STEEL WIRELESS TOWER

Dominion, Volume 16, Issue 173, 10 April 1923, Page 8

STEEL WIRELESS TOWER

A NEW AERIAL FOR ETAKO STATION

TO BE 165 FEET HIGH ABOVE FOUNDATIONS

Midway between the two masts supporting the aerial at tho Etako wireless station on the Tinakori Hills, is rising a latticed steel tower which is to support the new umbrella aerial. This will bo the first aerial of tho typo erected in New Zealand. It is not, however, tho first erected by tho Post and Telegraph Department’s engineers, for tho aerials at tho Chathams and Rarotonga are built on this plan. A new aerial was necessary on the Tinakori Hills, as the masts of tho old ono which have been up for eleven years —were beginning to show signs of. deterioration, and it is no part of the departmental policy to await trouble. Tho old supports commenced in a four-s.ded ladder structure, from which ship’s masts of Oregon pine reach up 150 ft. into the air (in three pieces). The new tower will have more enduring qualities. It will be made wholly of latticed steel, braced in all directions to stand any strain that could be put upon it by air pressure The base of the tower is 20 feet square, and each of the four legs is embedded in blocks of concrete (based on tho solid rock) 5 feet deep by 3 feet square. The tower tapers towards the top, where it will be. only 2 feet square, arid its total height will be 165 feet —15 feet higher than the old masts.

From the top of this graceful column of traceried steel will stretch tho aerial wires in the form of an umbrella, the four chief points of which —two to the north and two to the south —will be supported by subsidiary steel poles, giving stability to tho whole structure. Readers can imagine the “spread” of th" umbrella, when it is stated that the distance from either ono of the northerly poles to either of the southerly ones will not be fewer than 400 feet. The lite or such an aerial practically depends on the way on which it is looked after, if it is painted carefully every year or tWo, in order to keep out tho rust, such a structure might last for half-a-century or more. In a week or two the new tower and its aerial will be in position, when the old poles will bo dismantled, and sent to the Department’s workshops to bo utilised in some other way.