Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

radioworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 286 posts

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#111

Post by themafia »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #108
themafia wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't ask to be born and have never been given an opportunity to approve the society they're born into. The price of non-conformance is deprivation, punishment and incarceration. We should rethink this.

No, the price of the specific kind of non-conformance where you vandalize radio stations to sell the copper cables for scrap is deprivation, punishment, and incarceration. Non-conformance is not problematic in and of itself, but copper theft and vandalism absolutely are.

That's a rather narrow analysis. The larger point is that perhaps I don't want to negotiate a government currency and social structure in order to have shelter or to feed myself or to provide comfort. The people who attempt this often suffer those negative consequences precisely because the means to do so are often made illegal or difficult without large amounts of resources.

Am I making an excuse for _this_ individual? No. Am I making a broader point about the sources of "crime" overall? Yes.

The lack of caution in creating the current status quo has some obvious negative outcomes that could easily be legislated around. The impetus to do this is strangely missing.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#112

Post by quickthrowman »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #13

Is it too soon to talk about regulating the $#@* out of scrap-metal dealers?

You need a license to sell more than $25 of copper in my state. You won’t be issued a copper selling license without holding something like a journeyman electrical worker license or similar.

In practice, it just means the copper gets driven to Wisconsin and sold there. It’d be nice if my neighbor state gave a shit about metal theft or discouraging drunk driving, but they don’t.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#113

Post by johanvts »

themafia wrote: post #88
johanvts wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage. > better off by just paying the theif double. You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of…

I dont see how insurance solves it. The station had insurance and the crime still happened. Insurance doesn’t seem to take the thieves motives in to consideration at all, works the same for theft and earthquakes.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#114

Post by [deleted] »

tonyarkles wrote: post #41
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value If it's a "normal" wire specification that someone else can use it was likely sold for ~50% of retail.

It was gas-filled presumably ultra low loss RF cable, but the thief cut it into small sections so that they could take it away. You might be right about the 50% number of they had somehow managed to steal it as a single intact spool. As-is, the station even said that they wouldn’t be able to use it even now that it’s been recovered because of fears of gas leaks.

[deleted]

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#115

Post by RF_Enthusiast »

mikeweiss wrote: post #17

Wait a second, I just realized something... how much would the station be paying in electricity to transmit at 100,000 watts 24/7 ? Their electric bill must be like $200,000 per year??

It’s 100,000 watts ERP with a 6 bay antenna. The higher gain antenna means the transmitter output power would be much less (about 35 kw), although at still extremely dangerous levels to mess with.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#116

Post by AndrewKemendo »

7402 wrote: post #84
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #3

That’s wild. Radio transmission power is no joke. I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on our college radio tower and got in front of the emitter beam for like 10 seconds and my head rung for a week. The amps and power aren’t to be messed with. I can’t even imagine messing with 100K line that’s a solid block of copper

I'm surprised. Consulting an exposure limit calculator ( https://www.arrl.org/rf-exposure-calculator ) suggests a safe distance (FCC controlled exposure limit) for continuous (30 min) exposure from a 100w FM transmitter antenna at 100 MHz with, say, 5 dB gain is around 5 ft. For a brief exposure it's much less. Amateur radio operators need to know this, since 100w is quite a typical power level, and they have bands (…

Maybe like 1-2 feet away i was manually adjusting something on the top of a 8 foot radio tower on vandenburg hall at USAFA.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#117

Post by freeopinion »

aeonik wrote: post #15

Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire. Assuming between 3-1/8″ - 6-1/8″ diameter. Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair... Absurd.

Considering that stolen wire carries a lot of risk, the market value is considerably less than normal scrap prices. I've seen thefts that required special equipment like cranes and probably 10 man hours to recon, plan, and execute. All for probably less than $200 net when it was all done. But the repairs cost tens of thousands.

So some places put up Flock cameras... only to get them vandalized.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#118

Post by freeopinion »

themafia wrote: post #88
johanvts wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. There has to be a better way when both sides would be better off by just paying the theif double. Some kind of proof of work system to show that you really are crazy enough to do the crime maybe.

> Why hasn’t the economist of the world figured out a solution to this problem. They have. It's called insurance. The problem here might be the change in copper prices which possibly increased the value of the line and which were never properly reassessed for coverage. > better off by just paying the theif double. You could also just require a license to scrap copper. That people can show up with a suspicious pile of…

I'm sure different jurisdictions are different, but many places don't allow random people to show up with a suspicious pile of metal. They have to file photo ids and sign a document. Sometimes there is a waiting period for payment. A 24-hour waiting period is amazingly effective at dissuading bad actors.

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#119

Post by alphager »

Blackthorn wrote: post #56
jdross wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The villains are the people who let these people continue to commit crimes and make life worse for others in the name of empathy instead of quickly and forcefully moving them into compassionate care where they have any chance of recovering and joining the vast majority as contributors to society.

Compassionate care does not exist for people like this.

*in the US

Re: An Ohio Valley 100k-watt FM signal is severed in broad daylight

#120

Post by freeopinion »

georgemcbay wrote: post #79
esikich wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts.

> This site is so fuckin out of touch with the average American I can help but get pissed off after a few beers on the weekend. The tech stuff is good, but the social/political stuff here drives me nuts. A lot of people on this site have no concept of what it is like to grow up unprivileged (they think they do, but to them that means growing up merely upper middle class as opposed to ridiculously wealthy) but as bad…

A lot of people on this site grew up lower middle class or below and benefited from the generosity of a lot of other people. But they leveraged that generosity into an education and a skill set that improved their economic security. Then they see schools that provide 3 meals a day to every single student, food stamps, WIC, CHIPS, etc. and think that anybody with any gumption at all could achieve what they achieved even easier.

Some people here interact frequently with youth who are completely unmotivated to pull themselves up because they aren't really down. They have food, shelter, a $1200 cell phone with a $75/month data plan, an XBox, a $3k wardrobe, and free taxi service. And nobody is teaching them that all of this luxury comes at a cost.

So sometimes it is hard to see the kid in real difficulty. The kid with the $80 discarded phone on the $25/month plan. The kid with the difficulty processing math that isn't just the lazy excuse of all the other students. The kid with no internet at home. The kid trying to look after a younger sibling--not raise them, just helping them survive. The child in desperate isolation. These folks get lost in the sea of people pretending to have a hard life. And the pretenders can slip down into the reality without people noticing.

Yes. It's hard to see the bottom clearly after you've climbed some distance. And sometimes you can never see the steeper mountain face that is not the one you climbed. And its easy to get sick of listening to the belly aching. But try volunteering for an after-school club and recognize that the youth in that program are often already in a home life that gives them a life advantage. Not necessarily because of wealth (but maybe), but mostly because of culture. They have caregivers that provide a culture beyond living off of handouts. They might receive a handout, but they are going to use it as an investment to build a better future.

Some of the people on this site recognize the difference between engorging and investing. Sometimes they mistake people who don't invest as people who engorge. It's an understandable mistake.

Post reply on HN