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What really surprised me is that they get anybody to do that job for $10 an hour. It pays about $60 an hour out here. Plus the climbers go to a school first that cost $2000 to become certified. If they are paying $10 an hour, you kind of get what you pay for.
One dude was saying they will go to a site , climb it, replace a part and get paid $90.
I get more then that to drive to a customers house and replace a sprinkler head, on the ground.
Has anybody here seen the e-mail I got today about how many people are killed and badly wounded by gasoline explosions caused by cell phones ringing while people are fueling? Even more of them than are done in by static electricity they pick up by getting in the car while the fueling is being done.
When a cell phone rings you get a charge of electricity that can ignite the gas floating around by the tube into your gas tank. It seems to me that if you don't affect your brain using the little thing you can surely blow your head off from having it ring which filling up. Those little things sure can cause lots of deaths, even from those falls.
One dude was saying they will go to a site , climb it, replace a part and get paid $90.
I get more then that to drive to a customers house and replace a sprinkler head, on the ground.
I know. I get more than that to just drive somewhere period. There are tree climbers around here that get more than that.
The weight of carrying a parachute would probably cause more people to fall.
My dad climbed them, 30+ years ago, before cell phones existed, but not to change lightbulbs. Dont know exactly what he did though.
OP, do you realize these towers are used for radio, tv, etc, and not just cell phones? Why are they attributing tower deaths to cell phones?
The towers that are used for radio and TV broadcasting MAY have a cellular array on them whether GMS or CDMA BUT the cellular array is almost never more than 300 feet off the ground. And they are only that high in rural sparsley populated areas. In urban areas, most cellular antennas sit very close to the ground because the cellular system works on diffferent sets of radio frequencies for different areas so you want them to only cover a very small area in an urban area to divide the traffic up whereas you want them to cover a large area in the countryside where there is great distance and little traffic on them. On the other hand TV and FM broadcasters want maximum height and power to cover the largest area possible with a single antenna. Those are the huge towers that have antennas at 1400 to over 2000 feet. Here in L.A. ours are on Mt Wilson about 5000 feet above the valley. I can tell you this, broadcasters do not hire tower climbers that are not bonded, certified and insured to work on anything. And they are paid well north of $500 for a day of work. Each of them and they are usually in crews of 4. And the towers here are fairly short. A few hundred feet because they set 5000 feet up on a mountain. We have over 25 television stations here and they were all switched to digital which required lots of tower climbing and I do not recall hearing of even one fall. That is probably why most of the falls are people doing cell phone and land mobile work.
Last edited by Bruin Rick; 05-27-2012 at 09:56 AM..
I suspect if the numbers were compared there are more journeymen linemen killed working on electrical lines and high voltage tower/line construction and maint. than cell phone towers.
The weight of carrying a parachute would probably cause more people to fall.
My dad climbed them, 30+ years ago, before cell phones existed, but not to change lightbulbs. Dont know exactly what he did though.
OP, do you realize these towers are used for radio, tv, etc, and not just cell phones? Why are they attributing tower deaths to cell phones?
People climb them to look for damage to the coax and lights, the towers must be inspected every so often which involves looking at the section connectors and guy rigging anchors on them and some of them that have not been retrofitted with strobe lights have to be repainted which is a big job and big expense. Many modern towers have man elevators on them but the older ones have to be climbed and a really tall one takes hours to climb because the men have to stop and rest so often. Especially in really hot weather. The reason you rarely see people working on them is because, unlike cell towers, most work on broadcast towers is done late at night between 10 and 6AM because they have to go to low power or even off the air completely to do some of the work and usually there are several radio and TV stations that share an antenna.
You need to have a very dense buildup of gas fumes for an explosion to happen. I mean really, when you think about it, there are probably thousands of drivers every day who forget to turn off their engines or who light up cigarettes at gas stations. If it was really that dangerous you'd be seeing many news stories about exploding gas stations.
Now that doesn't mean you should go around smoking cigars and running your engine and generating static electricity while fueling up, but one also needn't be paranoid about potentially blowing themselves up because their cellphone rang.
OP, do you realize these towers are used for radio, tv, etc, and not just cell phones? Why are they attributing tower deaths to cell phones?
I'd never noticed those towers around my area until cell phones came into wide spread use. I think most people associate those towers with cell phones since they're called cell towers.
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