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Story 017 – 2017 – Products

Over the rooftops of New York

Wieland supplies copper tubes for the One World Trade Center

New TV broadcasting transmitters are being installed at the One World Trade Center in New York. Wieland supplies the feed lines made of highly conductive copper tubes that connect the ground station with the antennas.

When the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York collapsed after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and thousands of people died, not only the world power USA was shaken to its foundations. With the buildings, numerous cables leading to the television transmission antennas on the roofs of the World Trade Center were destroyed, too.

With the One World Trade Center, a spectacular successor building was built between 2006 and 2014, however, the broadcasting infrastructure was still not fully restored. As part of a reorganization of all TV frequencies, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) therefore invited tenders for the construction of a new network node at the One World Trade Center in 2017. The challenge: The signals must be routed without interference from the ground station to the antennas on the 541-meter-high building. This required feeders made of highly conductive copper, consisting of an inner and an outer conductor.

The choice fell on Wieland. The copper alloys K30 and K32 ideally meet the high quality requirements with regard to dimensional accuracy, straightness and concentricity. Wieland will supply around 800 tonnes of copper tubes annually for the feed lines to the antennas at the One World Trade Center, as well as for around 1,000 new transmission stations in the USA.

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Smooth tubes

The transmission lines to the antennas do not only have to overcome a height difference of more than 500 meters, they also have to meet special conductivity requirements.