I thought I'd better dig out a thread in Historical Features that shows some photos of Sydney's earlier TV towers.

https://vintage-radio.com.au/default.asp?f=10&th=8

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Just a small update on how things are going here:-

1. A shot of the tower from Waters Road, at the back of the former TV station site.
2. A shot of the tower from right outside the property boundary.
3. A photo of one of the guy ropes supporting the tower crane. This rope is over 100mm thick and probably for good reason.
4. A photo of a plaque commemorating the TCN-9 operations at the Willoughby site, widely regarded as the birthplace of broadcast television in Australia.

With today's ban on construction work due to the spread of the Delta strain of the coronavirus, work on dismantling the tower will be put back at least two weeks. Over the nine month lifespan of this job though, that is not a large amount of time.

I did hear that the cost of the crane is approx. $7.5m. Mirvac will have to sell quite a few flats to recoup that cost.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Some more photos from this weekend, with coronavirus restrictions on construction work being lifted in Sydney.

1. The latest segment of the self-climbing crane being added.
2. As the tower is extended, so are the tracks for the lift - yes, it'd be a bugger climbing the ladder every morning.
3. Newer segments of the tower are a slightly lighter colour. Re: the first photo, I did zoom right in on the chap standing on the end of the tower boom and he is strapped in with a harness.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Just saw an article on the demolition on the TV news - on Channel 7.

Yep network 7 had a 15 second clip showing the eyesore that has blotted the skyline for decades being torn down.
To be replaced by a beautiful Mirvac high rise building to grace the area...................

Yes folks I am kidding.
They just cannot leave things alone and have to pull Sydneys "Eiffel Tower" down.
Actually I thought the tower was going to be repurposed as a 5G transmission tower?
Oh of course stupid me...they can nail the 5G dishes on top of the Mirvac building.

Yes, so its a win....win situation!

Fred.

It is just another example of the deindustrialisation of Australia. A transmission facility that is well maintained, in good condition and up until recently was the primary source of DTV signals in Sydney has been laid to waste by a greedy Willoughby City Council who is lusting for rates money from the latest batch of work from homers. Will the bus services on Willoughby Road increase after these blocks of flats are occupied? Probably not. Instead a colonial-era Willoughby Road, which is still only four lanes wide, will have to take the burden of extra traffic. The closest servo isn't exactly a big one either. The nearest school? At the other end of Willoughby Road on the corner of Penshurst Street and Mobray Road.

I saw the report on Seven last night. I was a bit disappointed that the report didn't dig a bit deeper into the tower's history.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

The latest photos. These were taken yesterday and this morning. Note the difference in the weather.

The first photo is probably one of the last taken of the tower whilst it was still in one piece. It is truly the end of an era.

1. TCN-9 TV tower. About to be put to the torch and cut into little pieces.
2. Sadly, being at work made me miss the first piece being removed. The remainder of the support mast for the antenna arrays is about to be removed.
3. Rigging being fastened to the mast.
4. Sunday morning brought in some bad weather but this didn't stop the destruction. Preparations are being made to remove the 'crows nest', no relation to the name of an adjoining suburb!
5. Cables are being cut. Any bolts that can be unfastened are being removed. The cage around the ladder at the right has been cut.
6. Away she goes.
7. The structure is being lowered down to a space where it can be further cut up and removed from the site.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

"Sydney's Eiffel Tower" name is already taken. At least we will still have that on the AWA building.

http://www.historyofsydney.com.au/awa-tower-sydneys-eiffel-tower/

I've never understood the name to be honest. Sydney, being the early starter in television, and probably the only capital city that put the transmission towers on the TV station sites (in most cases) rather than up on mountains somewhere, there have been at least six towers, with only the first ABN-2 tower looking nothing like the Eiffel Tower, simply because it was so short. It was about the size of an old analogue mobile phone tower.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

ABN2's tower (still standing) was late arriving, it got stuck in the Suez Canal. It was also the only imported tower and the only one with a lift AFAIK..

The original temporary tower was actually a 33kV(?) power line transmission tower with a simple batwing array bolted to the top of it. It was called "Little Toot" after the children's book character of the time.

Sydney's towers were sited as they were due to the unique topology of the Sydney Basin. The chosen QTH gives the best coverage of the Sydney area possible from a single site.

A little statistic that I forgot to mention - as of last night, the air safety beacons are no longer lit on the tower, with the two on the adjacent crane being relied on to warn aircraft of the need to steer clear.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

There is a photo of Little Toot in the second photo on the thread linked from Post 16 at the top of this page. The lattice towers started at 132kV in NSW as they were only used by Elcom and not the old County Councils. Toot does indeed look like one. It may have been left over from when there were more HT network cables above ground in Sydney. There is a major substation at the bottom of Campbell Street opposite where Bunnings is now.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

1. A rig being lowered to safely collect the next stage of the tower.
2. Definitely not Channel 9 but a shot of the rising moon. It's getting late in the day.
3. We are getting to the stage where each segment is getting too big or unwieldy to hoist off in one piece. The western half of the uppermost segment is being removed.
4. A new day, and workers are being lifted to their places by the crane. The Australian Flag is flying high.
5. A smaller version of the lifting rig comes back to remove another portion of a segment.
6. Away it goes.
7. Saturday, 21st August. Work begins again. In terms of the tower's height, they will reach the half-way mark today.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

1. More of today's effort. The remainder of the last segment of the upper half of the tower is about to go.
2. There it goes. There is a small amount of the upper half left. This is where things start to get a bit trickier. When they arrive at the more elaborate lower half, will it be disassembled in quarters?

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Could the tower be rebuilt somewhere rather than melted down?