The AM Forum

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

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

I say find'em and shoot'em.

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

Budly said:

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

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

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.

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

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

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

73,  Mitch

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

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

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

Maybe its time to start firebombing Prius's in retaliation ;D

Carl
KM1H

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.

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.

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

FBI testimony from way back in 2002.

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

(http://www.causetm.ca/Image2.jpg)

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

>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

AMen!

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.

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.

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.

Steve said:
Damn straight! Let's light the torches and grab the pitchforks! We have a quest!!!  ;)

Done by ELF? Elfs are related to Gnomes. ELFs are like communists - evil! and inflicting suffering and consternation on humans. Don't be misled by the happy garden gnome.. he's just not done plotting your demise, yet. Then there are Socialists, Goblins, and the rest. All them critters are trouble; #&%$$%&&* terrorists! I'm not even going to start about the damage done by Fairies..

It's all fun and game until they burn your house or knock your tower down.  :o

But it has now become a pet buzzword whenever someone in the media (or local, state or national government) wants to instil fear into the public for any reason, whether such fear is warranted or unwarranted.  The word has lost its classic 1800's meaning: people who use violent acts or threats for political purposes or to force a government to act. Now, 90% of the time, the word criminal would  be more appropriate, because "terrorist" has come to cover everything from obnoxious street hooligans to bank robbers to the mafia. Common criminals destroy property, injure and kill people as well, and they rarely have government or politics in mind, beyond evading the cops.

Less than a month ago someone in the local news media used the word terrorists to describe under-age kids using fake ID's to get into nightclubs!

None of that has anything to do with the fact that groups like ELF, ALF and Earth First are terrorists.

Makes no sense, Don. Last I checked, no one was being forced to join any HOA. It's purely voluntary. Those who don't like the rules shouldn't buy there in hopes of getting the rules changed later. Instead, grow a brain and spine and look elsewhere. We already have enough self-inflicted victims out there who don't want to take responsibility for their choices and actions. HAM Radio doesn't need more stupidity associated with it. 

Besides, owning a Prius is punishment enough.  ;D

Nobody said they weren't.

I just said the word has been so overused in recent years that it has lost its significance.


Try to tell that to someone who is attempting to buy a house and property within reasonable commuting distance to work in any major city.

Some states have state laws that require HOAs for new developments.  I believe Florida is one.

It's only lost significance to those which never saw the significance in the first place.

I lived a whole six miles from center city Baltimore at my previous QTH. No HOA. Tens of thousands of houses in the area with no HOA.

Same here - tens of thousands of houses within easy commute distance to Norfolk, Virginia Beach and Richmond. The HOA problem is largely a myth.

that I will agree with. It seems like those burdened with HOAs must have brought that curse on themselves by selecting a property under the HOAs control.

Yes I was definitely making light of hooligans. Having had to deal with serious and dangerous 'problems' up close and personal, it is better for me to make some levity.

Yes, we should belittle and deride them. Then we should shoot them.  ;)

The people who are burdened with HOA's usually live in a brand new house.  There are plenty of older ones in existing communities that are HOA-free.  Probably better built, too.  Some of the new houses they throw up around here are real crap, shoddy construction using the cheapest material they can find.  But in an older community, you just might have the inconvenience of mingling with riff-raff... you know, the people who park their car in the driveway and use the garage for storage, who don't keep their lawn perfectly manicured, who don't rake up their leaves in the fall, or who maybe even put up radio antennas.

I'd rather mingle with riff-raff than to live in one of those HOA concentration camps.

Right on!

Thats the truth. I worked for a company installing new furnaces and air conditioning in new (and rather expensive homes)
talk about cheap and shoddy construction. When you walk up to a exterior wall fully studded in 2 stories high and can shove it 6 in in either direction
you begin to see why you shouldn't buy new.  They also had one house collapse because it snowed on it!!!!!  The barn on my place is much better constructed than any new house.

I am proud to be the cause of an HOA being dissolved strong arm tatics and foul language are very useful when caught on camera:)
especially when you find out one of the hoa nazis has an outstanding warrant on them :)

Wayne
KB3RRX

*whew* Was getting worried for a minute there!  ;D

Of all the folks I've talked to who were in developments with HOAs, virtually all were there because the little lady wanted to be there. Convenience plays a roll for some, no doubt. But so does retaining control of your own destiny. We have HOAs all around us here and could've easily chosen to be in a newer home for not much more money (since the Realtor showed us virtually all new homes). It was worth it to us to take a little extra time looking around. And even if we'd somehow had to buy into such a mess (not sure why, but for the sake of argument), it would certainly be a temporary situation. If I was married to a woman who insisted on it (and I wanted to stay married to her), I'd likely be in one too. Some things are more important than radio to most folks, even hams. And rightly so.

The folks who love those kinds of places have every right to live in one, just as I have the right not to. The more people 'in there', the fewer out in the wild complaining about our towers and aerials. I'm far more concerned by local zoning than private HOAs.

Catch 'em, and make em ride the next tower down....

Or wire up a pole pig to the lower sections of the guys or fencing or...

Follow the NJ rules of engagement, Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-up.

Rig up a high voltage source with a current limiting resistor, to each guy wire where it attaches to the tower (assuming this is not a vertical radiator with guys broken up with insulators).  Perfectly harmless to the touch since the guy wire shorts out the HV at the anchor point and there is no voltage on the guy wire in reference to ground, but the moment some idiot decides to cut a guy wire, he gets zapped with 100 kv the moment his bolt cutter makes it all the way through the cable.

Another AM broadcast tower falls, this time in Florida.  This is the 3rd radio station to lose a tower in recent weeks, but this one may have been a careless accident and not deliberate sabotage.

http://www.beacononlinenews.com/news/daily/2041

Hi Don,

The tower in DeLand, FL, that fell is less than a mile from my home in DeLand. I heard about it on Bill Pasternak's Newsline earlier today. Then son Bill, W2WM emailed me about it just a few minutes ago, and sicked me onto your post. Bill also lives in DeLand. Small world.

Walt

I intended to add that Jean and I spend Summers in Michigan, which is why I didn't learn of the tower falling until reading it on the Newsline. We return to DeLand on Oct 11.

Walt