Radar Tower of Tangerang Geophysics Station

This is the story about radar tower belongs to BMKG (Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency) in Indonesia. Short of story, this office has many duties on meteorological, climatologic, air quality and geophysical subjects, one among them is in weather forecasting. To make an exact weather forecast, BMKG keeps to afford the best meteorological, climatologic, air quality and geophysical instruments, one of it is the weather radar, and so the supporter tools and infrastructures. In general, BMKG used to have an import radar, this is so important to make the best weather forecast estimation. The radar would be supported by physical infrastructure like radar tower. Well, my blog would be about one of radar tower belongs to BMKG which lied near Tangerang Geophysical Station. It is around DPRD Tangerang Office, West Java, Indonesia. As a technical staff on BMKG, I became one of the aanwizjers (one who gives an explanation about an order) of The Radar Tower Project at The Aanwizjing (job explanation meeting), and my eyes became a bit opened about the project details. This radar tower counted as a complex building, with 4 stories, and 17 meters in height. Its structure is a reinforced concrete, with radar dome at the top.

This building stands next on Tangerang Geophysics Station. Initially, both of the building stood on the back of the other till they are integrated by a lobby in the middle of those two buildings.
Buildings with saddle and shield roof in the right are the existing building and the 4 stories building in the left is the radar tower. In the middle lies the old building private rooms which then being renovated as a lobby. (PS: What happened then is the contractor had to build the lobby afforded by the Tangerang Geophysics Station itself so that the design became so much different than my design, but the radar tower design was built exactly like the drawing). I was trusted to give an explanation and to describe a minimal façade design of The Tangerang Radar Tower. It was Mr. Rinto who gave me just few days to finish the minimal design (PS: It takes a week or more to a house design drawings). Related to the limited times, I’ve got another tower structure design as the reference, but the facade design was adapted to the Station needs. The design then being presented as a model for the candidate clients so that they could estimate the offer cost to the radar building. The shape, the types of structure, the minimal type of material, everything are explained to the candidate clients in details. Substantively, they are allowed to make their own designs so they could get the cheapest offer, but on the contrary they adopted my design, and that is the radar now standing on Tangerang. It looks like the building of radar tower is about to support the radar of Cengkareng Meteorological Station, which has to help on weather data collection of Soekarno-Hatta Airport. When the blog is published, the radar tower itself have been built and used well. At the 4th floor, there are the transmitter and receiver room, and there is a moveable access to the radom as a maintenance tools. But as far as I know, there isn’t any BMKG staff occupying the work station, I predicted that it would be operated by The Cengkareng Meteorological Staff by the shift schedule. I hope that the building could working properly and could become a good sequential for another BMKG radar in Indonesia. By: Lady Clara