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Relay Towers Wont
Cause Interference
It was a false alarm.
Last week’s Rappahannock News carried a story — based on an interview with Culpeper planner Charlie Carter — that warned of the potential interference with satellite reception posed by the microwave relay towers sought in Rappahannock and Culpeper counties by MCI Telecommunications.
“The technicians at the State Corporation Commission in Richmond says there’s no potential for interference. Their exact words were that it’s “highly unlikely” there would be interference with earth station reception caused by repeater towers,” Carter reported this week. The planner added that he had contacted the SCC representatives in the process of “trying to run down expert testimony on the potential for interference."
MCI has applied for a special use permit here to erect a 200-250 foot microwave repeater tower on Bessie Belle Mountain near Woodville. The county’s board of zoning appeals will consider the application at a public hearing set for Wednesday, September 7, at 1 p.m. in the court house.
The telecommunications company filed earlier for the necessary zoning approval for a similar tower in Culpeper County. Since the proposed site there lay in an Agricultural and Forestal District, Culpeper’s planning commissioners referred the request to the special ag district advisory committee. After the committee found the proposed use to be in conflict with an ag district, MCI asked that its application be tabled for 30 days, reportedly to allow time to locate a prospective site outside of an ag district.
Concern Unfounded
“I’m no mimwave expert but I was under the impression that the repeater towers could cause interference with satellite reception,” Carter said. “It was an unfounded concern. Interference between the two is theoretically impossible—or nearly impossible—because of the way the microw’ave signal is transmitted from tower to tower,” he said, explaining that the microwave signal is very “site specific” and travels from a tiny dot on one tower to a tiny dot on the next. On the other hand, Carter noted, satellite transmission is “circumferential”, sent in waves of signals that are picked up by the earth dishes.
The two relay towers proposed for Culpeper and Rappahannock counties are links in MCI’s Richmond to Winchester route. The company’s long distance telephone service will not become available to residents of either county should the towers be constructed.
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