Is this a 5G transmitter?

jond23

New Member
Hi. Can someone identify what kind of apparatus is the thing on the photo? There are multiple units placed a couple hundred yards apart. People are spreading fear and nonsense telling that's a 5g antenna but to me it more looks like a weather station.

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Metabunk 2020-05-29 10-45-16.jpg
 
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Where is it? When was the photo taken? Where was it posted?

Looks like some kind of in-process fiber installation. The black cylinder is a fiber optic splice closure.
Metabunk 2020-05-29 10-53-57.jpg
the grey box is probably some kind of local distribution terminator box.

Metabunk 2020-05-29 10-56-14.jpg
 
At least part of it (the black cylinder) has already been identified. Where is this? Can you provide a less zoomed in photo so that the entire mast is visible? And maybe part of the row of masts?
 
It is definitely fiber-optic cable, the black tube is called a splice enclosure and you see them all over the place. I install this stuff. Say you have a trunk cable running along the road of 144 strands of fiber and you want to take some of the strands to service a new building. You run a drop cable to the building (say 12 strands). You strip the jacket off the fiber and put it in this water tight enclosure. Then you put the drop cable into the enclosure as well. Then you splice the 12 strand drop cable to whichever strands / direction you want it to go on the trunk cable.

As for the box below it that the drop cable is going to.... not sure what that is. Could be all sorts of things, but it doesn't look like a cell phone tower antenna to me.

If you could get a picture of the front of the little gray box it would make this a lot easier. Particularly if it has a manufacturer name on it.
 
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Ok, thanks.

The thing below the main line fiber run is almost certainly a fiber patch panel in an outdoor enclosure, much like the styles that Mick marked as "local distribution terminator" above. From the only point of view you offer in the photo, it appears to be molded greyish plastic, designed to either attach to a wall (the little keyhole shaped openings) or to a mast (note how it's mounted to the mast in question, with stainless steel hose clamps/metal bands). I had one of these one the outside of my house, where Cox brought in their cable and it went through a multi-way splitter to feed various rooms. The enclosure is pretty generic, so it could house fiber, coax, or even punch-down blocks.

Now to the more important question: why is this done so shoddily? This looks honestly like some kind of amateur operation, or a cable operator didn't send out the supervisor, or this is in a place where they don't really have the money to do it right. Or, they just didn't care. One, it's not stainless steel straps, it looks for all the world like standard galvanized plumbing strap, which has got those little 1/4" or so holes every inch or so. I've got some around here someplace, but definitely wouldn't use it over ss. And that lower strap looks like there's a turnbuckle joining the two halves, which might have been to gain purchase on the strap, but it's really cheesy. (I was going to say that it looks like a ham radio operation, but I'm a ham radio operator and this looks even more cheesy.) It reminds me of stuff I'd seen in small towns in foreign countries, while on vacation, where rain or storm disrupted things and stuff just got kludged back into service.

In any event, the reporter suggests it might be a weather station, but there's no place for an anemometer or wind vane, yeah there could be a temp/humidity/pressure sensor inside, but to what benefit? There's no obvious antenna(s), and while I've been known to spoof stuff for geocaching purposes, I doubt this is anything but the usual fiber splice.

I suspect that the greatest hazard from this is that it falls from the mast and injures someone.

Cheers and 73 - Jon N7UV
 
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