Obstruction marking/lighting

A

AirHare

Pre-Flight
Joined
Jun 20, 2021
Messages
52
Display Name
Display name:
AirHare
Dumb question: Is there a cheat sheet to how obstructions are marked/lit?

At night I see some towers which have solid red lights, some have slowly blinking red lights, some have white strobes. Is there some actual meaning to this? I'm not finding it in my training manuals.
 
Not on the aviation side, other than obstructions have to be marked (I think it’s over 200 ft.). However, the FCC might have something.
 
Most of the towers I see are white strobe at night, and they switch to red slow-flashers at night.

Then in a power failure, they revert to strobe 24/7.
Or, we suspect when the red bulb fails, they also revert to strobe 24/7.

My other observation is that they are no longer in any big hurry to fix failed lights anymore; they just call in a notam and let us read about it. I say this, from the growing list of unlit towers in the notams :(
 
Let'sgoflying! said:
My other observation is that they are no longer in any big hurry to fix failed lights anymore; they just call in a notam and let us read about it.
Click to expand...

Yulp! We have had notams for beacons out at a couple of nearby non-towered fields. Seems they've been out for a few years now ... seriously! :dunno:
 
FCC doesn't care. The one thing they teach you on your FCC tests is you have to report tower lights (over 200') to the FAA if they go out. There are a lot of 199' towers out there.

Lighting ranges from solid, to strobes, to flashing red. There was one station (the old WBAL AM IIRC) that was unique in that all three towers blinked on and off in sync. Most have it adusted so two out of the three towers are always lit. But there was this one little mercury switch on a motor driven wheel there that controlled this set.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top