Put a fence around your tower

[K3ZS]

Thieves are stealing radio towers now:

http://www.wjactv.com/news/17432092/detail.html

[WD8BIL]

Sounds like these guys would just take the fense too!

[Ed/KB1HYS]

Not if you hook a Plate Tranny to the fence... 


and serve em right too...

[KA1ZGC]

Police believe the thieves threw cables over the guidelines of the tower and yanked it down with a truck.

 

I know, I know... a reporter is unlikely to know what a guy line is, but I still wind up shaking my head every time I see them called "guidelines".

Damn lucky they didn't get killed doing it that way. Cutting one set of guys would have brought it down without anyone being in the fall zone.

[k4kyv]

I hear hammy hambones on the air call them "guide wires" just about every time I decide to surf the phone bands with the BFO turned on.

They didn't say if the tower was from an AM station gone dark, but that 120 ft. height would have made a good quarter-wave vertical for 160.  Of course, the "guide lines" would have to be broken up with insulators.

I don't have any other antennas on my 127' vertical except for the dipole @ 119', which to a casual observer looks like additional guy wires, so one day a suspected CB'er stopped by and offered to take it down for me if I would give him the tower sections and hardware.

I looked at him for a couple of minutes, scratched my head, and then told him no, I guess not. I might want to put an antenna on that tower one of these days.

[AB3L]

Man hole covers are disappearing in the area.

At work our fire sprinkler connection caps are rapidly going as well. I reported that three downspouts from one of our buildings are also gone. Been there since the early 1900's. Nice heavy copper units probably on the order of 10 by 8 inches and about 10 feet long.
Lightning rods on top of the buildings are leaving.

I was told by a guy at work that he had a call from his wife. She was leaving work in the SUV and the exhaust was making a terrible racket. When he crawled under the car in the driveway later, he found that she no longer had a catalytic converter under it. The crooks crawled under the car in the company parking lot and must have used the battery sawsall on it. I think the price tag was around $1200. for the replacement.

The crooks are running wild. (or junkies)

[Bill, KD0HG]

Legalize the junk.
Let 'em have all they want.

Theft problem solved.

[k4kyv]

Plus there wouldn't be so many people killed or hurt in the crossfire. And once the junkies get what they want, they are usually harmless to everyone but themselves.

I read a news story on a web site about someone who had thieves attempt to break into his garage where he had some copper pipes stored for a plumbing job.  He had a motion detector activated video camera set up, and got a good image that clearly identified the thieves, and the audio track clearly recorded their voices and verified that they were there to steal the copper, but couldn't get the outside door open far enough to enter because he had moved a piece of heavy equipment up against it, so they abandoned the project after causing considerable damage to the door.

He took the video tape to the police, but was told by a lawyer for the prosecutor that the tape could not be used as evidence in court because it contained an audio track.  For some oddball reason, the law says an audio tape is inadmissible as evidence in court, and a video tape with an audio track attached is categorised as an "audio" tape, so even the indisputable video evidence could not be used against the thieves.

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

I thought copper was legal?

Legalize the junk.
Let 'em have all they want.

Theft problem solved.

[W1ATR]

It's not even the doper's anymore. Everyone is jacking scrap metal these days. There have been articles in the papers here almost twice a week about houses, (vacant or not) getting stripped out of they're plumbing and wiring. The people that do get caught aren't always dope heads. One article said the guy that got caught stealing the copper plumbing was employed by the contractor that just installed that plumbing.

I did one small supermarket this summer that got nailed a couple months ago. The bastards stripped out one of the 16ton rooftops literally leaving it destroyed. Fortunately, the older couple that owns the building had they're insurance in place. The unit was 14G, delivery and flatbed fees were 800, the crane lift was 2000, the permit was 400, the police to direct traffic was 300, and the electrician to replace ripped out wiring was 750. The thieves made off with around $250-$350 worth of aluminum, and naturally, the scrapyards know nothing.

What I have been pushing all summer, almost demanding, is installing low pressure switches on all new installs and existing maintenance contracts. I install the low pressure switch to the liquid side of the lineset inside the building or inside the unit and it gets wired to the alarm. (All it is, is a normally open switch on a pressure diaphragm that closes if the line pressure drops below 40 psi, cost is about $50 less install) If some SOB cuts the lineset or does anything else to cause refrigerant to escape, the pressure switch goes off and sounds the alarm. In residential's that don't have an alarm in the house, I have been putting these little screamer horns in the eve's and wiring those to the switch. So far, none have been activated, but it's only a matter of time.

As long as the metals market remains high, and the economy continues to suck wind, these thieves are going to keep it up.

[WA1GFZ]

It is just people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps.
If you can't make it with the legal way the other option works.
Sign of the times

[Steve - WB3HUZ]

Yup. There was no theft in the USA until recently.

[flintstone mop]

We're turning into a third world country with all of our bling bling.
The good times might be over if those gas prices start shooting up again.
Fred

[Ed/KB1HYS]

Ya know, this wouldn't happen if it was legal to defend your home and property.  Most thieves when faced with an armed home owner will just turn tail and run off.   

Sorry but I have ZERO compassion for thieves, junkies or other varieties of low life scum...

[WA1GFZ]

Gee, it's legal at my house to defend myself.
Besides when Sgt. Andersen tried to shake me down he told me don't depend on us.
a junkie would never work that hard for money.....

[k4kyv]

Regarding the surveillance camera used at large businesses, I have been told that it is SOP for the audio feed to be monitored by security personnel in real time but not recorded, to avoid making the surveillance tape inadmissible as evidence in case of a break-in.

Bizarre that there is actually a law that is intended to protect a trespasser from audio surveillance.

[KB2WIG]

"Bizarre that there is actually a law that is intended to protect a trespasser from audio surveillance."

I think its more likely to protect one from having their comments recorded and used against them. 

It is a sad comentary on how the Fifth Amendment has been twisted to protect criminals. It was designed to protect the citizens from the government, not the criminals from the public.   Political rant over, we now return the thread to general AMfone use.

klc

[W1ATR]

Gee, it's legal at my house to defend myself.
Besides when Sgt. Andersen tried to shake me down he told me don't depend on us.
a junkie would never work that hard for money.....

You got that right. Don't forget, CT has the 3 "S" rule.

Shoot, Shovel, STFU.

How's that saying go? When seconds count, police are only minutes away.

[flintstone mop]

UNfortunately it's against the law to hurt someone with any type of device to protect property. But thankfully I think you can protect yourself in your home with firearms and kill the intruder.
The theives of the radio tower must have known that the radio tower was not in use. I interpreted in the piece that it was 'an old radio tower', meaning the station was dark. The family/owner were negotiating a deal with a wireless Internet provider.
I'm not a perfect English type but the wording of that news article left a lot to be desired.

Fred

[Bill, KD0HG]

From a Department of Energy report..

"The value in damages and revenue losses suffered by electric utilities as a result of copper wire theft cannot be calculated. Pacific Gas and Electric estimates about $1,000,000 in damages from copper theft.The Oklahoma Association of Electric Cooperatives estimates that its members lost about $500,000 from damage due to copper theft in just three months last
year. Table 1 summarizes the number of thefts and dollar value of losses reported to selected
police departments. Note that this table presents information on thefts from construction sites, telecommunications facilities, and electric utilities for only ten of the over 5,000 police departments in the United States.
Based on Table 1, there has been approximately one copper theft per year for every 1,000 residents in an area. The value of the damage per incident varies, but the average seems to be about $3,000 per incident. A conservative estimate of the total value of damages from copper
wire theft across impacted industries in the United States would be $900,000,000. (WOW) Electric utility losses are also in the hundreds of millions dollars per year range because damage to substations, utility poles, and transformers is usually valued significantly more than the average
copper theft incident. Bonneville Power Authority, for example, estimates its $1,000,000 in losses from 50 thefts at its facilities in 2006 to average $20,000 in repair and materials costs.

"The most dangerous places to steal copper wire are from substations and from utility poles. To steal a large amount of copper quickly and safely, spools on the back of trucks and storage yards would seem to be a more lucrative target. In fact, the larger hauls of copper wire theft have been
from trucks, storage yards and from construction sites. Why then are most thefts occurring at substations and utility poles? It appears this is related to the large number of methamphetamine users who are stealing copper wire. Medical studies have shown that this drug reduces the ability of the brain to assess risk before taking action; hence users of this drug are not concerned
about the risks involved in stealing wire from high voltage substations, utility wires, and transformers. The people who risk their life to steal copper wire from a substation typically only receive a few hundred dollars from the sale of the stolen wire, sufficient for the next drug fix..
Thefts from storage sites and trucks are most likely done by professional criminals and not the drug abusers. Storage sites and trucks are also more difficult to break into than an unguarded substation or utility pole."

[k4kyv]

"Bizarre that there is actually a law that is intended to protect a trespasser from audio surveillance."

I think its more likely to protect one from having their comments recorded and used against them. 

It is a sad commentary on how the Fifth Amendment has been twisted to protect criminals. It was designed to protect the citizens from the government, not the criminals from the public.

Actually, in this case, the Fifth Amendment has nothing to do with it.  The 5th protects both the criminal and the falsely accused innocent person from being forced to provide evidence or testimony against himself or herself.  If I make a recording of a burglar on my premises, I'm the one  providing the recorded evidence, not the intruder.

I think it may have something to do with the possibility of the audio tape being spliced and edited to provide fake evidence, which may have actually occurred during a trial sometime back in the 40's or 50's, after wire recorders and tape recorders were developed.  But if the audio track is attached to a video tape or DVD-R, it would be pretty hard to fake the audio evidence with the video evidence right there to back it up.

I have a large, official-looking "Danger - High Voltage" sign that I picked out of a dumpster several years ago.  I have been thinking about posting it near my shack and tower to maybe discourage anyone who would casually try to tamper with any of my radio stuff when I'm not home.  But obviously, that wouldn't deter someone willing to rip the live wire off a utility pole or a transformer out of a live substation.

Of course, if they broke into my shack and electrocuted themselves on my transmitter power supply, it would be pretty hard to construe that as "hurting someone with a type of device to protect my property".  It would be just plain stupidity.

[N3DRB The Derb]

my wife grew up in Windber. It's just over the hill from Johnstown to the east. I know the town well, and saw that tower and was thinking what a good 160 meter pole it would make.

areas hard hit, no jobs to speak of. we were up there about 4 weeks ago.