[SBE] Copper Thefts

[Bill Harris]

Boy, do I feel your pain.  Here in Albuquerque, there were at least
8 AM transmitter sites hit, some, like our three, multiple times.
Of the 8 towers that make up our 3 sites, we have just recently
finished putting copper back in the ground on the 7th tower and
then....we covered the ground screen and the intersection points
with the strap that interconnects with the radials with 4 inches of
asphalt.  Another station used concrete, still another, great big
river rock.  Our theory is to make it unattractive and hope they
go away.

Folks, you can't stop them, you can only slow them down.
They come at you in multiple vehicles, day and night, they have
the tools to go through your fences, over your fences, or they
tie a chain to their trucks and just pull them down.  They take your
ground screen, any exposed heliax, they even cut out the few feet of
copper tubing between the tuning shack and the tower!

Lesson learned: hire a security company to run them off until you
can 'harden' the site.  Put in lights, cameras, trip wires, noise-
makers, whatever you choose.  But you may discover that you are
on your own.  Law enforcement may not be much help, they have
other priorities.

Bill Harris



-----Original Message-----
From: sbe-bounces at sbe.org [mailto:sbe-bounces at sbe.org]On Behalf Of Barry
Thomas
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 4:01 PM
To: sbe at sbe.org
Subject: [SBE] Copper Thefts


This is a forward from the Miami SBE Chapter email list.

Barry Thomas, CPBE CBNT
Atlanta, GA
barryt at sbe.org

------------------------------------

From: membership-bounces@ sbe39.org [mailto:membership-bounces@ sbe39.org]
On Behalf Of Mcmartin, John
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2008 7:15 AM
To: Clark, Roz (CXR-Tampa); membership at sbe39. org
Subject: RE: [SBE39 List] Copper theft at 6AM Wednesday in NewPort Richey...

Hey Everyone,


This is what happened to one of the Clear Channel sites in Sarasota.   Tim
White is the Chief Engineer down there.  Here is his account of what
happened.  I cut and pasted his email to me below.



John McMartin

Director of Engineering

ClearChannel - TampaBay



813.832.1933 Direct

813.832.1086 Fax



WFLA  WDAE  WXTB  WFUS

WFLZ  WHNZ  WMTX  WBTP



Friday morning at about 5:00 my phone rang from one of our transmitter sites
telling me the line voltage had dipped below the normal lower limit. I
cleared the alarm, took some readings on the transmitter which was fine and
went back to sleep.



Our generator is just big enough to run the transmitter and rack equipment,
but when the air conditioner compressor starts it will sometime draw enough
current to shut the transmitter down momentarily. Yes, the AC needs a relay
to shut it off when the genset is running - it's on the "to do list".



After a couple of hours I began to get suspicious that there was more to the
story so went to the site to investigate.



What I found was like nothing in 30 years I have seen yet. A copper thief
pried the cover off of the electric meter panel and attempted to remove the
wires. On the third leg of the three phases he attempted to cut the wire
first and then in apparent frustration gave it a mighty yank. I don't know
if he (or she) just didn't realize the box is a 480 volt feed and was live
or is really this stupid but you can imagine the pop the unfused primary
feed made when phase 3 and phase 2 met each other. The meter box burned, the
conduit going to the power company's transformer looked like someone used a
cutting torch on it.



I took pictures and you can see them here. Click on pictures of interest for
hi res close-ups. We looked all over the surrounding woods and field for a
body but didn't see one but unless there were some good gloves and heavily
insulated cutting tools used - I am pretty convinced there is a very sore
person in the area.



Here are the "shocking" pics - I used an image gallery called "coppermine"
for the fun of it!



Enjoy...



http://easmonitor. com/coppermine/ displayimage. php?album= 1&pos=0



Tim White

(941) 552-4818



From: membership-bounces@ sbe39.org [mailto:membership-bounces@ sbe39.org]
On Behalf Of Dave Anderson
Sent: Thursday, April 10, 2008 9:45 AM
To: membership at sbe39. org
Subject: [SBE39 List] Copper theft at 6AM Wednesday in NewPort Richey...


It¢s not just the big towers they are after, guys.


The 80ft tower at my office in New Port Richey primarily used for WiMax long
distance repeating for some of my engineering clients got everything nailed.


All the ground bars, they even dug down 1ft to the top of the ground rods
and cut the wire there.  Ground kit¢s copper right to the mastic.


The funny part is this tower is hardly noticeable on the road due to trees.


So last night spend the evening putting it back together, and put up a IP
camera with motion detecting recording.


Wasn¢t there a FDLE task force setup for us at one point?


Several of my contract stations have been hit in one case 3 times in the
past year.


Regards,


Dave Anderson, CEO

Fleeman Anderson & Bird Corp

Voice 727-853-1237

Fax 727-841-7110


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