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Comments (143)

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  silisili
  Kentucky for some reason has an epidemic of this. My father lives in the middle of nowhere in a perfectly safe area, yet still at least once or twice a year someone steals the phone or power lines leading to outages. I live in a similar area in another state and it's nearly unheard of.I wish they'd up the severity of these crimes - people willing to damage infrastructure for everyone else just to make drug money are not conducive to a functional society.
• geerlingguy
  Cutting a live transmission line is incredibly foolish, for many reasons, but I'm guessing the station has a modern(ish) solid state transmitter, which has great foldback protection.I've seen (and personally tested) AM transmitters dead shorting, and within less than a second (probably less than 100ms, but I haven't measured precisely) it will fold back on a dead short to like 1% of its operating power, lower if it still detects a short.This is to protect the (even more expensive) transmitter from lightning strikes or other weird eventualities (like the line leaking pressurized nitrogen, used to prevent shorts from moisture mainly).But replacing that 3" transmission line is not cheap or fast. Usually the runs are planned and designed, and every elbow / connection has losses that are accounted for.
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  rmason
  In Detroit copper theft was an epidemic a few years back. Once the easy stuff in abandoned houses was gone thieves went further afield. .A few brave thieves went after power substations. For some thieves a lack of knowledge was fatal.https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2017...
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  aeonik
  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.
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  bArray
  I'm surprised nothing more serious happened. There was obviously a serious electrocution risk, but I think that is the easiest bit to deal with. 100kW of radio waves, whilst non-ironising, can still microwave you. With 100kW there could have also been a serious reflection back to the transmitter. This guy cutting the cable is far luckier than he will ever know.
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  cpncrunch
  Looks like this guy has a history of drug trafficking: https://wchstv.com/news/local/deputies-boyd-county-man-charg...
• userbinator
  This isn't just any regular copper cable:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coaxial_cable#Hard_line
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  legitronics
  How is this person alive? That’s a terrifying amount of relatively high frequency energy. And pressurized gasses of some sort.
• fortran77
  That's 100,000 watts "ERP"- the actual power in the transmission line can be as low as 5,000 watts. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_radiated_power
• grahamburger
  Oof, that's a bad day. I've had cable stolen from a tower site like that, but it was cable we had spooled out for installation the day before, not in active use.
• asdefghyk
  The photo shows a cable ( with insulation ) that looks at least 4 inches thick ... (from a distance )
• helterskelter
  Darwin awards should give this guy an honorable mention.
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  CamperBob2
  The alleged perpetrator — Paul CrispNominative determinism in action.
• trick-or-treat
  Reads like a super-villain origin story. Welp, I guess he doesn't have to worry about getting the electric chair.
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  AndrewKemendo
  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
• silexia
  The criminal will be out in a few months to strike again I'm sure.
• elzbardico
  How the fuck is the thief alive????
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  CamperBob2
  Is it too soon to talk about regulating the $#@* out of scrap-metal dealers?
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  mikeweiss
  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??
• Vaslo
  The trash thief will never be able to replace that. I guess insurance will help but that’s just another excuse for them to raise rates.That thief should be indentured until he pays it back in full.
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  dylan604
  I'm looking for a Kalshi bet that the perp is a tweaker.They say it could cost $70,000 - $100,000 to repair, but I also wonder if they'll have to refund ad buys while they are running at 10 watts and such reduced coverage. Makes me also wonder what kind of insurance broadcasters might have for such incidents when they can't broadcast.
• anon
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