[grc] Amusing Tower Contractor Story

[David Klann]

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Hey All,

I had an interesting exchange with a tower contractor in western
Wisconsin this morning and thought I'd share with the list.

Our station, WDRT, 91.9fm, has an awesome arrangement with our local
telephone coop, Vernon Communications (vernontel.com) here in Viroqua,
WI. They provide the station with Internet service, tower space, rack
space, power, and cooling for our transmitter in trade for underwriting
announcements. (They also carry our audio on one of their cable TV
channels!) We have a great relationship with them and love their active
participation in the community!

We got a call from a tower contractor this morning notifying us that we
needed to reduce our transmitter power so they could remove an antenna
for their client (a cell company). And could we do it right now? "My
guys are up on the tower right now waiting." I was pretty shocked
because our contact at Vernon Communications is really good about
staying in touch with us and giving us at least a couple days' notice
about tower maintenance.

So I reluctantly reduced the output power on the transmitter (after
conferring with the staff). After restoring the power I sent a note to
our contact at the phone coop. He called soon after and profusely
apologized saying that when he left the tower site this morning they
were packing up to leave because they didn't give *him* advance notice.
He left the site, and apparently the contractors went back to work. The
contractor then contacted us (and presumably the other radio station on
the tower) asking us to reduce our power.

The kicker is that the our friend at the phone coop didn't even open the
locked gate to the tower before he left. So the contractor broke in to
the secured area to do their work. Needless to say, the phone coop folks
are quite disturbed at the behavior of this contractor.

No harm was done, but it highlights the fact that there are plenty of
unreliable operators out there.

My suggestion is that you think twice before contacting Wave
Communications in Sun Prairie, WI for doing tower work.

  ~d
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