‘What do you mean, the tower is gone?’: thieves steal 200ft structure from Alabama radio station | Alabama

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theguardian.com

‘What do you mean, the tower is gone?’: thieves steal 200ft structure from Alabama radio station | Alabama::Small radio station forced to go silent after ‘unbelievable’ theft of giant tower, which would cost over $100,000 to replace

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Carmen Sandiego level crime

I was thinking Despicable Me level, but that's probably because my kid is obsessed with that movie.

For those wondering like me, that's a bit over 60m in rest of the world units.

That's crazy.

Just divide by three and you will be close enough to understand the scale.

I hate organised crime, but damn, part of me just finds this so impressive that I'm not even angry

This was simply a meth heads, or junkies, with the right power tools, heavy equipment, and knowledge.

They've either already sold it for scrap, have one of the biggest ever private HAM repeaters in their backyard, or possibly duct taped it to their now collapsed roof.

High voltage transmissions towers have parts stolen all the time. I have a vague memory of half a dozen being stolen from a desert in India and no one noticing for a year

So the missing tower was discovered by a landscaping crew, did nobody trust listens to the radio notice?

AM radio? Anyone who is listening to that probably doesn’t have a phone to call anyone about it, inside their Mad Max bunker.

Or they might not know what country code to use since some of that AM stuff gets broadcasted really far.

I remember doing international support as a youngling, and asking my co-worker what the calling code was for the US.
"+1"
'Haha, no, really, what is it?'
Checks internet
Makes the tea once everyone has finished laughing

TIL the 1 at the beginning of numbers designates that they are US based

But my company absolutely has a dedicated target audience we boast about to potential advertisers.

Apparently this was their AM feed and most people listen to their FM feed. And they'd been doing maintenance lately where they'd be down for days at a time, so may not have seemed unusual.

Plus they're a really small station and their listener base skews old and people are kinda apathetic.

The bigger problem I guess is that they themselves appear not to have been doing anything to monitor the signal as required by the FCC. But I really doubt they get audited much or ever.

They have a 100+ mile range and often the same content will be broadcast on a different frequency by other towers. A lot of people would have just switched to the other frequency and moved on with their lives. You might have three frequencies to choose from for the same content.

How the fucking fuck do you pull off something like this?

[Meth heads] are people of focus, commitment and sheer fucking will [to get that next hit].

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Elmore said the theft was first discovered last week by a landscaping crew that regularly manages the area nearby the tower, WBRC reported.

The radio tower was previously located in a wooded area, behind a local poultry plant.

Elmore quickly reported the theft, but said that local police were equally surprised at the brazen robbery.

About six months ago, a nearby radio station had their air conditioning unit, copper pipes and other materials stolen.

Elmore isn’t sure if the robberies are connected, but believes thieves may have targeted WJLX’s tower and transmitter to make a quick buck from selling the metal.

Elmore added that the station is working to get the AM tower up to get back on the air, but will resume their broadcasts online in the meantime.

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Lucky they didn't kill themselves. AM works by sending a FUCKton of RF energy into the tower structure. If you're touching the tower and ground you're going to conduct it instead and poof.

Typically towers are simple structures to elevate the actual antennas high up in the air. The towers aren't live wires, they're ladders with rungs for mounting.

Not AM. They’ve got an insulator at the base, the entire tower is live. There’s so much energy being transmitted you can get sparks off the fence surrounding the tower.

https://youtu.be/Aax-ehkRTnQ

There was another video where a guy clamped a wrench to ground with a jumper cable and held it (wearing insulated gloves) within arcing distance of the tower. The power transfer of the arc was enough that you could audibly hear one of the transmission frequencies just in the arc along. Those AM towers are no joke.

Surely there's an easy to find switch to cut power and make it safe.

1 more...
1 more...
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For me it smells shady business.

There is no way to remove the tower without leaving trace. I would

"WJLX still has its FM transmitter and tower, it is not allowed to operate its FM transmitter while the AM station is off the air."

But why?

they have a deal with authorities only to re-transmit their AM broadcast. No AM, no FM. Prevents demise of AM broadcasts.

Yeah they really needed to do a follow up question on that one didn't they?

Can only really speculate here... maybe something to do with the Emergency Alert System? But I dunno. Could just be FCC bureaucracy reasons.

It would set a horrible precedent.

I don't know the exact frequency specifics, but I know the FCC is super particular about any broadcast over a certain power on most wavelengths.

I imagine this is yet another instance where "mostly works" is in fact somewhat problematic in one way or another.

It can't be a tower like one in the picture right? There's no way you're stealing one like that without anyone noticing

Some of these installations are quite rural.

I bet with a big box truck, some meth heads with a few angle grinders, you could get one of these down and gone in a few hours.

This reminds me of the time someone stole a mango in Australia... obviously, being Australia, the mango was very big.

It was just a marketing stunt and it backfired — police weren't too happy about wasting their time investigating a fake crime. Even after they were told what happened, they still had phones ringing off the hook with people calling in evidence, wasting government resources.

Wow I'm glad they had that little addendum after the headline telling me this happened in Alabama, I was worried that it might be my local Alabama radio station.