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WJLX 200' tower reported stolen

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passtheword

passtheword

Was involved in the removal of a Rohn SSV public safety tower - Start to empty lot was less then two days.

Mini-bobcat excavator with a thumb made loading the cut-up steel scrap into dumpsters easy.

Add a remote site into the mix where no cared about machinery or cutoff saw noise, it might have been quicker...
 
WJLX is a 1Kw AM on 1240 (with a translator for 101.5), in the middle of Nowhere, Alabama, adjacent to a poultry farm or processing facility. Nothing suspicious there.

Maybe the perp was training for some extreme weightlifting competition and couldn't afford a normal set of barbells?
 
Spareparts said:
33°48'54.0"N 87°16'19.0"W · Walker County School District, AL

Tower was in the woods with nothing around it....
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Time out ... widen your view a bit on Google Maps. Mar-Jac Poultry is ~1200 ft. to the (I'm assuming) northwest. A road into the facility is barely 200' away at its closest point. The Jasper Sewage Treatment Plant is about 1200' to the southeast. It is in a wooded area, but that area is by no means isolated. Hell, one of the access roads into town is within a couple hundred feet of the tower site. Somebody must have seen/heard something. Somebody must've noticed a station going off the air. Somebody must've gotten quite a shock if the 1KW transmission line was cut. (Unless, of course, someone had access to the transmitter shack to kill power to it first.) And don't forget there was probably an aviation beacon at the top, and that had to be powered too.
 
When I saw the headline, I assumed they meant a surplus tower on the ground.

Felling and stealing an actual operating tower seems a bit more involved. For a start, a 200' tower will make a significant thud when it hits the ground.
 
Spareparts said:
Was involved in the removal of a Rohn SSV public safety tower - Start to empty lot was less then two days.

Mini-bobcat excavator with a thumb made loading the cut-up steel scrap into dumpsters easy.

Add a remote site into the mix where no cared about machinery or cutoff saw noise, it might have been quicker...
Click to expand...
So, you're saying that thieves will bring along an excavator and saws or torches to cut up and load pieces of a tower, assumably to some sort of dump truck? And even if it took a day, why didn't anyone from the station notice the station would be down for a day or more? For years my remote control started calling after just a few seconds, and wouldn't stop until someone acknowledged the alarm.
 
Former or current disgruntled employees will be looked at first. This would take some planning to pull off. The remote would raise an alarm at someone's house when the transmitter shut off. Likely if you broke into the shack as well.

So the bad guys need to know about the remote control and how to disable it first. Maybe someone who had the codes.

Sometimes security cameras are a good idea. Just don't have the DVR in the shack. They'll steal it too.

A welding torch could quickly cut up the tower and two guys load it onto a flatbed.

This takes some real planning and I hope they're caught.

There were some guys in Indiana back in the 1990's who broke into radio station transmitter shacks. They stole and smashed radio equipment. My commercial FM in Attica Indiana was one of the stations they hit. However they hit one station too many. A station owner had an exciter stolen and he heard a signal on his frequency and he tracked those thieving pirates down and busted their asses.
 
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I am with Kelly on this one. Lots of restaurants let their insurance policy get too close to the stove. In this case they must have had the policy sitting on top of the warmest piece of equipment in the xmitr shack!

I mean, I realize that the FM is the one being listened to, but geez for you not to even notice your AM is off the air? Hmmmm...
 
A search of Google News for WJLX produces nothing further on this story from any source. WVTM's initial story was last updated on Feb. 2. So, did this happen or not?
 
PTBoardOp93 said:
When I saw the headline, I assumed they meant a surplus tower on the ground.

Felling and stealing an actual operating tower seems a bit more involved. For a start, a 200' tower will make a significant thud when it hits the ground.
Click to expand...
I have been at several tower removals over the years, and the sound of one hitting a field is about the same as dropping a bag of cement off a truck: "thud!". If the surrounding area is concrete or paved with asphalt, it will ring a bit, but not very loudly. Cutting the sections of the tower apart will make much more noise, but it will sound more like power lawn tractors at work to the neighbors.
 
They stole the transmitter too. That's not your ordinary metal thief. It would take more than one guy to do it. Maybe more than two. Very strange. How much would an AM transmitter weigh? An old one would be several hundred pounds.
 
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The New Chico said:
I am with Kelly on this one. Lots of restaurants let their insurance policy get too close to the stove. In this case they must have had the policy sitting on top of the warmest piece of equipment in the xmitr shack!

I mean, I realize that the FM is the one being listened to, but geez for you not to even notice your AM is off the air? Hmmmm...
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And that's a great point. I wonder if their translator is still on the air with programming? It's not outside the realm that the owner discovers his entire AM plant has been stolen, but his FM translator is still in business? Ultimately a check from insurance while the beat goes on. Cake and eat it too.
 
Hmm. 200' tall tower goes missing. What's that weigh? Yeah, Bubba and Joey ain't gettin' that in the back of the Dodge. And nobody noticed until a mowing company goes out there?

Listen. Maybe this needs to get somebody's attention at the FCC. These people have NO idea when the tower went AWOL. What? You don't have monitoring equipment? NOBODY noticed the AM was off the air?

Maybe, just maybe, people that have translators need to remember that it's NOT their primary signal, and somebody should be paying attention to the originating station. If you can't be bothered to pay attention to your primary signal long enough to realize your freaking TOWER is missing, then you've got problems. That's like Sonic not realizing someone stole their stove while they were microwaving my breakfast burrito.
 
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