‘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

  • circuscritic@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    19
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    8 months ago

    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.

    • deranger@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      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.

      • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        8 months ago

        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.