On Thu, 21 May 2009 19:29:24 -0700, "Al Lorona"
wrote:

Jeff Liebermann wrote:
Was not a burning or anything,
it made you feel real nervous and uneasy. Pretty weird.. :/

Probably if I hadn't had the following experience, I would think you were
kinda loony, Jeff. But I know exactly what you describe.

Please watch the attributions. I didn't write that quote.

Several times in my 4th semester in college a good friend and myself would
ditch English class and drive up to Mt. Wilson, the mountain peak above Los
Angeles where almost all of its radio and TV antenna installations are.

I spent quite a bit of time up at Mt Wilson in the late 1960's. I
certainly had RF effects, but the causes were obvious. My teeth would
hurt. What was happening was the metal in the fillings was getting
slightly warm. The lousy job the original dentist did left a gap
under the filling, which was full of air, bacteria, crud, whatever.
Heat up the fillings, and the air tries to expand. If it hits the
nerve, my teeth would hurt. This went on for several years until I
had some removed and replaced with the unleaded variety.

I also have a small stainless plate where my skull was fractured while
I was trying to play gang member (at age 14). I eventually outgrew
the plate and had it replaced with a plastic and fake bone version.
The RF induced pains magically went away.

There have to be several megawatts of VHF and UHF ERP up there.

Most of it goes over your head as the antenna patterns are towards the
horizon, not under the towers. Even so, there's still quite a bit
floating around.

I didn't worry much about the RF. It was the falling blocks of ice
when the TV station xmitter baby sitter didn't bother turning on the
de-icer until the VSWR climbed. By then, there was quite a bit of ice
on the antennas. Nothing like big ice blocks falling from 500ft to
ruin my evening. Most went right threw the corregated steel roof on
the commercial radio buildings that sat under the towers. The blocks
didn't do much damage to the radios, which were in racks and boxes.
However, it did a great job of peeling off all the coax cables and
control wires.

Each time we made the trek in his Pinto station wagon, almost as soon as we
rounded the final bend at the top, I would start to feel nauseous.

Probably the fumes from the Pinto. In college, I worked part time for
a local Ford dealer fixing electrical systems in mostly Pintos and
Mavericks. I'd say you were lucky to have made it up the hill.

I
couldn't stay up there for more than a few minutes, and for several hours
afterward I would have what I came to call an 'RF headache'-- a dull,
debilitating haze that affected my focus and appetite. I don't know how
anyone who has to work up there does it, having to live in that environment.

Probably different people have different sensitivity levels. I spent
about 8 days up there helping with a messy install. I never felt
anything exept some altitude sickness (at 5700ft) which affected my
sleep. However, that was in the 1960's, where there were far fewer
xmitters on Mt Wilson. These days, you could probably heat your lunch
by simply waving it in the air.

Al W6LX