I took a trip to Squak Mountain on Friday, partially to see the transmitter sites in person and partially to go hiking. I of course had my camera, and I figured I'm not the only one that wonders what it's like atop a mountain at a transmitter site. So here you are.
This is the entrance to the access road at May Valley Road.
The sign is right, sort of (see next). The first .4 miles is well travelled; there's a house just before the gate. While I was hiking up there, an unmarked POV (F-150) passed me. I know it was a POV because 1) It wasn't white and 2) It had truck plates (started with an A) and not XMT plates. When I reached the summit, the two guys were still there, they were inside the KC building (see later in this post).
They weren't kidding when they said .4 miles. But that gate was "unlocked". It was locked, but I just gave it a gentle push and it came open. So I could have drove to the top, which would have been much less strenuous, but I walked because I'm not authorized. That power box on the left (edit: RIGHT)--there must be one every 1/10 of a mile. Most of them were upright though.
Here's the lock. Everyone's got their own lever, and in case your curious, everyone means NWS, Puget Power Light, King Couty Sheriff's Office, Bonneville Power Administration, ATC, RCS, Fire District #10, Roads (King County?), ?, Washington State Patrol, ValleyCom, and City of Seattle.
...which can only be moved if their lock is undone. Too bad those Masters are pretty easy to pick and bump. But like I said, I'm not driving, so there's no reason to open the gate.
This is more or less what the road looks like all the way up; this is taken 1/10 mile from the summit. I was super excited to see those towers, because it meant I was almost done going uphill. It's steeper than I expected, and I knew it would be steep.
Part of this belongs to the BPA. They've got a tower here, and maybe even two...?
This is on the building that I assume belongs to KC/VC.
This is the tower just outside the above building, so I assume that'd be the KC/VC tower.
This is all of the other towers. The one on the left with all of the microwaves on it belongs to ATC Microwave of Ephrata.
I don't know much about towers... those black tubular type things: is that what the signal gets radiated off of? That's like the "antenna"? I know the tower itself is just a support structure for the microwaves/dipoles/yagis, but those things do something too I know. I guess it would make sense I-Call, Medcom, and tons of other repeaters are up there...
Squak isn't the mountain you climb for the views. This is the only one: you look Northwest to see that so it must be the city of Bellevue.
This is Windows Live Maps looking northward at the site. Not my picture, but see off to the right side, just south of (above) the power lines there's a clearing. You can't see it in any of the arieal photography, but there's a small shack over there.
There's a super old tower over there. I forgot to take a picture of the shack (I was in a bit of a hurry to get down after being up there for a while; like any summit, it's cold up there). This is the only photo I could find that shows that tower. Could this be NOAA's transmitter? I had my BR330 on Close Call Auto Store mode, and I picked up NOAA on 415.975 and 410.575. 415.975 "lines up" with 162.475 or "Weather 4" and 410.575 with 162.425 "Weather 2".
I love Google Earth. White pushpin is the Washington State Parks parking lot, yellow is the summit. It's really cool when you pan around the mountain in looking at it in different directions.
Here's a stiched image, you can see most of the important stuff. The guardrail runs along the perimeter and stops right next to the fence on the left side of the picture.
