(July 7, 2022) The mystery of the malfunctioning blinking light at the top of the 320-foot antenna tower in Miacomet appears close to being solved.

The light is supposed to flash a bright white in the daytime, and then a more subdued red at night. But over the past months it’s seemed to have a mind of its own, some nights flashing the bright white throughout the night, like a strobe, flooding the homes of nearby residents, but other nights behaving as it’s supposed to.

“It’s a piercing white light that literally lights up a room for an entire night, and it always finds a way in like water,” said John Johnson, head of the West Miacomet Homeowners Association.

He said the issue has been affecting at least eight homes in the area. What makes it worse is its unpredictability, he said.

“It will blink white three or four nights in a row, then go a couple of nights of red. Or it will go back and forth night by night. There’s no rhyme or reason,” he said.

Troy Smith, an operations manager for General Dynam-ics, the company in charge of maintaining the tower, said a technician and engineer will be on island today to hopefully diagnose and fix the issue once and for all. He said they have received a number of complaints about the light at the top of the tower and also sent a technician to the island on June 29 to make preliminary repairs.

Those repairs included  replacing the photocell that senses whether it’s day or night, moving the photocell to a different orientation and putting a shroud over it. Smith said they think something might be triggering the photocell on certain nights, making it believe it is daytime when it is actually still night.

“We suspect it’s being triggered by some kind of ambient light, possibly ATV or vehicle lights,” Smith said.

Johnson said on the nights immediately following the repairs on the 29th, the light was still malfunctioning, flashing the bright white light throughout the night.

Although he added that in the last three nights, it has been working correctly, flashing the more subtle red.

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