When I was a young lad during our family travels by automobile we’d look for license plates from different states and for red and white towers. Whichever of us as kids spotted a tower first got a “bonus state” in our quest for winning the license plate game.
Actually, we only thought towers were red and white. It turns out that towers with obstruction marking and painting are actually orange and white, and that the exact shade of orange matters. It can’t be OSHA orange. It can’t be safety orange. It can’t be highway roadway sign orange. If your tower requires obstruction marking and lighting and unless your tower has strobe lights, it MUST be aviation orange and white. Plus, it can’t have faded, and your tower can’t have any unpainted (usually black) wires running along the outside of the tower.
The FCC rules say stations that own their own tower that needs obstruction marking and lighting are to make inspections of the tower quarterly in addition to checking any and all tower lights every day. But how do you know if your tower paint color is compliant?
Simply looking and saying “It looks fine to me” doesn’t count. While you don’t have to worry so much about the white paint part, the aviation orange paint color must fit within a narrow range of orange tint and hue. The FCC specifies using a “paint chip chart” that meets FAA requirements – the requirements of FAA A/C 70/7460-1K, Obstruction Marking and Lighting. It costs about $50, and is available from a number of places on the Internet – Google it, and you’ll find it.
As a part of making ABIP assessment visits to stations, have I often found non-compliant paint? Yes, about 20% of the time, and not only because paint fades in our New Mexico sun, but because clients we rent tower space to seem to insist on running their black coaxial cables up the outside of our towers (a big no-no!) and because sometimes the paint used is simply the wrong color. In the past years I’ve found two actual fire-engine red towers, and found one tall tower where the painters ran out of orange so a couple of the orange bands were not aviation orange, but were industrial safety orange and probably painted with paint from Home Depot or Lowe’s !
Bottom line: when your station logs the results of each quarterly tower inspection as required by FCC Rule § 17.47 if you own your own tower and if your license requires obstruction painting and marking, it’s best to make a one-time investment of $50 and get the approved paint chip chart. I guarantee the FCC inspectors will have one if they come to take a look at your tower!
Mike/
