Vandals knock radio tower down

[W1RKW]

http://www.kirotv.com/news/20723839/detail.html

[W2PFY]

It will be interesting when and if the persons who are responsible are caught, to know their reasons  for doing what they did 

[WD8BIL]

I say find'em and shoot'em.

[KA8WTK]

Darn shame the tower didn't fall on the vandals.

[W3SLK]

Budly said:

I say find'em and shoot'em.

Cmon, you can't do that! They'll probably end up as an 'environmental czar' for the current administration.   

[N3DRB The Derb]

theres no reason. it will be some bored kids that thought doing it would be ha ha. I dont believe the elf crap.

[k4kyv]

Never could figure out why people get a kick out of destroying property just for the hell of it. Leave a house unoccupied for a while.  First, the windows get broken out, then someone breaks in and trashes the place.  The vandals may or may not attempt to actually steal anything.  I have heard stories of radio transmitters at AM BC stations gone dark being destroyed by vandals, or at least, the meters and tubes get smashed.

[K5UJ]

I think someone here (or maybe it was on another internet site) wrote a few months ago that the idiots are in charge.  Well this is an example of the lack of science education these days--that so many people believe the b.s. about EMF being dangerous.  So we have some nutcakes doing a few $100K damage (add up the costs of panted and lamped towers, insulators, proof of performance, labor, and so on) and I'll bet they think a new tower is a few hundred bucks. 

Believe it or not, I actually worry a bit about my antennas at night--my vertical feed points are in my yard about 40 feet from a sidewalk.  When I last had a L network out there a friend was amazed that I put it out without expecting it go get stolen.

This is another argument for moving to the country.

Rob K5UJ

[kenw2dtc]

My friend W3GK send me this email:  Someone cut the cables on one of the 5 WAEB towers in Allentown, PA.  The station is still on the air with the other 4 towers.  Authorities don't know if it is related to the west coast event.

Ken W2DTC

[K9PNP]

Looks like it's triple-strand concertena and claymore time around the towers.

73,  Mitch

[flintstone mop]

That's amazing how that "trackhoe" took that tower down. Was that an A.M. tower?
Were that a dog house for tuning next to it? The cabinets looked too small for any kind of a TX.

Fred

[K5UJ]

That's amazing how that "trackhoe" took that tower down. Was that an A.M. tower?
Were that a dog house for tuning next to it? The cabinets looked too small for any kind of a TX.

Fred

Hi Fred, it doesn't take much to destabilze a tower and once that happens it's coming down.  Just cutting one guy cable can release enough force stored in tension to upset equilibrium and it's all over in a few seconds. 

It looked like a four tower DA.  There was one big painted tower, I'm guessing that was probably their day tower (omnidirectional day) and three unpainted towers that were shorter and probably part of the night pattern.  All the towers had leg insulators up around 15 or 20 feet and the dog houses were up on stilts too so perhaps the site floods every few years.   This is pretty common with stations located in low lying areas, especially near rivers.  What you sometimes find is that the tx is in the doghouse (not really a doghouse though, much bigger) at the base of the day tower and the others have ATUs.  The day tower has the tx shed and that's what's in there along with a phasor, audio gear and tower light controls and a few other things.  The buildings don't have to be as big as they used to because solid state rigs can be a lot smaller than their tube counterparts for a given power.   

73

Rob K5UJ

[W1RKW]

update from CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/04/washington.towers.terrorism/index.html

[W2PFY]

They must have been schooled at Ted Kaczynski University. It looks as if they have been around for quite some time.

[KM1H]

Maybe its time to start firebombing Prius's in retaliation

Carl
KM1H

[k4kyv]

In its news release, the ELF describes itself as "an international underground organization that uses direct action in the form of economic sabotage to stop the systematic exploitation and destruction of the planet. Since its inception in North America in 1996, the ELF has inflicted well over $150 million in damages to corporations and governmental agencies that are profiting from the destruction of the Earth."

Now, what man-made structure could be less destructive to the environment than a radio tower?

Rather than retaliating against Prius's, I would suggest targeting HOAs and their busybody Nazi thugs.  A more serious threat to amateur radio than BPL, TVI and SSB combined.

From what I read of the story, the self-proclaimed "ELF activists" took action after local HOAs failed.  One tower of an east coast directional array was hit a few hours earlier and the FBI is reportedly investigating for any possible links.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

This is nothing new. ELF and the Earth First crowd has been doing things like this for well over a decade. These people are terrorists, plain and simple. They should be infiltrated and neutralized in the same way the FBI did to the KKK back in the 60's and 70's. I doubt they will though with the current crowd running the show.

[WQ9E]

ELF is probably a lot more difficult to infiltrate than the old KKK.  Quite a few of the klukkers were a tad short on mental horsepower ( and that's being charitable).

However, the organization did come up with some interesting "publicity" I remember back in my college days a fraternity brother and I were headed back up US 49 from the coast to Hattiesburg and the Klan along with their female auxiliary were clad in full regalia and handing out their newspaper and collecting funds at a stoplight just north of the coast.  The top half of the first page was a large picture of president Roosevelt in his wheelchair with the caption reading "Stalin wearing roller skates".  Politically incorrect but I was working with the first Reagan presidential campaign at the time and we did get a chuckle out of the paper back at the office.

I am more worried about these homegrown terrorist groups of all flavors than the international types.  I was testing one of my recently repaired receivers earlier this week and tuned in WSM out of Nashville.  I am not sure who the artist was but the song lyrics were, "God is great, beer is good, and people are crazy".  That pretty well sums things up.

Rodger WQ9E

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

FBI testimony from way back in 2002.

http://www.fbi.gov/congress/congress02/jarboe021202.htm

[k4kyv]

http://www.causetm.ca/Index.html

[K5UJ]

>because of the overwhelming evidence chronic exposure damages DNA and increases your chance of getting some cancers by >double even triple and even accelerates cancers?

This part (taken from that CAUSE website) is simply not true. It's a flat out lie.  RF is non-ionizing radiation.  It cannot alter chemical bonds and DNA.

>They should be infiltrated and neutralized in the same way the FBI did to the KKK back in the 60's and 70's. I doubt they will >though with the current crowd running the show.

You mean whom?  The Atty. Gen.?  I'm sure the current administration likes radio stations just as much as anyone else (except the ELF).

>Rather than retaliating against Prius's, I would suggest targeting HOAs...

In a way, HOAs (i.e. the planned unit developments that have restrictive covenants that ban all signs of normal living) are like honey pots for society's control freaks.  I'd like for anyone near me who has a problem with my station to move to one where they can be happy and leave me alone.   So I kind of like the idea that there are places where these people can go and be miserable together.

The problem to me is more with hams who have the idea that their antennas are ugly and they should practice their hobby with hidden antennas to be "nice and considerate."  These hams should get into audio or something non-antenna dependent.   It really irritates me when there's some magazine article of praise for some ham who has managed to hide all his antennas.  Let's be clear:  Hidden antennas stink.  That's because good antennas need to be outside, full sized, and up in the clear.  A ham may think he as a great antenna with a wire hidden under the eaves of his house but he doesn't and he'll probably never know that if he never puts up a real antenna.  But he'll claim to be happy and satisfied and that's a problem because instead of standing up to antenna haters, he is misleading them into thinking all hams can be happy and satisfied with a flagpole vertical, or a dipole in the attic of a one story house.  Then it's why can't all hams use Echolink or QSOnet?

And isn't it sort of bizarre that these hams are acting like they're setting up a spy station?  Doing all kinds of clever things to conceal an antenna was done by spies behind enemy lines in WW2 when you had to get orders from the Resistance.   Why are hams in 2009 being made to think that they have to act like they're in the CIA?  This is normal, or acceptable?  No, this is nuts.
Hams need to establish that nothing less than full sized antennas high up in the clear is acceptable because anything less than that is a poor antenna period.  That's where the line needs to be drawn.

Rob K5UJ

[k4kyv]

Hams need to establish that nothing less than full sized antennas high up in the clear is acceptable because anything less than that is a poor antenna period.  That's where the line needs to be drawn.

AMen!

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

>They should be infiltrated and neutralized in the same way the FBI did to the KKK back in the 60's and 70's. I doubt they will >though with the current crowd running the show.

You mean whom?  The Atty. Gen.?  I'm sure the current administration likes radio stations just as much as anyone else (except the ELF).

Considering the current administration does not want to even use the word terrorist any more .....

We already know some in the FCC are against too many choices in the broadcast realm.

[k4kyv]

It doesn't matter what buzz-word you use to describe them.  Mostly a bunch of lunatics and about the only thing they accomplish is to hurt whichever of their own causes that might happen to have some degree of legitimacy.

Our present society has degenerated over the past few decades to the point that the inmates pretty much have control of the asylum.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

The term terrorist (as we would use it) goes back to the 1800s. It is not a buzzword.

These groups do more than hurt their own causes. They destroy property, injure and kill people. They should be hunted down and ruthlessly eliminated. They are nothing like the majority of our society.