Electrocuted Climbing Abandoned Radio Tower
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- Опубліковано 2 лип 2024
- It's days like these that make you grateful to be alive.
Instagram: sumairev
CHAPTERS:
00:00 - Intro
00:24 - Infiltration
1:24 - Radio Tower 1
3:26 - ELECTROCUTION
4:01 - Radio Tower 2
4:35 - Radio Tower 3
5:16 - The Most Majestic Moment in Human History
5:54 - Almost Caught
7:21 - Scenery :)
7:42 - Exit
Disclaimer:
All footage was sent in anonymously. I have no association with the actions in this video.
You got shocked not electrocuted
Correct ! The word electrocuted means you are killed ! Brown Bread/Dead.
Abandoned all right, until nightfall that day.
The way I understand that transmitter site, there are three local radio station transmitters feeding their signals into the antenna systems there. The two shorter towers, including the one this idiot went near, only operate at night with a directional pattern. One of the transmitters is 50 kilowatts. During the day, the transmitters, including the 50 kilowatt one, all feed the tall tower at that site. If he touched that one instead............
While the old tuning huts are seemingly abandoned, the new tuning equipment is outdoors in those stainless steel enclosures you see in the video.
The FCC should require signs on the property fences that read: "Attention UA-camrs: this transmitter site is not abandoned. You MUST write the names of your next of kin at the bottom of this sign before tresspassing."
He literally walked over the sign. I guess it didn't apply to youtubers.
1:41 I like the American flag on your bike. Stay safe young adventurer.
@@Kinann Continental is talking about shock hazard. The sign he walked over was RF hazard.
When a person partakes in urbex they assume the risks that come with it. Noticing things like freshly installed signs, things that are still plugged in, the humming of power, vibrations in the surroundings, and fresh grass that isn't entirely overgrown are things one needs to look out for. This was one of Sumaire's earlier exploration videos. He made it out with a beginner's warning that not everything you see is how it really is. The Proper People's channel is a good example for what years of experience doing urbex looks like.
If the 50Kw mast radiates the HF energy, could the two smaller masts take a bit of that energy? Was that what zapped him?
@@arjanwilbie2511 Multiple combinations of stations can broadcast from the same tower via colocation. Any antenna can be hot at any time, (and very probably is due to cost). Many stations share antennas, they're a valuable commodity and hard to get new ones built, the land is just too valuable for things other than AM radio.
Yea those towers aren't as abandoned as you thought. 🤣
I see big shiny insulators at the base of any tower and you can't pay me enough money to touch it
Even unused insulated towers can pack quite a shock punch. It's due to the static electric charge buildup on the tower that results from wind blowing through the tower. Discharge arcs of one foot or more are not unheard of.
how would this guy have avoided that?
you use like a multimeter to check if its hot, then how would you dissapate the charge?
aspiring electrical engineer and a physics student so wondering a potential solution
@@ultragear207 Maybe your next course will tell you about grounding. Isn't that one of the very fundamentals of harnessing the power of electrons safely to human use?
The tower is insulated from the ground potential as often the whole tower acts as an antenna. Grounding it when used as a transmitter would just direct the power straight to the soil.
The atmosphere alone on a clear day has a 100 volts per meter potential difference, no friction needed. A charge build up is to be expected in an ungrounded tower. Not much of a conductor would be needed to direct the potential to some metal object located at a sufficient depth in the ground.
A jump start cable attached to a steel rod pushed deep in to the soil or better yet, an already established grounding electrode near by would do.
@@ultragear207 With a grounding strap, possibly through a bleed resistor so you don't get arching when you attach it to the tower. Then it will be safe to climb, but check the weather report first. As Kasinka says, there will likely be a grounding point at the bottom of the porcelain insulators under each leg. would not want grass or animals die from just being on the ground next to the antenna.
Why aren't we harnessing this power?
@@Xfacter You can, with a spark gap and an inductor coil to drive a transformer, you can make low voltage and higher current to charge a phone or similar small devices.
Most people don't understand also that the tower will receive other signals around it. Even dead towers won't be dead. They can conduct a neighboring towers energy through the airwaves
there was this footage of russian guys listening to a dead tower with a blade of grass
@@circleinforthecube5170 Yep, ua-cam.com/video/b9UO9tn4MpI/v-deo.html
AND through the ground!
Dude…..glass insulators at the bottom of each leg are kind of a MAJOR clue that you missed?? Geezzzzz…….
Most kids know nothing about AM transmission facilities anymore.
I thought electrocution = death or severe injury due to electric shock.
It does.
Yeah normally it cooks your insides.
The word "electrocution" implies death.
You really are lucky to be alive. Even with a spectacularly badly maintained site like that, the transmitter can still be on. You're lucky it's not running the full 50kW advertised power, or my friend you'd be a piece of fried bacon.
This was not power from a transmitter, or he's not be alive. It was induced power because the towers are insulated from ground.
It actually COULD have been running at 50KW. Likely not, though, that vegetation would likely have been burned.
The tower can pick up other nearby stations, or static from wind,make sure NEVER to touch the mast and ground at the same time. Don't mess around with rf, it is CRAZY dangerous.
If you are not authorized to be there and have the knowledge of what is involved, you shouldn't be there. That's why there are warning signs.
I'm the former owner of two AM radio stations. Neither of my stations had the amount of power this station is licensed for. You were a fool to ignore that "No Trespassing" sign and walk in the fence where the tower stood. You could have literally been killed under the right conditions. No, it wasn't your tennis shoes that saved you, either! AM towers have ridiculous amounts of power running through them. Even at lower power, you can still get a jolt by touching a "hot" tower.
The owners of that station aren't doing themselves any favors either. They are required by federal law to maintain safe, locked fences around their towers. What I saw could subject them to a fine if inspected. To others who want to explore, leave broadcast facilities alone. They're not as abandoned as you perceive them to be, and you are most likely trespassing!
I've worked on 25W AM TX kit, and that still gives you a nasty shock/RF burn. If folk want to play with RF then expect to never tell the tale(!!!), especially at 50,000W and especially with so much energy in the near field! @Sumairev is lucky not to have been fried - Take a look at this... ua-cam.com/video/GgDxXDV4_hc/v-deo.html ...These guys know what they are doing, and demostrate exactly what can happen!
Likely Hell! He was trespassing. And he had been warned.
regulations are gay
Stupid is as stupid does.
Ladies and gentlemen...........Meet the prince of stupid.
When you heard the gate opening that was just another UA-camr sneaking in to make a video
haha i didnt expect to see jawtooth in this comment section, love your videos!
@@slserenader Thanks! lol
Was it you Jawtooth? 🤔😂 interesting bumping into you here.
Are you the JawTooth who makes the railroad vids?
AM towers are crazy, if it was performing at its full 50 kilowatts, that would have been much worse. Glad you're alive!
Even if it's not transmitting... it sure is receiving 😂 Aerials work both ways!
Indeed! (Near field energy passing down that tower from the RF coming off the active tower nearby)
If I was you . I would turn back if I was you. Them towers aren’t Abandoned. There are in fact fully charged with energy.
This could have been SUCH an interesting video, but instead, you turned it into a complete waste of bandwidth
You didn't want to touch the other 2 towers?
Maybe at least he is not a TOTAL dumbass and learned from his first encounter with high power RF. Maybe. Just maybe.
I'm trying to figure out which behavior demonstrates more intelligence -
1) Messing around with high energy RF installations
or
2) Filming yourself committing a criminal act
He wasn't filming. No film was involved. He was using an electronic camera recording on memory media, hus he wasn't "FILMING".
@@The_DuMont_Network When you try to be a smartass about something, atleast be correct. You instead just made yourself look like the fool you are.
Almost another successful winner of a Darwin Award. Assisted in this case by not learning to read.
Those are fairly well preserved very old towers. That style dates to the 1930s. They might even be bald Knocks. Before they went to the inverted stack design. Looks like the old antenna tuning house, made a brick is still there but they have new antenna tuning boxes, out of aluminum or stainless steel. I remember the words of my former Chief engineer, after I touched the shower for the first time I got bit. He said hurt didn't it, taught you not to touch a second time. Assume everything is hot unless you personally ground it. And then assume that it still be hot...
It’s Blaw-Knox…not bald knocks. They were a very famous tower builder long ago.
i like that even our infrastructure architecture noticeably changes overtime, this world is beautiful, they should start preserving iconic old towers
@allen_steel1236 "bald knocks"??? Do you mean "Blaw-Knox", perhaps? They built hella strong towers.
If you look at the actual equipment, there's not much evidence these towers are abandoned. The equipment boxes for the first tower are literally shiny. Tower climbing is dangerous enough as is, your lack knowledge makes it borderline suicidal.
Alright so my friends and I went to an abandoned air force base in CA that had an old hospital. It was tagged and broke to shit and had security. We went in and some sensors went off and I couldn’t find my way to an exit considering it was pitch black and we didn’t all have flip phones back then. I was caught by security. He said “Look, I don’t see you guys caused anymore damage but with the homeless and the drug addicts I don’t need anymore stress and I need this job. Look, I know it’s fun and you are kids but it’s not haunted, everyone who says things have happened have lied or have just seen homeless people sleeping in some of the rooms. Just tell your friends not to come back please.” And he drove me to the gate and that was the only time I ever entered private property knowingly. I only had to be told once.
That whole site is a major FCC violation, particularly with the tower fences.
Even the tall vegetation at the tower base can get you a ticket. I had an FCC inspector write me up for "unmowed vegetation" at the base of a shunt fed (The tower is grounded, safe to touch at the base) AM tower. He had found nothing else at the station and said he "had to write me up for something". We became good friends and often worked together. The ticket was a hummer, but it was valid.
This tower may not have been fully excited, there would have been arcing at the vegetation brushing the tower.
there is a fence to keep people out of the whole property, so the tower fences are probably no longer needed for compliance.
@@The_DuMont_Network FCC brownshirts aren't your friends, even if they're friendly.
The signs were there for a reason imagine that.😆
This video really captured the feeling of exploring something alone on a summer day 😄 good music choice
With a bit of web searching, this station call letters indicate a station near Charlotte, NC. 50K watts as seen on the studio front face, but the current transmission for it claims a trio of transmitter towers. At 50Km this is recognized as an A-class station, and the strongest an AM transmitter can be in the US. This must be their previous and outdated studio site.
Those towers might still be radiating a signal if you got shocked climbing on it. So they might not be abandoned after all.
This is still an active transmitting site for WPTF AM 680 at 50kW and WQDR AM 570 at 1kW, basically a diplexing transmitting site. Soon to be a triplexing transmitter site.
For WPTF, Tower #3 (East) is used for non directional daytime operation at 50kW. Towers #1 (South) & #2 (North) are used for directional night time operation at 50kW.
For WQDR, Tower #1 (South) is used at 1kW non directional for daytime operation and Tower #1 (South) is used at 40 Watts non directional for nighttime operation.
There is a current construction permit for WKIX AM 850 to use Tower #2 (North) for 9kW non directional daytime operation and Tower #2 (North) 120 watts non directional nighttime operation.
The WPTF transmitter site in Cary NC, has historic protection status. Redevelopment of the site will be a future joint venture between the town of Cary and the property owner.
In this video today we learn that a lot of abandoned facilities rent out their towers to active stations and that some stations use entirely different antenna sites to transmit daytime and night time signals! We also learn if there's shiny metal boxes, those are NEW! For A Reason!
C'Mon man, show us your burnt hand!
PS< the lawns are mowed...for a reason.
If the site is in use, it is not "abandoned". This site is indeed derelict, unkempt, in need of upkeep, but it is not abandoned. Active power meters on the building, perhaps cooling blower noise should have been your first clue.
it's still in use by the station that has (most of) its call sign on the building.
@@jon_byler Like I said, the FACILITY is abandoned, not the towers.
The FACILITY, you know that thing he walked through that had trash strewn about everywhere.
Whether the towers are lit up with the signal of the call letters on the abandoned building or not is mostly irrelevant, towers are hard to build nowadays so they're always in use. Too many hoops to jump through to build new ones
If the lawn's mowed the towers are hot.
WPTF 680kz is owned by Don Curtis aka Curtis Media Group. Glad to see he's keeping up this historic property. 😢 Typical
Keeping up? Hardly. That shithole is an embarrassment. If the FCC were doing its job, the violations would paper a wall. I shudder to think of what a nightmare the transmitter room looks like.
Electrocution results in death….this is just a shock.
Real frigging bright, aren't you! You got shocked because you couldn't mind your own business. 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Those towers reach into the eather and collect the static electricity, be glad that all you got was a shock.
There's a ton of sketchy electrical around there, probably why it's got the NO TRESPASSING sign. Hehehe. Disobeying, carry on my friend. 💌
Another candidate for the UA-cam Darwin Award, walks right over RF radiation sign
A static shock and being "electrocuted" are very different things. One of them you don't walk away from.
that wasn't a static shock... That facility is still in use, despite the disheveled appearance.
Hi, yeah, this is one of the numerous fashions to act irresponsibly.
If you see a tower sitting in those insulators it’s energized! You touch it your grounded your damn lucky you were not killed ! The whole tower is the antenna ! You just got a little shock not the full 50 .000 watts if so you would be burned to a crisp !
What is the name of the soundtrack in the first part of the video? It sounds so familiar but I can't remember where I heard it?
Electric railroad tower shutting down for no patent for energy 1:39 1:39 1:40 1:40 1:40
RADIOACTIVE 3:10 3:10 3:10 3:11 shut down for no allowed patent 3:29 3:29 3:30
Assume ANY tower is HOT! You got “bit”by AM power fed to the tower. While exploring places like this ---DO NOT TOUCH! Only time a radio tower is safe is if ALL the RF power fed to it and antennas on the tower is off and the structure is grounded. 50 kw is more than enough to be LETHAL! It can KILL !
Hint: Check to see if the power feed to the main building is still active. Blower noise. Recent tire tracks...
Some of these are the radiator. Not a structure to hold antennas but the entire structure is live. If you notice the bottom legs. At the bottom there are four isolators that keep them from ground. I'm pretty sure what you felt was static discharge since its not grounded.
The tower was either being fed or was excited by near field radiation.
Another thing the RF emitted from the towers CANmess up your camera. Folks that film towers often use film type cameras to avoid RF interference issues with cameras-and again the RF can interfere with you! RF burns can be worse than fire because they are deep and take a long time to heal. Can also be infected later.
You need to JUMP onto the tower. You are creating a circuit with one of your knees/legs contacting earth ground
You need to NOT BE THERE. Yes, I've seen tower crews do it and have done it myself in an urgent situation. But it is stupid in general. You can still get bit.
Bro don‘t Write you Climb when you don‘t
Welcome to AM
Please. What is the name of the sound track being played at the end? Thank you
lonely sine
Not abandoned at all….50KW WPTF AM 680 is still very much on the air.
It's a shame to see an active broadcast facility in such disrepair.
Electrocuted? So you're dead?
Current record show the station license for one kilowatt, not 50,000. Seems like a drastic power increase I don't know what station would honestly want that
Where did you look up that data. I always wondered who owned xyz towers that blinked in the night.
transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/amq?call=WPTF&arn=&state=&city=&freq=680&fre2=680&single=1&type=0&facid=&class=&list=1&ThisTab=Results+to+This+Page%2FTab&dist=&dlat2=&mlat2=&slat2=&NS=N&dlon2=&mlon2=&slon2=&EW=W&size=9
@@obsoleteprofessor2034 Every tower has a federally assigned ID number. You can look it up in FCC and FAA databases. he number must be prominently displayed a the tower site and at the main entrance.
Would honestly want what? The site might have originally been for a 50KW station which moved elsewhere and sold the site to a lower power station. Are you certain that there are not more than one AM stations using the same site? It is quite common. For example, WFAA and WBAP shared a site and towers from before WWII. In fact, when D/FW Airport was being built, the gubmint built them a nice shiny new location a few miles away. WBAP later moved further South for reasons of propagation, then the current licenseholder KLIF moved to colocate with another station a couple of miles to the East. The second site is now gone, part of it is a new light rail station.
03:36 He didn't spot the large insulator between the frame and the ground...? 💀
what music did you use for the background music
whatt song did you use in the intro?
Well if you were electrocuted you wouldn't be here electrocution always means the result was death, otherwise you were just shocked.
I'm not sure where you went to med school. But you can certainly be electrocuted without suffering death.
@@CraigLumpyLemke shit that's what the Dr told me when I got zapped, but it's cool you thought I was a Dr but just a sparky
Man the hate on here… well produced video with a great soundtrack. I grew up near a AT&T long lines tower and it carried the same fascination for me as a kid and young adult. That art deco station building is pretty amazing too.
You were not electrocuted. Had you been electrocuted, by definition you would be dead. You were shocked.
Shocked by the radio frequency (RF) energy in that tower which is NOT grounded. See those funny brown feet? Those are insulators so the RF energy feeding the tower doesn't go to ground but is sent into the air. The tower was either being fed by the transmitter or was energized by one or more of the other towers in that array. Different stations setups can feed different combinations of towers in the day as opposed to the night.
You were dumb to ignore that and the other signs. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
electrocution does not necessarily mean you die. it does mean it, at least temporarily, disables you in some way, such as disabling or freezing your muscles. some electrocution can result in permanent injury. but in many other cases there can be full recovery. a shock just hurts but you can continue on being stupid. this video looked like a borderline case. i have touched the feedline of a 250 watt AM station. it burned like touching the filter connector of our 200 watt 2 meter repeater once when i forgot to shut it off. even my 5 watt HT will burn at the antenna connection if you hold it wrong (5/8 wave antennas put RF on the connector shield).
THERE'S NO CURE FOR STUPID !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Grate pics
AM is received through antennas and you can be miles away and get shocked just by a long wire
Your comment makes absolutely no sense.
@@CraigLumpyLemke It makes every sense if you understand RF (i.e. with a 50,000 Watt transmission, the field strength can still be high enough to give you a shock/nip some distance away. In fact this UA-camr ( ua-cam.com/video/yqljaKjKjd4/v-deo.html ) who manages to light up LEDs from just the RF field some distance away from the transmitting antenna/tower/mast.....)
Nicely shot. I also loved the sound track.
Ouch
you were lucky you weren't seriously injured or killed even when not energised by a transmitter an insulated tower of that size can still be at high voltage from other nearby live towers inducing current or just plain old static and that can be many thousands of volts lesson learned i hope. never touch a tower that's sitting on insulators like the ones there! otherwise nice footage be safe.
Better yet, stay the Hell away from towers.
It doesn't look like anyone has stolen the ground plane
Don't give them ideas. I've had to replace ground systems twice. Major pain in the ass.
Two lies in the video title. First you did not climb the tower. Second you are still alive so you were not electrocuted. Clickbait.
I agree. Electrocuted means dead, as in executed. Otherwise it was an electric shock. Lots of people use the term wrong.
@@rabbit188 Yes, Ms Rabbit. Lots of people "use the term wrong" [sic].
@@rabbit188 Definition of electrocute is 'to injure or kill (someone) by electric shock'.... This guy was definitely electrocuted!
When he touched it he made a connection between the earth and the tower, thus electricity found a path through him to ground. If he had thick rubber gloves or something then this wouldn't have happened is my guess. And maybe the grass or soil was wet. But with electricity you shouldn't guess 😢
Radio Frequency energy does not always respect "rubber gloves", and the soil does not have to be moist. There's a whole bunch of reasons based in physics to support this.
Read the signs
hope you learned a lesson
6:30 STL antenna on the ground
Probably using terrestrial interconnection or wireless Internet. Lots of folks have gone to IP STL.
0:03 I have that exact same sign.
Why the company that abandoned the towers rather than scrapping them for their metal is also beyond me. They are still responsible to maintain the safety fencing, tower painting and lighting. It usually costs nothing to have them scrapped and they must pay property tax on them as long as they stand. (actually even if they are on the ground) I have not heard of such fools around where I live. Ron W4BIN
You'd pay property tax whether or not the antennas were in place.
Ron, 50 year Amateur Advanced holder and retired Broadcast Engineer here. This site is clearly not abandoned. Shoddily maintained, to be sure. If the FCC were still doing its job you could paper the walls with violation notices. It is obviously still in operation and appears to be a colo site. The original doghouses have been updated to the metal box enclosed tuning units. Likely done when a second station was added. Too bad, they are a pain in the ass to maintain in bad weather.
they're still in use. there is a fence around them, the chain link fence he breached in order to get onto the site.
name of the first song? or at least genre
lonely sine
The name of the first song was "Adam, Where's My Fig Leaf"
@@CraigLumpyLemke idk, found nothing
Looks like the movie FALL
AM antenna are dangerous
So are FM, cell, communications, power transmission, any type of tower can be dangerous. Hell, just parking nearby in the Winter is dangerous. Ice can come off towers and land blocks away.
bellissimi gli induttori
4:51 🤣 A brick shit house...
It is obvious the site is NOT abandoned. Look at how the grass is cut. If it was abandoned, it'd be buried in tall grass and trees. Sumaire, stay the hell away from antenna fields, for your own safety.
I wonder is these towers are dead not into business or something!!!
Uh, nope, that site is active
jajaja casi te quemas el culo
FAAFO
you would be d ead if this was a real video. The amount of wattage pulsing through that connection would wave killled you.
it's a dead tower just pikcing up induced power. tower should be grounded for safety.
@@dopiaza2006 Do a little research. The site is active, just neglected.
That's essentially a giant capacitor. When it was in use it built up a load of wattage and was just sitting there looking sexy waiting for it's victim to come along.
Really, now. Take some time to learn RF and antenna theory and get back to us.
Click bait.. did not climb tower but did get a small shock overwise you'd be dead... Stop with the BS