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Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says
- delichon 3y agoI need to check my homeowner's insurance to see if I'm covered if the house is stolen.
- soco 3y agoNote to self: don't build a steel house.
- speed_spread 3y agoJust pour concrete over it.
- rssoconnor 3y agoAh. "The Problem of the Missing Baseball"
- azornathogron 3y agoNot as implausible as it sounds... The guy in Luton whose house was stolen did get it back, but it took two years. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67356354 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67356...
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoIn this case the squatter was able to legally sell the house in his name: https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/squatter-who-claimed-ownership-pensioners-28220940 https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/squatter-... >He applied to the courts for permanent possession of the home and won following an appeal, despite the judge accepting that he had committed criminal trespass. According to new reports, Mr Best has now sold the home for a huge profit.
- voakbasda 3y agoWhen the courts legalize theft, it is past time for a revolution.
- dylan604 3y agoYou should also check if the coverage depends on who does the stealing. Like, if your house is stolen into the spirit world like in Poltergeist. Clearly, this wasn't an act of God.
- brodouevencode 3y agometh addicts
- Enginerrrd 3y agoOr an insurance scam by the owner?
- justusthane 3y agoAccording to the article it was not insured.
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoYou're being downvoted but I used to live there and I think you're right on the money.
- jibbit 3y agonot in the US, but i believe we have plastic manhole covers here now because you can't leave anything metal unguarded
- euroderf 3y agoAren't those going to be light enough that people will steal them just for the hell of it ?
- mikrl 3y agoBlessed are the scrappers, for they shall inherit… 200’ tall radio towers?
- dgrin91 3y agoHow come they didn't notice that their service went dead when the tower was stolen?
- InitialLastName 3y agoThe tweet says "a tower site" which implies they have others. It's entirely possible/likely that they have multiple towers for better coverage; if one went down they would lose some coverage area but not all of it. It's an AM station, so they may also shut down overnight (as many small stations do to avoid over-propagation). Off topic: I could have guessed that guy was a radio station manager without any context. There's just a look to them.
- Kon-Peki 3y agoThe tweet said that they took a crew with a bush hog ([1]) to "do early cleanup of the property before we do more work down there". So this was almost certainly a long-abandoned radio tower that they acquired and were planning to bring into service. The grass needs to be severely overgrown before you need a bush hog. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush_hog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brush_hog
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- randomdata 3y ago> The grass needs to be severely overgrown before you need a bush hog. Use of a bush hug does not imply the need for a bush hog, though. Even for routine maintenance of the grass you're apt to choose the bush hog out of convenience and practicality. It's not like you're going to waste time puttering around with the push mower you cut your grass at home with for a tower site out in the middle of nowhere.
- I_Am_Nous 3y agoA single season of no maintenance in rural Alabama could easily allow the property to be full of Giant Hogweed[1] which seems to allow UV light to penetrate our skin a lot more easily, causing severe burns. Especially around a tower where birds roost and spread droppings for 100 feet around the area. 1. https://www.al.com/news/2018/07/giant_hogweed_plant_on_alabama.html https://www.al.com/news/2018/07/giant_hogweed_plant_on_alaba...
- nickcotter 3y agoNote that the tower doesn't really look like that picture in the nypost - it's a much more portable looking affair: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y9QMBDPnazGT1cgj9 https://maps.app.goo.gl/Y9QMBDPnazGT1cgj9
- imglorp 3y agoA few guys with plasma cutters and a winch could have that pieced and loaded on a flatbed in no time.
- huytersd 3y agoNot easily. Those metal tension cables are dangerous to cut and it’s going to have to fall like a tree in some direction.
- alistairSH 3y agoThese towers often have several sets of tension cables at various heights, so you could cut the outermost/tallest set, drop the top-third of the tower, and work your way down. Still dangerous, but it's not always "bring all 500' down at once".
- cf100clunk 3y agoThere are YouTube video compilations showing exactly what you've described.
- marcosdumay 3y agoMetal thieves are not known for following strict workplace safety protocols.
- huytersd 3y agoSure, but if you’ve ever been around high tension mental cables before you’ll realize you need a huge pair of balls to cut those. It’s not safety protocols, it’s fear that it might cut you in half.
- hiddencost 3y agoSteel scraps at $225 a ton.. That's about what a large pickup truck can haul. Copper is worth 20x more. I dunno, if you're willing to work that hard you could probably just become a contractor.
- sokoloff 3y agoI think the issue is that some people are willing to work quite hard, but only intermittently. (Though that doesn't necessarily disqualify them from being a contractor either, I suppose.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- randomdata 3y agoMost people don't fear hard work, they fear being beholden to other people. Ain't nobody hiring a contractor under the terms of "Yeah, go ahead and build me a house however you like, whenever you feel like it. I don't care about what you do."
- trompetenaccoun 3y agoWow. My feeling is that metal theft is getting out of control. If the news reporting on it is to be trusted, cases are in fact rising. Thieves have probably always hit junkyards and stolen wire, but now there seems to be more and more infrastructure hit as well. The oddest aspect of this is that scrap steel isn't even worth that much. How many tons could that be? Let's say it's 400 tons, that's maybe $100k. And it seems like extremely high risk, because they're going to be looking for this everywhere now. Why would they not just steal two or three cars, which would never make the news. They must be skilled to pull something like that off in a night. Edit: Another user linked the street view, apparently the article image wasn't the actual tower. So based on that it's much less metal even.
- pelorat 3y ago[flagged]
- bombcar 3y agoA nutcase would have dropped the tower and left it down, not removed the tower itself. They'll find the scrapyard that received it and track it down from there. Unless it was done months ago and they just finally noticed.
- ryandrake 3y agoNever underestimate a "nutcase's" willingness to additionally grift and profit when it aligns with their nutcase-ness. Delusional but not stupid.
- dylan604 3y agoEveryone loves a stupid criminal, so it would make sense it would be a local scrapyard. If they were "smart", they would split it up across multiple scrapyards so that it was much less obvious. The fun thing would be to find a new tower that suddenly appeared in another location that happens to look just like this missing one.
- eschneider 3y agoMy money is on this being insurance fraud.
- roamerz 3y agoIt was an AM station so I wouldn’t rule out political motivations.
- shrx 3y agoThe estimate, he said, is expected to be six figures. Elmore did not have insurance on that property. edit: quote from https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio-stations-200-foot-tower-owner-says.html https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio...
- bombcar 3y agoThere's no discussion, but a 200 foot tower doesn't come down without evidence on the ground unless you have, well, a 200 foot crane.
- russdill 3y agoIf you cut the wires on the type of radio tower, it will come down on its own.
- daedalus_j 3y agoYes, certainly. But the point is that it will leave *VERY* obvious indications that it was felled in such a way.
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- DamnInteresting 3y agoA better source than the tabloid New York Post: https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio-stations-200-foot-tower-owner-says.html https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio...
- dang 3y agoThanks! We've changed to that from https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/news/radio-station-baffled-after-200-foot-radio-tower-disappears/ https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/news/radio-station-baffled-aft....
- sonicanatidae 3y agoMeth heads are REALLY stepping up their game.
- chasd00 3y agothey can get resourceful that's for sure. A family friend had a catalytic converter stolen in the parking lot of a grocery store when they stopped to pick up a few things. Stealing a catalytic converter involves cutting parts of the exhaust system out of a car.
- cafard 3y agoA lot of Priuses in my neighborhood lost their catalytic converters a few winters ago. Mostly this happened at night, so there was more time than for whoever hit your friend's car..
- fragmede 3y agoso in defense, you can have a catalytic converter cage put in, but it seems they will just cut through that as well to get at the catalytic converter.
- mschuster91 3y agoSkilled thieves can do that with a battery powered saw in less than 30 seconds, there's been more than enough videos on youtube showing just how easy it is. Cheap battery powered tools have made a lot of crime a hell of a lot easier.
- euroderf 3y agoJust wait for the drones that bring the saw and haul away the converter.
- quickthrowman 3y agoIt takes about 30 seconds to make two cuts through exhaust pipe with a one handed battery sawzall or battery angle grinder. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-M18-FUEL-18V-Lithium-Ion-Brushless-Cordless-HACKZALL-Reciprocating-Saw-Tool-Only-2719-20/302190765 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-M18-FUEL-18V-Lithium-I...
- jack_riminton 3y agoMy BS detector is going off on this. It's such a monumental effort for what would quickly become pretty worthless scrap
- asadotzler 3y agoSomeone who needs a 200' self-supporting tower. Getting one from Rohn is probably $15,000 to $20,000 and more than half that used. I've been shopping towers for several years and when I read the headline my first thought was "yeah, Starlink needs a clear view of the sky" not "some meth head tryin' to sell steel for scrap."
- hluska 3y agoThe world has changed in odd ways. Ten or twenty years ago, this would seem like very ambitious drug addicts. Today, there’s a real chance that this will turn out to be a prank for Internet cred. And as strange or unlikely as that sounds, a guy recently made the news for intentionally crashing a plane for internet cred. I sure never would have imagined that. We live in interesting times and that’s not always a good thing.
- 486sx33 3y agoSeems like there could be more to the story.. perhaps an alternate explanation than scrap value. a giant steel frame for an antenna would have scrap value, but relatively not that much. For a lot less hassle and more money you could grab a couple semi trailers and cut them up, they are usually just laying around unhooked. Then again I guess meth heads aren’t masters of cost benefit analysis
- lxgr 3y agoScrap metal thieves are indeed not always the brightest. I've heard of cases of attempted thefts of (powered) power lines of electrified railways...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- boringg 3y agoI should feel bad for the outcome, but i don't....
- 486sx33 3y agoI agree. A tire manufacturing plant closed in my home city back in the early 2000s. I guy we knew from high school wanted the copper that came to the plant under ground in a vault. He figured for some reason it was disco … and blam fried his legs and hands completely cooked all his nerves in them and apparently one of his teeth exploded.. I mean , why would they turn service off to a manufacturing plant when they can just pull the meter ?
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago20 years ago rotten.com would post pictures of charred thieves that managed to electrocute themselves at the top of a pole.
- jacquesm 3y agoThis happened in Amsterdam a couple of decades ago. There was a newly minted industrial area on the other side of a bridge and the power company had temporarily run a pretty beefy hookup to the other side of the canal (Zeeburgerdijk) to power the various businesses there. The cable was about 4" thick. One night the power went out without warning and the power company showed up, when they found the break they found a hacksaw embedded in the cable fused solidly to the cable guts. They never bothered to file a report with the police because they figured whoever did that had been punished enough and sure enough there was a report of a guy with massive burns reporting to a nearby hospital that same night.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Animats 3y ago"Better Ads Experience Program Certified"?
- moioci 3y agoJasper has always had a unique brand of criminal: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-29-mn-60726-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-29-mn-60726...
- standardly 3y agoFun fact, my grandparents moved into that house. It was cheap, and within a year they found part of an undetonated pipe bomb in the shed in the back which the ATF came and confiscated. Jasper is a strange place. You hear of meth heads, being in north central AL and all. But the town has a unique history and there are actually a lot of really rich folks and nice neighborhoods there. It's an old mining town with a lot of old money, and rich folk from all over move there because of Smith lake. It used to be "the hitman capital" of the US and I've heard stories from a pilot friend of an umarked and unidentified black leer jet transporting shady individuals/cargo that used to frequent the Walker County Airport.
- jcpham2 3y agoThis guy Jaspers
- csa 3y agoJasper and the surrounding area is very similar to Shittown (of podcast fame). Crazy shit happens there for random reasons that probably won’t make sense to an outsider. This could be as simple as someone having a beef with a person at the station or one of the content sources that the AM station broadcasts. It could be something as simple as drunken weekend shenanigans. Why? Because they could.
- jcpham2 3y agoThis is totally Walker county. It was an AM station so it probably took the owner the weekend to look into it. We’ve got local stations near me that relay to the top of a nearby mountain and weather or road conditions can delay repairing that local station. I have family in Jasper, this really happened it’s wild that’s it’s national news.
- sho_hn 3y agoIf you need more radio tower stories tonight: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_(2022_film) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_(2022_film)
- AdamJacobMuller 3y agoI'm not particularly susceptible to jump scares in movies or anything shocking really, but, this movie had me on the edge of my seat. Good movie, much better than expected. Watch some of the making of features too, they filmed it all "real" (up on a 50ft tower or something) and it shows in the acting.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- schappim 3y agoImages of the actual tower: https://cdn.scrippsnews.com/images/videos/x/1707511452_vrzZ9i.jpg https://cdn.scrippsnews.com/images/videos/x/1707511452_vrzZ9... https://www.radioworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/WJLX.png https://www.radioworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/WJLX.p...
- russellbeattie 3y agoThe thing about this theft is that in order for it to be worth the effort, there needs to be a buyer. Is the FBI looking into what must be an organized metal salvage pipeline? First the salvage place needs to pay the thieves, no questions asked and no paper trail involved, then they need to pile it or chop it up, then sell it on to industrial factories that can use it, who must look the other way in terms of knowing about the source of the metal. This involves (among other crimes) tax evasion, book keeping fraud, money laundering, secrecy and probably a lot of bribery. I mean, if I can't buy pseudoephedrine without the state recording my license, surely it'd be pretty straightforward to require the same to sell copper.
- rbc 3y agoThere's a lot of detailed discussion in the Radio community here: https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/wjlx-200-tower-reported-stolen.769741 https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/wjlx-200-tower-repo...
- graphe 3y agoThanks for sharing, interesting forum post by radio experts. The conclusions they suggest like it being removed because they didn't pay their lease and just transmitted from their translator makes sense.
- thih9 3y agoIs anyone here familiar with structures like these? Do you have any theories how this could have happened?
- arp242 3y agoThe tower seems to be in a relatively remote field, and the tower seems pretty small (judging from [1]). Cut it down and in to pieces with a few battery-powered grinders, put in a van or two (or a small truck), and off you go. I suspect this may be easier than it appears at first sight. [1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/08/us/stolen-transmitter-radio-tower-jasper-alabama/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/08/us/stolen-transmitter-rad...
- diggan 3y agoHow realistic is the theory in the article regarding it being picked up by a helicopter? I don't know how much a tower like that could weight, nor how much a typical helicopter that a private individual has access to could lift. But if they'd be able to collect a significant value after cutting it down into pieces somewhere else and sell the pieces, maybe it makes sense (from the thief's perspective) to helicopter away the tower after detaching it from the ground.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Bluestrike2 3y agoIt's a small tower, but I'd think it'd probably still weighs a couple thousand pounds. I could be way off there and it's smaller than it looks in the CNN photo, but you're likely looking at using a construction helicopter and needing experienced people capable of rigging the tower and actually lifting it without killing everybody. My guess is that they just dropped it and chopped it up. A helicopter seems ridiculously over-the-top and cartoonish for a couple hundred bucks in scrap metal value you'd gain from the theft. You'd waste more than that in just fuel for the helicopter.
- sh79 3y agoThe image of another tower used in the article is pretty confusing. This <https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-alabama-d16a57daeaf10f473df39d628e1fe388 https://apnews.com/article/radio-station-tower-stolen-am-fm-...> one apparently includes the real one, which I think makes the theft appear more within the realms of possibility.
- graemep 3y agoOne of my earliest memories of something in the newspapers was, as a teenager, finding out a picture in The Guardian was of any entirely different conflict, more than a decade earlier, albeit in the same country. The media did not really care much about accuracy then, and its even worse now.
- jackfoxy 3y agoThis is more and more a problem, not just with images. Even most of the higher quality (better researched) Youtube channels are fast and loose about using irrelevant stock footage to go along with their narration. Of course the channels with AI voice-over are universally terrible at this. I know a lot of this is content creators have limited access to good visual content. A naval historiographer I follow will show, for instance, ship photos or archival video that is not exactly the ship or event he is describing. He's probably a solo creator and I'm sure constrained by archival access, and frankly time. One notable exception I have found is this channel https://www.youtube.com/@wildwestfaces https://www.youtube.com/@wildwestfaces The narration is often of first person memoirs of historic events and the images are relevant and sync well with the narration.
- sandworm101 3y ago>> A naval historiographer I follow will show, for instance, ship photos or archival video that is not exactly the ship or event he is describing. It isn't about money or resources. Even the biggest budget Hollywood productions regularly pass off incorrect ships in full understanding that most viewers cannot tell a sloop from a brig. Sometimes it is about cost or practicality, but more often it is about which ship comports with audience expectations.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Stratoscope 3y ago> The FCC also notified WJLX on Thursday morning that the station would have to go off the air because of the theft. While WJLX still has its FM transmitter and tower, it is not allowed to operate its FM transmitter while the AM station is off the air. W.T.F.? I've been following this story, and as a ham operator I am usually a big fan of the FCC. But I don't understand why the loss of the station's AM tower should require their FM transmissions to also be taken down. I must be missing something here. Can anyone help me understand this?
- blackfawn 3y agoTheir FM station is a "translator" which listens to their AM station and rebroadcasts it. Translators are a secondary service that must only rebroadcast their primary service.
- Brybry 3y agoTo add to this with sources: "Loss of primary station's signal. The translator must be set up to go off the air if the main station's signal is lost." [1] and cites regulations [2][3] [1] https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-translators-and-boosters https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-translators-and-boosters [2] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-74/subpart-L/section-74.1234 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C... [3] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-74/subpart-L/section-74.1263 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- amelius 3y agoIf stuff like this surprises you, then you haven't seen David Copperfield make an airplane and statue of liberty disappear.
- joemi 3y agoI'm not sure if you're trying to make some sort of joke or not, but that's not really related at all. This tower thing was just something in a remote location being dismantled in between regular visits, which is not at all how Copperfield accomplished those illusions.
- ryzvonusef 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZSxb8QIIa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZSxb8QIIa4 jeff geerling made a video on this, has some details on FM/AM translators, and how difficult it is to dismantle a tower.
- chasil 3y agoWouldn't it be easier to destroy the supports, causing it to fall? As long as the power is off, this seems faster.
- geerlingguy 3y agoPresumably the power was on—else the FM translator would've been in violation if it was transmitting. Also the owner never mentioned any monitoring of the AM signal, but most radio stations have at least one if not two or three different means to monitor their signals (and the FM is supposed to be integrated into that since it's not its own station). If the tower disappeared overnight... it would not be able to be done without a trace, and if any listeners were listening, for almost any station I've heard of, at least one listener would call into the station.
- assimpleaspossi 3y agoHow did they not notice this immediately themselves instead of having a landscaping crew notify them? When I was a broadcast engineer, we were required to constantly monitor the on-the-air signal. In addition, that tower is live. How did they disconnect it without serious shock?
- sandworm101 3y agoA small-town radio station likely doesn't have a 24/7 monitor. And it is AM, which they seem to be have kept running only to facilitate their FM license. I bet they just sent it a feed and checked on it ever few days/weeks. If a small AM station drops off the air, would any listeners think to inquire about why?
- rstephenson2 3y agoThe most plausible theory to me: this is all FCC licensing related, where the owner is operating an FM station that is licensed as an AM station + repeater, but _nobody_ listens to the AM station or cares. Other comments say they haven’t been broadcasting on AM in ~5 years, so it seems likely that it was stolen much earlier and nobody noticed. The Jeff Geerling video kind of supports this, but doesn’t call anyone out since it is speculative. Because if it is true, the station either didn’t notice, or ignored it until the landscapers filed a report, forcing them to address it and pretend like it just happened.
- thehamkercat 3y agoThis reminds me of [1] [1]: https://archive.ph/tOuMU https://archive.ph/tOuMU
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mlhpdx 3y agoInteresting that the folks making the broadcast weren’t listening to it.
- sam_goody 3y agoOT: One of the best short stories ever written is O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation". It takes place in Elmore, is about a thief, and is WTF. Which is a tenuous connection, but nonetheless a story worth reading ;)
- nazgulsenpai 3y agoI lived in Jasper about 15 years ago for about 5 years. Meth is a huge problem on this area and so is metal theft. Many facilities and even homes have their outdoor AC units in cages to prevent theft. Even church vans/busses not parked in garages often have their catalytic converters stolen. It is a sad state of affairs.