"Leon Fisk" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:21:34 -0500, "William Wixon"
wrote:


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...


thanks, i'm going to patrol for the eventual dumpster, see if i can catch
the techs while they're there.



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



yeah, really. 20 or so years ago when i lived in nyc someone got up into
the old (at that time abandoned for many years) new york city police
headquarters http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/p...um/4632658.jpg
and stripped parts of the ornate copper dome, it was sickening. the dome
probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build and tens of
thousands of dollars to repair (or maybe vice versa) and the guy probably
got a couple hundred bucks for the copper. that was the most outrageous
example i've ever encountered. good thing the statue of liberty is on an
island.
there were guys taking the aluminum guard rails off bridges and overpasses
around here (new york state) which is outrageous, sickening, expensive to
replace but the copper dome was utterly sickening.
i'm not a really good scrap picker upper guy, more often than not i try to
fix the thing, or find someone who can use it. if i can't find someone who
wants it or fix it very often it breaks my heart to throw a potentially
useful item into the scrap man's dumpster.

b.w.