Sutro Tower, San Francisco

977 feet tall

There is some great history and tons of pictures at http://www.sutrotower.org/,
and the official site http://www.sutrotower.com/

Construction started in 1971
with the first stations signing on July 4, 1973

11 TV stations and 4 FM stations

Owned by TV stations KTVU 2, KRON 4, KPIX 5 and KGO 7

	The entrance gate, complete with guard house.
	The whole tower, from the reservoir next door. Note that the masts at the top are guyed. After a defective paint job, the tower lighting was converted to strobes.
	From below you can really see how much cross-bracing there is. In 2003 the tower got upgraded to withstand an earthquake of 8.0 on the Richter scale.
	The pre-digital layout of the top of the tower.
	The pre-digital layout of the standby antennas.
	The floor plan of the building. Click on image for larger image.
	The lowest level of the tower, where a lot of the backup antennas are located. When they are done, the only TV backup antenna at this level will be KGO's orange pylon. The horizontal tower members are not weather-tight.
	The 3-story transmitter building is huge. That big window is the office.
	The infamous elevator that follows the profile of the tower, tilting in and then out on its way up.
	Oh yeah... where are all the feedlines? In tunnels to two of the tower legs.
	Former KGW Director of Technical Operations Eric Dausman gave us the tour. A former VHF antenna mast lies cut up. Note the thickness of the mast: it weighs 1500 pounds per foot!
	Seacomm Erectors left this present in the lobby for Eric. They estimate it weighs about 13,000 pounds.
	The top of one of the new masts.
	Seacomm Erectors anchored one of their winches to the base of a former tower on the site.
	There are lots of generators at the site. These are some of the ones outside.
	Some of the generators located inside the building.
	Power distribution. Multiple feeds at multiple voltages.
	Eric's office.

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