On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:21:34 -0500, "William Wixon"
wrote:

"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
.. .

snip
Different tower sites had different tendencies. Some rarely
received lightning damage even though you knew they were hit
regularly. Others seemed to get beat-up every time a dark
cloud floated by. If the site was hardened, built to R56
standards damage was always pretty limited. I doubt if there
are too many cell sites anymore that aren't built to that
spec in lightning prone areas (shrug).

snip
dang. i was hoping to go rooting through their dumpster, see if i could get
some copper scrap.

Depending on the technician, company policy... they might
scrap all the heliax (coax) cable and connectors too. A lot
of times we knew the antenna was bad but couldn't tell if
the line was okay or not. It wasn't worth the risk of having
to call the tower crew back again if we guessed wrong. So
both the antenna and line would get replaced. Sometimes I
would climb up to the antenna, disconnect it and stick a
dummy load on. Another tech would then check it out from the
bottom. But that tied up two techs and you still couldn't be
100 percent certain. Sometimes test equipment tells fibs

A lot of techs won't fool around changing those expensive
connectors either. Either they don't want to spend the time
or can't figure out how to do it.

Can't hurt to ask though if you see them working on it.
Someone has to dispose of the stuff. Recycle prices took a
big dive. Might take a week or two for the crew to show up.
May have to order an antenna, heliax, misc and schedule the
tower crew. We used to keep a few of the more common
antennas on hand, doubt if they do anymore...

snip
when copper was (WAY) up there was a
band of bandits who were cutting down couple-hundred-feet sections of
telephone cables in towns around here. happened at least 3 times, maybe 4,
can't remember.
snip

That would **** me off royally if I had to go out and fix
it. Drives me nutty to see someone take expensive stuff and
trash it just to get the scrap value, UGH!

--
Leon Fisk
Grand Rapids MI/Zone 5b
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