Late night copper hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

[radarwill]

Last year I traveled to Cornell University to deploy a passive radar system.
The system has 12 antennas all connected to a "brain" around 100 feet away.
It seems that late at night yesterday some would be treasure hunters decided the
coax connecting all the antennas was treasure and cut/stole all of it.
I was going to enjoy Monday off with my family for a little fishing, both water and dirt, but now
I'll be working to replace the coax.

Thanks whomever you scumbags are.

 

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[Marc(NB)]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

well that sucks big time.probably not a TH"er but a thief looking for copper wire to sell.

 

[truckinbutch]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

Sorry about your luck but figure it was a theif not a treasure hunter.

 

[radarwill]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

I'm sure they were not treasure hunters. I'm sure they were scum bags.

 

[La Beep]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

12 cables 100 foot pull, connectors, should not be more the 1 hour work, whats the big deal, you need to be just as motivated as the thiefs were, I but they had the wire pulled in less then 15 min.

Damn thiefs, they need something like a hand cut off to remind them from taking something from somebody is a no no.

Place cameras while you are reinstalling the cables. Hope you do get it fix in time to enjoy some of your weekend.

 

[homefires]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

I worked for a Micro Wave Company. We took hit from Thieves all the time.

You should rename the post!

This Treasure hunter got a bad taste with that title.

 

[radarwill]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

12 cables 100 foot pull, connectors, should not be more the 1 hour work, whats the big deal, you need to be just as motivated as the thiefs were, I but they had the wire pulled in less then 15 min.

Damn thiefs, they need something like a hand cut off to remind them from taking something from somebody is a no no.

Place cameras while you are reinstalling the cables. Hope you do get it fix in time to enjoy some of your weekend.

Thanks for the well wishes Beep, but I wish it was that simple.
This is how it will go down:

1. Drive 5.5 hrs to Ithaca, NY.
2. Get tools, supplies, and 4' dia rf coax spool to roof.
3. Survey damage.
4. Lower 12 supports/antennas to ground level and remove "tail" of stolen coax.
5. Remove "opposite end tail" from receive preamps inside, one floor down.
6. Run 100' of Andrew LDF-150 semi-rigid RF Coax times 12 from preamps to antennas.***
***Above step to be a royal pain since to cable wants to retain its spool shape and will kink easily.
7. Install connectors on each end of new coax.
8. Loss test, at three different frequencies, each run of coax.
9. Install coax onto preamps.
10. Install/weatherproof coax on antennas.
11. Raise antennas.
12. Reorient each antenna in azimuth and record Rx levels from three different distant transmitters.
13. Pack up
14. Drive 5.5 hrs to Barre, MA


I'll be motivated to get back home before Tuesday.
Oh well, I'll be thinking about you guys.
Good luck and have a nice weekend.

 

[radarwill]

Re: Late night treasure hunters, thanks for taking my Labor Day away

You should rename the post!

This Treasure hunter got a bad taste with that title.

Good point, and done.

I was just think ing how those types would probally ridicule use honest Treasure Hunters.
It was on my mind and made it into the title. No offense intended.

Oh, and they were after copper, just not colonial coppas.

 

[La Beep]

Hope you did not take offense to the very first part of my post, It was a light hearted joke we used to tell each other when we had screwed up call when I used to install. I better then anybody knows, it never goes right when you in a hurry, but I also have seen some really fast installs when they were called for(like no overtime pay and no time extension). Hopefully there is more then one of you going. 4 would be nice 2 on the pull team and 1 on each end terminating. Doing long pulls by your self no fun.

Anyway best of luck.

 

[nightwolf]

That's just terrible, I'm sorry to hear your weekend was spoiled
We had a thief make the newspapers a couple weeks ago, he went to a transformer to steal the copper wiring and electrocuted himself, bad enough they had to ID him from his teeth, a total BBQ mess
Karma does come around for people like that.. maybe not as often as we would like it to but some is better than none I suppose, I hope you guys will be able to do something enjoyable to make up for the lost holiday time!

 

[radarwill]

Hope you did not take offense to the very first part of my post, It was a light hearted joke we used to tell each other when we had screwed up call when I used to install. I better then anybody knows, it never goes right when you in a hurry, but I also have seen some really fast installs when they were called for(like no overtime pay and no time extension). Hopefully there is more then one of you going. 4 would be nice 2 on the pull team and 1 on each end terminating. Doing long pulls by your self no fun.

Anyway best of luck.

None taken. If you used to install, I know you have felt the pain.
The only good thing about this is that for the first 8 hrs it will 2.5x since it's a holiday and 1.5x after that.

 

[homefires]

Thieves Suck!

Some people not far from here left on a extended vacation. I drove by there home a few weeks ago and the Slimes had Robbed all the Aluminum Siding from the Mobile Home. No Mercy!

 

[pookie-princess of rust]

man, that stinks. too bad your weekend had to be messed up like that.

 

[Ray S ECenFL]

Sorry to hear that you holiday is ruined.

Was wondering if there was anything you could do to prevent theft in the future?

Video camera, motion detector alarm ( security system).


Ruined holiday, but the pay scale is nice.

HH

Ray S

 

[SomeGuy]

It's been my observation that thieves will often return to a profitable site. Perhaps you can arrange to have an alarm triggered if an antenna is disconnected.

 

[FireRescue]

My grandfather would say "It's too bad you can't kill people anymore."

 

[BIG61AL]

there is a big difference between treasure hunters and thieves
thieves take what ever they want
treasure hunters only take what has been abandoned

 

[hollowpointred]

that sucks. i hate a thief.

 

[boogeyman]

Used to deal with copper wire thieves on an almost daily basis. I definately know how you feel! The only time I felt justice was served was when two transients cut through two chainlink fences and pried one of our transformer cabinets open. One guy got burned so badly he lost both hands, the second had 3rd degree burns all up one side. Heard later they had trouble treating them due to the meth they had done. When all was said & done, the only response I could come up with was "Well, at least he won't be stealing wire anymore."

It's not just the theft, it's the time for people to make the repairs, go out & document the theft and write the reports, not to mention if the wire is recovered it's usually cut up and no longer useful. This cost almost always gets passed on to all of us.

 

[La Beep]

See radarwill I should not have picked on you. Spent the last two days with pouring rains and heavy winds, from the hurricane.