I found this abandoned building with what looked like some sort of radio gear while hiking near Mono Lake California.
The shed on skids
Close up of inside
Does anyone know what this was originally used for?
asked May 8, 2019 at 14:05
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3Not confident this is on topic for TGO.– studiohackMay 8, 2019 at 14:31
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2@studiohack This is outdoors.stackexchange.com/questions/17428/…– Charlie BrumbaughMay 8, 2019 at 14:32
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I suspect the dish was on the tower. With a dish antenna, it is unlikely to be a radio repeater. More likely transmitting data from the location to somewhere else. Could be weather, snow pack, or something else.– Jon CusterMay 10, 2019 at 14:22
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On second thought, the dish could have been a back-haul route to link a repeater into a network, so it could have been an old repeater.– Jon CusterMay 10, 2019 at 16:17
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Likely a repeater, those are all over the place in remote areas for local park and gov. comms.– studiohackMay 16, 2019 at 19:55
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1 Answer
This is likely a 1960s Mono County Television Corporation CATV (Community Access/Antenna Television) broadcast translator/repeater station. The original CATV - a precursor to modern Cable TV systems - was common "in areas where over-the-air TV reception was limited by distance from transmitters or mountainous terrain". As this former employee notes, Mono County Television "installed and maintained Community and Cable Television Systems, and serviced many mountaintop Repeater Sites for Communication, Education and Entertainment throughout Mono and Northern Inyo Counties."
That this is a CATV station is consistent with the leftover equipment. In the bottom photo, you can see the old logos of Blonder-Tongue Laboratories (the "B" over a stylized "T", see here for an example) and Benco Television Associates ("Benco" over a stylized atom, see here for an example). They were both big providers of CATV equipment in the era. Blonder-Tongue bought Benco in 1960 and sold it in 1965. Blonder-Tongue Laboratories still exists, but with a very different Logo, and Benco also had various logos over the years before it was sold again, merged, and eventually disappeared.
