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I used to live and work in NY and dealt with most of the major skyscrapers in deploying communications facilities. This montage is but a small sample of photos I have taken over the years, but have extra special meaning to me as they were taken 10 days prior to the first attempted destruction of the WTC back in 1993. The North Tower (Tower 1) roof (with it's 362' tall communications tower) was off limits to everyone except people like myself, and I am honored to have been there. I have CADed the North Tower and 110th floor, and have an original blueprint of this building which is now priceless to me. In 2 of the photos you can see me leaning against the high winds up there. In the photo I took with the red aircraft warning beacon looming large in the foreground, I am a scant 4 feet from the edge of the building corner (no guard rail- they called me crazy). The "catwalk" looking structures are called cable trays which route main feeds from the tower to different broadcast studios on the 110th floor below. Ironically, even though the great height gave a fantastic radio horizon (59 miles from the tip of the tower), the huge footprint of the roof, which spanned 207' X 207' (a "square" acre is 208.71035' X 208.71035'), generated an "umbrella of silence" so large that it prevented roof top whips from -direct- communications with the streets directly below. Even though the Sears Tower in Chicago was taller "building-wise", the WTC North tower rose 1,730 feet above the ground to the tip of its communications tower, which surpassed the Sears Tower communications towers tips by 17 feet. The communications tower was not in place from the inception of the building (check out the movie "King Kong"), and came to be 6 years later, requiring a "hump" in the middle of the roof to help support the tower. Roof top whips were not allowed to be taller than 13' and had to be able to survive 200 MPH winds. There was even a secret helicopter landing pad in the SW corner of the roof for the President of the United States (one of the reasons so few people were allowed up there). I felt you could almost touch the clouds and just 3 stories below in Windows on the World, I dined many times. The granduer of this can not be imparted, you must have be there to fully understand.

This iconic structure and the people that breathed life into it every day, will be sorely missed. The terrorists that caused the most cowardly act in history were not human beings, they were human imposters, the epitome of evil.

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World Trade Center - Tower 1.jpg

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2002-09-28