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Message
200 ft. Radio antenna stolen (Yes, the whole tower!)
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:41 pm
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:41 pm
quote:
On Friday, Brett Elmore, owner of the WJLX radio, a nondirectional AM radio station, went on Facebook and announced that someone had made off with his 200-foot-tall guyed tower from a site in Jasper, Alabama, that is located at a dead end near the sprawling Mar-Jac poultry plant.
quote:
Elmore said the thieves stole every piece of equipment out of the building, cut the guy wires to the tower and removed it from the property.
LINK
I cannot understand how a 200ft tower can disappear and no one noticed until someone went to cut the grass on site. Also not sure how you take that thing down in the middle of the night cutting the guide wires and it not just toppling over. Those bama meth heads really needed to get their fix.
This post was edited on 2/6/24 at 1:09 pm
26
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:42 pm to the4thgen
Must have been made out of 100% copper
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:43 pm to the4thgen
Some meth heads hit the jackpot!
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:44 pm to the4thgen
The worst attempt of insurance fraud ever lol
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:45 pm to the4thgen
Can you get insurance on an antenna? This sounds like an inside job.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:49 pm to the4thgen
Inside job 100%
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:57 pm to the4thgen
At least it should be easy to identify when it hits Facebook Marketplace.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:58 pm to tgrbaitn08
This is what happens with only a few companies left running centralized production sites by computer pushing content to remote unmanaged often very rural broadcast sites via satellite (generally one way traffic with little or no indication of verified receipt). Dead air or catastrophic events can go unnoticed for days until reporting reaching someone that can schedule an RF tech to visit the site outside of normal rotation etc....
Posted on 2/6/24 at 12:58 pm to the4thgen
quote:
site in Jasper, Alabama, that is located at a dead end
quote:
Those bama meth heads really needed to get their fix.
Son, that's Walker County. The meth heads are the good ones.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:00 pm to the4thgen
quote:
200 ft. Radio antenna stolen
cant happen without spending a week on site there at a minimum.
there would be at least a 6-10 man work crew, cranes rented and delivered to the site, and about 15 separate 18 wheeler flatbed trucks to load it up and haul it off.
then wherever it went you cant hide it and would be very easy to find by an airplane search.
as others have said, this was an inside job all the way
This post was edited on 2/6/24 at 1:02 pm
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:00 pm to the4thgen
damn all this time i thought they were guide wires 
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:05 pm to the4thgen
I was once involved in a case where the FCC served a criminal search warrant on a dude in ultra rural Pennsyvania for operating an unlicensed AM radio station. It was some seriously petty BS.
The guy was broadcasting all kinds of anti-government conspiracy theorist stuff but it was just the biggest case of government overreach I had ever seen. I am not even sure anyone listened to the guy besides the crazy lady that made the complaint on him.
Funny part about it was that the FCC rolling into his farm with a bunch of guns quite literally proved all the stuff he was broadcasting.
Now that I wrote this down I realize it makes me look like OWEO telling an unrelated story. Sorry. Just seeing rural and AM station triggered that memory.
The guy was broadcasting all kinds of anti-government conspiracy theorist stuff but it was just the biggest case of government overreach I had ever seen. I am not even sure anyone listened to the guy besides the crazy lady that made the complaint on him.
Funny part about it was that the FCC rolling into his farm with a bunch of guns quite literally proved all the stuff he was broadcasting.
Now that I wrote this down I realize it makes me look like OWEO telling an unrelated story. Sorry. Just seeing rural and AM station triggered that memory.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:09 pm to Topwater Trout
quote:
damn all this time i thought they were guide wires
I will wear that one. Autocorrect got me.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:13 pm to jbgleason
AM would be tough to broadcast stealthily, long wavelength == LONG antenna (180 - 550 meters for a full wave antenna). However, it doesn't take much power to propagate the signal (potentially world wide) but like most RF, the source is pretty easily located.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:17 pm to keakar
quote:
cant happen without spending a week on site there at a minimum.
there would be at least a 6-10 man work crew, cranes rented and delivered to the site, and about 15 separate 18 wheeler flatbed trucks to load it up and haul it off.
then wherever it went you cant hide it and would be very easy to find by an airplane search.
as others have said, this was an inside job all the way
You should never underestimate a motivated meth head.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:29 pm to keakar
quote:
cant happen without spending a week on site there at a minimum.
there would be at least a 6-10 man work crew, cranes rented and delivered to the site, and about 15 separate 18 wheeler flatbed trucks to load it up and haul it off.
then wherever it went you cant hide it and would be very easy to find by an airplane search.
as others have said, this was an inside job all the way
BETA Page
I dont think it was the type of tower you are thinking. just a regular galvanized tower. a few meth heads with sawzalls would make quick work of it and easily haul it off with a 16 or 20' trailer.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:33 pm to the4thgen
I guess my first question would be, was it not transmitting regularly? If it was transmitting regularly, wouldn't the first clue have been that it suddenly and mysteriously stopped transmitting? Did it really take Jim Bob the bushogger showing up at the property to discover this caper?
This post was edited on 2/6/24 at 1:33 pm
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:34 pm to the4thgen
I think this is the tower, but Im not real sure. Its close to the plant that they talk about.
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:36 pm to dakarx
quote:
This is what happens with only a few companies left running centralized production sites by computer pushing content to remote unmanaged often very rural broadcast sites via satellite (generally one way traffic with little or no indication of verified receipt). Dead air or catastrophic events can go unnoticed for days until reporting reaching someone that can schedule an RF tech to visit the site outside of normal rotation etc....
With that being said, was the 200 ft tower even in use? Wouldn't it have been noticed when the tower "fell"?
Posted on 2/6/24 at 1:36 pm to Areddishfish
quote:
The worst attempt of insurance fraud ever lol
The tower was not insured, per the article.
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