On Sat, 10 Sep 2011 08:12:23 -0500, Jeffrey Angus
wrote:

All it takes is ONE user who believes himself to be above
any technical standards in his quest to maximize profit.

Yep. However, sometime they actually have a clue. One of my friends
recently orchestrated a site cleanup and purge, emphasizing coax
cables and isolators. After the complaining, yelling, and screaming
stopped, so did the intermod. On the other foot, the county decided
to do the same things on a crowded tower that we were sharing. All
the LRM-400 came down, and was replaced by Heliax. Much of the
intermod went away, but the mixes generated in the receiver front ends
remained.

These are the same clowns that strip a site of any and all
hardware that isn't nailed down or currently connected to
something.

They're probably the same clowns that steal my scope probes that I
leave plugged into the scopes at various sites.

I had a weird problem related to unused equipment. There was an
unused "smog alert" receiver at one site, connected to an external
ground plane antenna half way up the tower. It was turned off as the
system was obsolete. Someone noticed that if they unplugged the
antenna connector, some of the intermod would magically disappear. The
outside antenna was picking up RF from the tower, delivering into the
building, and the badly shielded receiver front end was re-radiating
it all over the rack. The building manager immediately instituted a
reign of terror, demanding that all unused equipment and antennas be
removed, resulting in most of the junk exiting the building and tower.
There was a slight but noticeable decrease in intermod. Oh well.

Or throw together a "repeater" out of junk bought at the
swap meet and nailed to a piece of plywood.

Ahem... You must have been looking at my photos. Please don't do
that. Here's our unfinished plywood APRS weather station, built on a
plywood (with ash veneer) bookshelf:
http://802.11junk.com/jeffl/WR6AOK-WX-Station/
The 2m bottle is not in the picture. I use screws, not nails. There
was a good (political) reason to use plywood. Also, the rack in my
living room has plywood shelves, as are the radios in my Subaru.


--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558