The Felsenegg-Girstel TV-tower is a broadcasting tower

Radio masts and towers

Radio masts and towers are, typically, tall structures designed to support antennas for telecommunications and broadcasting, including television. They are among the tallest man-made structures...

 located nearby the Felseneggbahn mountain station on the Felsenegg

Felsenegg

Felsenegg is a vantage point in the canton of Zürich in Switzerland.- Geography :Felsenegg is located some to the southwest of the city of Zürich on the Albis chain, between the municipalities of Stallikon and Adliswil. The hilltop station of Luftseilbahn Adliswil-Felsenegg aerial tramway is...

 vantage point in the canton of Zürich

Canton of Zürich

The Canton of Zurich has a population of . The canton is located in the northeast of Switzerland and the city of Zurich is its capital. The official language is German, but people speak the local Swiss German dialect called Züritüütsch...

 in Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

.
The tower is owned by Swisscom

Swisscom

Swisscom AG is a major telecommunications provider in Switzerland. Along with Swiss Post, it is a successor company to the former state-owned PTT. Its headquarters are located at Worblaufen near Bern...

 and generally not accessible by the public.

History

The tower was built in 1959 for broadcasting of radio and television programs. Felsenegg-Girstel was the number one national technical control centre for TV transmissions and it was the connection point of many private TV stations in Switzerland allowing to connect to the national and international TV net. The REAL system moves antennas on other 27 Swisscom-towers. Today, Felsenegg is getting a station like all the others, as the optical fiber

Optical fiber

An optical fiber is a flexible, transparent fiber made of a pure glass not much wider than a human hair. It functions as a waveguide, or "light pipe", to transmit light between the two ends of the fiber. The field of applied science and engineering concerned with the design and application of...

 technology will replace beam radio technology. Felsenegg still supplies directional radio but also FM broadcasting

FM broadcasting

FM broadcasting is a broadcasting technology pioneered by Edwin Howard Armstrong which uses frequency modulation to provide high-fidelity sound over broadcast radio. The term "FM band" describes the "frequency band in which FM is used for broadcasting"...

 among them Radio Zürisee in Rapperswil

Rapperswil

Rapperswil-Jona is a municipality in the Wahlkreis of See-Gaster in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland.Besides Rapperswil and Jona, which were separate municipalities until 2006, the municipality includes Bollingen, Busskirch, Curtiberg, Kempraten-Lenggis, Wagen, and Wurmsbach.-Today:On...

. Since 2005, Skyguide

Skyguide

skyguide is the air navigation services company that controls Swiss airspace....

 maintains a radar station at the same location.

Technical data

Felsenegg-Girstel has a triangular form with smoothed edges, is 51 metres (167 ft) high and has a 22 metres (72 ft) high pole on his top. It has 16 floors and an underground building for technical equipment. The antennas are on the terraces of the 5 top floors and on the roof. For its directional radio system there are parabolic antenna

Parabolic antenna

A parabolic antenna is an antenna that uses a parabolic reflector, a curved surface with the cross-sectional shape of a parabola, to direct the radio waves. The most common form is shaped like a dish and is popularly called a dish antenna or parabolic dish...

s, horn and shell antennas. The power for directional radio is quite small in comparison to the Uetliberg TV-tower

Uetliberg TV-tower

Uetliberg TV-tower is a 186.7 metre high freestanding concrete TV-Tower on Uetliberg near Zürich, Switzerland built in 1990. The tower is used for radio and TV transmission. It is owned by Swisscom and generally not accessible by the public.- External links :...

: 10W at the maximum for a connection from Felsenegg to Chasseral of about 110 kilometres (68 mi).

External links

• Felsenegg webcams on Swisswebcams.ch