in the lake and bumped her head and damned near drowned, but that
pig swam out and dragged her back to shore."
"Amazing!" the salesman exlaimed.
"And that's not the only thing. Last fall I was cuttin' wood up on
the north forty when a tree fell on me. Pinned me to the ground, it did.
That pig run up and wiggled underneath that tree and lifted it off of me.
Saved my life."
"Fantastic! the salesman said. But tell me, how come the pig has
three wooden legs?"
The farmer stared at the newcomer in amazement. "Mister, when you
got an amazin' pig like that, you don't eat him all at once."
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