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What's required for a tower to become electrified from the air? I feel like I've played on other metal towers in my life that were inert...
by jonahx 11y ago
What's required for a tower to become electrified from the air? I feel like I've played on other metal towers in my life that were inert...
- upofadown 11y agoMost tall towers are aggressively grounded. You would need a tower insulated from the ground. A tower used as an element for a low frequency antenna for instance. I strongly suspect that those large black interlocking rings are used as a spark gap for lightning protection in the absence of a solid ground. Once you were on the tower you wouldn't notice anything. You would have to get between the ungrounded tower and ground.
- jloughry 11y agoThe interlocking rings are an Austin Transformer [1]. It's the only way to feed electricity to the aircraft warning beacons on the tower without frying the power supply for the light bulbs. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_transformer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austin_transformer