[BC] to light or not to light

[Paul Smith W4KNX]

WWJ 950's new 50 kw site south of Detroit has red flashing strobes, along
with painted towers.  First time I've ever seen that.  The day I flew over
the towers a couple years ago, they were flashing during the day.  Gave it a
twinkling look.
Its been my experience that white strobes at nite are very hard to determine
where they are.  They appear to jump all over the place.  My personal
preference is red incandescent lamps.  I can see low flying helicopters
prefering strobes because of the blending in of car tail lites. Even LEDS
with their instant on feature seem to jump around in my view.  The early LED
traffic lites were like that too but they have fixed that.  Most traffic
LED's have a soft on and off feature now to more simulate an incandescent
lamp.
Here in this part of Florida, most tall towers have a dual lighting mandate.
white strobes day, red lites nite.

Paul Smith
Sarasota, Fl

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kevin Tekel" <amstereoexp at yahoo.com>
To: <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Sent: Wednesday, June 28, 2006 9:27 PM
Subject: [BC] to light or not to light


> John Buffaloe wrote:
> > I had a situation in San Diego several years ago where I was contacted
> > by the police department's helicopter division and asked if I would put
> > strobes on the 442' KSON tower.  They were always in the area (high
> > crime) and down low, worried about not finding the red lights.  I took a
> > night time ride with them and approaching the tower from the north I
> > could pick it out, but when I looked away and looked back the red lights
> > had disappeared into the tail lights of cars traveling south on I-5.
>
> A related question: are tower lights required to be red or white?  In this
> situation the confusion could be avoided just by changing the beacons to a
> different color (amber, for example), but I've never seen tower lights
> that are not either red or white-ish beacons or white strobes.  (I say
> "-ish" because some of the LED or constant-strobe beacons give off a
> distinctly purple-ish hue of white, as typical of LED flashlights or
> high-intensity automotive headlamps.)
>
>