[BC] Long Island, NY Metro PCS Cables Cut

[Broadcast List USER]

>From: Mike McCarthy <towers at mre.com>
>I have found ice and braid are incompatible for any long term application 

Don't use braid! Use strap!

I once took 27 antennas and transmission lines off a shunt fed tower.   
I replaced them with a four band receiver multicoupler system, with  
three antennas at the top of the tower coupled into one line, Low  
Band, High Band, UHF and 900 MHz, and two other lines for transmit.

The system worked great.  We got rid of all kinds of intermodulation  
distortion, and everyone received from the top of the tower so  
everyone got better hand held radio coverage.  It was my first of many  
of these conversions, and I am happy to do more.  Receive antennas at  
the top of the tower, and several levels of transmit below.

So, I was standing on a four foot tall GE cabinet, with my arms and  
head in the steel rafters of the building which contained all of this  
two-way, paging, an FM and an AM.  I was in the process of swapping a  
cabinet from a duplexer and one antenna to a receiver jumper from the  
multicoupler and a jumper to their port on the transmit combiner.   
They were on our receive antenna, so I shut off the repeater and  
unscrewed the antenna from their now useless duplexer.  I was in the  
process of connecting the transmit line and my head got near the  
earlier disconnected TX/RX line for this repeater, which wasn't far up  
the tower, maybe a bit less than half way on this 360 AGL, just over  
150 M HAAT FM tower.

I struck an arc from that now not connected line to my head.  I moved  
as far from it as I could.  The arc followed.  I leaned forward, and  
the arc moved from my head to my neck then my back.  I jumped from the  
top of the GE cabinet, and the arc kept following, though it seemed to  
move lower and lower.  Just before I hit the ground, the arc went  
out.  I ripped off my shirt and ran outside the building.  I found a  
co-worker and asked how badly I was burned.  He said I had some singed  
hair, but not bad at all, and a strip of sunburn along my spine about  
half way down my back.

I got the jumper cables from my car and went back inside and carefully  
grounded the end of that line.  The tower crew used a very small  
jumper (Radio Shack like) to bridge the rotted out Cablewave braided  
grounded kit, which fixed the problem until the cable could be dropped  
from the tower after the daytimer left the air that evening.

Long story short, where any cable leaves a shunt fed tower, it must be  
grounded, well grounded.  This line came off the tower about 18 feet  
off the ground and the Cablewave braided ground cable kit had rotted  
away and created a transformer, putting a very high Voltage, but low  
Current  on the end of that line.  I have never used a braided  
grounding kid since then, and check all grounding kits frequently.  I  
replace a lot of grounding kits.  Not only are they important for MW  
RF, but they are crucial for lightning protection.

--chip