I really like this photo I took of myself on Halloween. Really I could get all fancy like this any time but this was just unusually good.
Then, a few days later, I had to go make a run down to our tower to deal with a lack of LED glow. I guess I could have just put my glasses up on top, but that wouldn’t have been compliant with FAA regulations.
So it turns out this needlessly overcomplicated crazy-ass thing that communicates with all the LED tower strobes will get stuck in A Bad State if the strobes lose power, and you have to reboot it. Weirdly, unlike every other tower strobe system I’ve ever worked with, if you lose communications or the controller dies, it seems like the strobes just power down and do nothing. Most I’ve worked with have a failsafe that comes right up wherein they switch to day mode (maximum intensity) and just strobe without any regard to synchronization. The effect of this is a tower that looks like a funky twinkling disco ball, but remains visible.
By pressing down this special key, it plays a little melody.
Ultimately, it would turn out nothing was blown and the controller needed a full power cycle, NOT a press of its reset button which stands out there right below that row of red LEDs. Go figure.
Every now and then the gate operator at my apartment complex either leaves the gate open forever or opens like eight inches and dies so I have to get out and shove it open. This explains why.
Because this is what a fucking obnoxious, inexorably growing, and irritatingly vocal segment of the population actually believe. Copied off “chemtrailplanet.com”. I’m not even making this shit up and my faith in humanity is waning. You may click this to view it full size but why bother.
Ok, for like the sixteenth time this week I’ll explain this – I’m getting tired of this shit. I’m putting this up here so I can just send the link to people fighting over it instead of repeating myself a zillion times.
Note: If you were sent this link, you have probably been a victim of fake news!!!
First off, before you even read what I’m going to say, please take a moment to educate yourself on how to spot fake news. Many of the convincing looking articles out there that are trying to convince people that there are health risks linked with 5G wireless technology, or worse yet, that it is somehow “powering” the COVID-19 viral pandemic, are literally just fake news being propagated via a variety of sources including Russian propaganda bots. (Why, I wonder? I… frankly don’t care.)
I also highly recommend checking the Ad Fontes Media Bias Chart which ranks media sources on both their reliability for factual reporting and their level/direction of bias. If the source doesn’t even appear on the chart OR appears way down at one end or the other of the bell curve, look elsewhere.
Pictured here: a very loud-ass fake sensationalist “news”-spewing walking anal sphincter that really needs to be plugged up with hydraulic cement.
5G wireless is not harmful. It is not harmful to people living, working, or playing near towers, using mobile phone handsets, or even to properly trained tower workers and technicians maintaining the base station equipment. (In fact, the physical supporting tower itself is the only significant risk, mostly from fall hazards.)
It is not using hazardous ionizing radiation which can cause cancer or other health problems. It is not using high RF power levels that can cause injury from heating or thermal burns to tissue. It is not generating strong magnetic fields. NOTHING.
IT IS CERTAINLY NOT CONTRIBUTING TO OR RELATED IN ANY WAY TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, YOU MORONS. If it was still supported in modern browers I’d pepper in the fucking <blink> tag to make sure you see this.
5G wireless is in most cases using the same radio frequency bands and low transmitter power levels that 4G, 3G, EV-DO, LTE, whatever currently in use, are using. The only odd exception is that T-Mobile’s implementation, in some areas, is going to also have some millimeter wave channels in use for base to mobile transmissions. Users will not be exposed to high RF field strengths unless they physically climb the tower and give the antenna a big hug. So, uh, don’t do that.
The handsets you’ll have will continue to transmit at 600 to 800 Mhz as always, at very low power levels as they do now. Consider the fact that a mobile phone handset has to run off a battery of limited size and actually, you know, run on that for a long period of time. In all cases I’ve seen, the mobile phone’s CPU and screen consume 2-10 times as much power as the radios.
I’ve seen the TMobile millimeter wave system compared to the military’s active denial system, but that’s a really shitty comparison as the ADS uses kilowatts of power focused by a huge truck mounted dish for truly crazy effective radiated power levels. Specifications on the device are hard to come by but a smaller version was specified in a WIRED article as sending 30,000 watts. From speaking with a TMobile technician about it, he told me that the transmitter power (I don’t recall if it was effective radiated power or transmitter power output) will be approximately 50 watts, HOWEVER, the path loss is HUGE at those frequencies, so once you’re just a few feet away from the antenna sectors, you’re back down within safe RF exposure limits. They pretty much expect to only use the millimeter wave stuff within a few outdoor urban areas where there’s a high density of subscribers who will use it. It will not pass through trees, walls, or windows at any usable level.
It’s all entirely harmless to everyone except for the deluded consumer who thinks it’ll actually give them more bandwidth. Nobody’s actually investing in improving the bandwidth and reliability of the fiberoptic networks behind all this shit, so it will continue to be garbage. It’ll just be garbage in a fancier can.
Please, do not listen to Russian propaganda bots and clickbait websites. Do not listen to Alex Jones / Infowars. Don’t go chasing chemtrails, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you used to.
There’s a company working to install a DMR repeater as part of their network up on one of our sites now. They chose a good time to do it – we have dry weather today, and a 20% chance of light precipitation tomorrow…. much better than the last time I was up at this site when it was unrelentingly moist, cold, and slippery mud was infesting everything. Yes, it was indeed nasty enough to necessitate the word moist, that’s how offensive it was. Now it’s just beautiful, and with the clear sunny sky I can see two of the other sites I work on from here… the one with the wind farm is showingly only little patches of snow and should be accessible again, and it’s starting to melt off of Shasta Bally over there.
I know the tall snow capped one at right is Shasta Bally – I can see our tower up there. One of the other peaks visible is Shoemaker Bally and I’m not sure which one is which.
This is beautiful sailing weather. Go hit the lake! 🙂
Tower crew at work. They just mounted the transmit antenna for their MotoTRBO Capacity Plus repeater up there next to that weird arm with the IP camera on it.
Speaking of which—
We do not know whose camera that is.
It just kind of appeared when one of the tenants was working on the site.
They did not ask us to reduce transmitter power to drop RF exposure levels to within controlled exposure limits.
The way I look at this lately…. if some fool’s gonna go do work without asking for a power reduction, they DESERVED to be warmed up a bit. 😉
JUST ASK ME FOR A POWER REDUCTION! I don’t bite….. particularly hard.
For that matter, if the camera they did not ask us for permission to install starts malfunctioning due to the RF output of the DMR repeater— welllllllll guess whose fault that is for putting it there. Bwahahaha. I’m turning into the freaking BOFH, aren’t I?
Be sure to water and fertilize your LDF4 lines so they can go into full bloom!
This switch was pulled from a studio after it made the lights flicker. Sometimes tapping it would change this but moving the slider didn’t.
Let’s see what’s inside.
Well that’s unusual. A small snap switch is used behind the lights on/off toggle. But wait, aren’t those momentary switches? Clearly a mechanical latch is used. Let’s see that latch….
Wait just a NOPEing minute. They used a cheap and nasty no name Chinese latching push button to latch the light switch…. and it’s worn out and gotten loose, letting the snap switch flicker.
Let’s have a look at the actual switch contacts. Hmm, that switch smells funny and the Bakelite fractures very easily….
Superderp.
This could have caused a fire if it were powering a high wattage bunch of incandescent or halogen lamps.
By pressing down this special key, it plays a little melody.
