9 ms·

He sort of touched on this, but an aspect of tower rigging that most people don’t think about is how long it can take to climb a tower when you are the first on

He sort of touched on this, but an aspect of tower rigging that most people don’t think about is how long it can take to climb a tower when you are the first one up with the line. It’s absolutely exhausting work. Another side fact, wasps are attracted to building nests on the towers for some reason. I never knew if it was all the EM radiation being put off or just the heat.

aetherson 2y ago
Almost certainly the heat.
- Xenograph 2y ago
  I don't think it's the heat, rather, the wasps seem attracted to the radio wave EM radiation. I'm not sure why, but I've seen it first hand when turning on high powered outdoor point-to-point WiFi antennas (eg. airMAX LiteBeam 5AC). The moment I connected the power, several wasps immediately began crowding around the antenna.
  - KeplerBoy 2y ago
    The wasps are of similar size to the wavelengths of 5 Ghz RF frequencies. It seems plausible that they experience the absorbed energy quite differently. Maybe it's like a pleasant warmth from within and they just fly towards the direction of increasing warmth. I guess it wouldn't take many dBms of absorbed power to slightly heat a wasp.
    - baggy_trough 2y ago
      Monkeys like to be microwaved; may be a similar effect.
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        Very curious how you get IRB approval to microwave monkeys.
        hyeonwho4 2y ago
        There is no IRB for monkeys. The animal equivalent to an IRB is usually an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), but the laws they are subject to vary with jurisdiction, and their use is optional if your grant provider (i.e. NIH) or academic publisher do not require them.
      - 0_____0 2y ago
        I beg your pardon?
        baggy_trough 2y ago
        Try it: you'll see. Low power recommended.
      - SoftTalker 2y ago
        Humans like to sit in saunas.
      - golem14 2y ago
        Humans, too: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2012.3787 https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2012.3787 I remember treatments like these happened in GP's offices in the 1980s.
  - walrus01 2y ago
    It's a useful small tool for low cost Ethernet bridges but a sub $200 ubiquiti 802.11ac point to point bridge is not a high powered radio, electrically they max out at something like 200 milliwatts, the rest of the eirp comes from the gain of the antenna.
Q6T46nT668w6i3m 2y ago
I used to do this and, for me, the time it took was entirely dependent on the gear I was provided and whether the climb was enjoyable. The gear isn’t exactly what you think of when you think climbing gear and, frankly, it’s infuriating. It might be manufactured by Petzl but the weight and utility are terrible relative to their alpine and mountaineering products. Hell, I was expected to wear work boots that were extremely heavy and climbed poorly. As far as scenery, everyone, myself included, would treat these climbs as climbs and would enjoy ourselves if the views were scenic. The work itself wasn’t hard relative to the trips we were guiding during the climbing season.
- jasinjames 2y ago
  How would someone get into this work?
  - walrus01 2y ago
    As a person that hires tower service companies, I seriously would not recommend it as an entry level employee... The pay is horrible, the benefits suck, you'll be travelling 75%+ of the time. The bar to entry is very low if you're physically fit. If you don't have any DUIs and can pass a drug screen you are already ahead of many candidates. Most of the recruiting takes placein social media these days, for instance there's probably 20 or so tower climber related groups on Facebook. One of the reasons for the extensive use of social media is that to put it as politely as possible, the talent pool they're recruiting from are not highly educated, often don't own laptops or any device other than their phone. Many cannot put together a grammatically correct cover letter or CV. There is a very high turn over rate in people with less than 2 years experience. You will be working with (and sharing the cheapest possible motel rooms with) some very crude and uneducated individuals, with whom you might have nothing in common. All that for a rate of pay about the same as Dicks Burgers pays in Seattle to literally flip a burger, and Dicks has much better benefits. The majority of the work will be mundane cellular tower and monopole stuff, unless you are hired by one of the more rare and specialized broadcast industry tower companies. The tower erection specialists are also a whole different ball game from the cellular industry contractors and subs. The industry in general is a frustrating race to the bottom in subcontractors, turf vendors, subs of subs, unpaid invoices, and similar. It's very much like getting into any other hard labor construction job like roofing. For the person in the thread here that said drones can only fly to 400 ft, not quite, the faa has specifically addressed this. ==== https://pilotinstitute.com/drone-altitute/ https://pilotinstitute.com/drone-altitute/ The relevant rules under Part 107 are summarized within Section 107.51. This section is entitled “Operating limitations for small unmanned aircraft” and contains a set of limits associated with speed, altitude, and visibility. Pertaining to altitude, item B of the Section states that: “The altitude of the small unmanned aircraft cannot be higher than 400 feet above ground level unless the small unmanned aircraft is (1) flown within a 400-foot radius of a structure, and (2) does not fly higher than 400 feet above the structure’s immediate uppermost limit.”

aetherson 2y ago

Almost certainly the heat.

Xenograph 2y ago
I don't think it's the heat, rather, the wasps seem attracted to the radio wave EM radiation. I'm not sure why, but I've seen it first hand when turning on high powered outdoor point-to-point WiFi antennas (eg. airMAX LiteBeam 5AC). The moment I connected the power, several wasps immediately began crowding around the antenna.
- KeplerBoy 2y ago
  The wasps are of similar size to the wavelengths of 5 Ghz RF frequencies. It seems plausible that they experience the absorbed energy quite differently. Maybe it's like a pleasant warmth from within and they just fly towards the direction of increasing warmth. I guess it wouldn't take many dBms of absorbed power to slightly heat a wasp.
  - baggy_trough 2y ago
    Monkeys like to be microwaved; may be a similar effect.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      Very curious how you get IRB approval to microwave monkeys.
      - hyeonwho4 2y ago
        There is no IRB for monkeys. The animal equivalent to an IRB is usually an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), but the laws they are subject to vary with jurisdiction, and their use is optional if your grant provider (i.e. NIH) or academic publisher do not require them.
    - 0_____0 2y ago
      I beg your pardon?
      - baggy_trough 2y ago
        Try it: you'll see. Low power recommended.
    - SoftTalker 2y ago
      Humans like to sit in saunas.
    - golem14 2y ago
      Humans, too: https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2012.3787 https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2012.3787 I remember treatments like these happened in GP's offices in the 1980s.
- walrus01 2y ago
  It's a useful small tool for low cost Ethernet bridges but a sub $200 ubiquiti 802.11ac point to point bridge is not a high powered radio, electrically they max out at something like 200 milliwatts, the rest of the eirp comes from the gain of the antenna.

Q6T46nT668w6i3m 2y ago

I used to do this and, for me, the time it took was entirely dependent on the gear I was provided and whether the climb was enjoyable. The gear isn’t exactly what you think of when you think climbing gear and, frankly, it’s infuriating. It might be manufactured by Petzl but the weight and utility are terrible relative to their alpine and mountaineering products. Hell, I was expected to wear work boots that were extremely heavy and climbed poorly. As far as scenery, everyone, myself included, would treat these climbs as climbs and would enjoy ourselves if the views were scenic. The work itself wasn’t hard relative to the trips we were guiding during the climbing season.

jasinjames 2y ago
How would someone get into this work?
- walrus01 2y ago
  As a person that hires tower service companies, I seriously would not recommend it as an entry level employee... The pay is horrible, the benefits suck, you'll be travelling 75%+ of the time. The bar to entry is very low if you're physically fit. If you don't have any DUIs and can pass a drug screen you are already ahead of many candidates. Most of the recruiting takes placein social media these days, for instance there's probably 20 or so tower climber related groups on Facebook. One of the reasons for the extensive use of social media is that to put it as politely as possible, the talent pool they're recruiting from are not highly educated, often don't own laptops or any device other than their phone. Many cannot put together a grammatically correct cover letter or CV. There is a very high turn over rate in people with less than 2 years experience. You will be working with (and sharing the cheapest possible motel rooms with) some very crude and uneducated individuals, with whom you might have nothing in common. All that for a rate of pay about the same as Dicks Burgers pays in Seattle to literally flip a burger, and Dicks has much better benefits. The majority of the work will be mundane cellular tower and monopole stuff, unless you are hired by one of the more rare and specialized broadcast industry tower companies. The tower erection specialists are also a whole different ball game from the cellular industry contractors and subs. The industry in general is a frustrating race to the bottom in subcontractors, turf vendors, subs of subs, unpaid invoices, and similar. It's very much like getting into any other hard labor construction job like roofing. For the person in the thread here that said drones can only fly to 400 ft, not quite, the faa has specifically addressed this. ==== https://pilotinstitute.com/drone-altitute/ https://pilotinstitute.com/drone-altitute/ The relevant rules under Part 107 are summarized within Section 107.51. This section is entitled “Operating limitations for small unmanned aircraft” and contains a set of limits associated with speed, altitude, and visibility. Pertaining to altitude, item B of the Section states that: “The altitude of the small unmanned aircraft cannot be higher than 400 feet above ground level unless the small unmanned aircraft is (1) flown within a 400-foot radius of a structure, and (2) does not fly higher than 400 feet above the structure’s immediate uppermost limit.”