alt Hacker NewsAn Ohio Valley 100k-Watt FM Signal Is Severed in Broad Daylight – Radio World
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Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire.
Assuming between 3-1/8″ - 6-1/8″ diameter.
Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair...
Absurd.
In Detroit copper theft was an epidemic a few years back. Once the easy stuff in abandoned houses was gone thieves went further afield. .
A few brave thieves went after power substations. For some thieves a lack of knowledge was fatal.
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017...
This isn't just any regular copper cable:
How is this person alive? That’s a terrifying amount of relatively high frequency energy. And pressurized gasses of some sort.
I'm looking for a Kalshi bet that the perp is a tweaker.
They say it could cost $70,000 - $100,000 to repair, but I also wonder if they'll have to refund ad buys while they are running at 10 watts and such reduced coverage. Makes me also wonder what kind of insurance broadcasters might have for such incidents when they can't broadcast.
Oof, that's a bad day. I've had cable stolen from a tower site like that, but it was cable we had spooled out for installation the day before, not in active use.
The photo shows a cable ( with insulation ) that looks at least 4 inches thick ... (from a distance )
The alleged perpetrator — Paul Crisp
Nominative determinism in action.
Darwin awards should give this guy an honorable mention.
Reads like a super-villain origin story. Welp, I guess he doesn't have to worry about getting the electric chair.
That’s wild. Radio transmission power is no joke.
I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on our college radio tower and got in front of the emitter beam for like 10 seconds and my head rung for a week. The amps and power aren’t to be messed with.
I can’t even imagine messing with 100K line that’s a solid block of copper
The trash thief will never be able to replace that. I guess insurance will help but that’s just another excuse for them to raise rates.
That thief should be indentured until he pays it back in full.
Is it too soon to talk about regulating the $#@* out of scrap-metal dealers?
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Cutting a live transmission line is incredibly foolish, for many reasons, but I'm guessing the station has a modern(ish) solid state transmitter, which has great foldback protection.
I've seen (and personally tested) AM transmitters dead shorting, and within less than a second (probably less than 100ms, but I haven't measured precisely) it will fold back on a dead short to like 1% of its operating power, lower if it still detects a short.
This is to protect the (even more expensive) transmitter from lightning strikes or other weird eventualities (like the line leaking pressurized nitrogen, used to prevent shorts from moisture mainly).
But replacing that 3" transmission line is not cheap or fast. Usually the runs are planned and designed, and every elbow / connection has losses that are accounted for.