They stole the WHOLE TOWER?! 

**Update** (Feb 14): RU-vidr @WilliamCollier visited the tower site on Monday and documented the tower base, fence, building... and details like a missing power meter. Lots of evidence points to a tower site that's been unused for a *long* time: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-bqIysr3o_vY.html (warning: language) Before you consider donating to the station's GoFundMe, I would recommend waiting to hear the full story. There's more to this story than a tower being suddenly stolen (which is definitely *not* what happened here), forcing a small community FM station off the airwaves.

Decades ago, I was a DJ on an FM station. The transmitter shut down during my shift. Our station engineer was calling me within 5 minutes. I don't understand how the lawn mowers were the first to discover this.

In unrelated news, a nearby Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane helicopter was reportedly upsetting the chickens at the poultry farm...

The fact that the tower was taken, along with everything in the building, tells me either it was an epic scrap haul, or someone knew what it was, and it's heading somewhere else to be used by someone else.

Saw another report today, William Colliers channel. The reporter visited the site of the tower. It has been gone for years by the look of the place. The guy wires are on the ground and grown over with years of weeds. The building that housed the broadcasting equipment is a rotting mess. The owner owes money to just about everybody he does business with. It was not stolen.

I have a 5kw transmitting tube on the shelf in my den. Anybody who tries to steal it is gonna have to get past my cat.

if a 200 foot tower would magically appear in my backyard I wouldn't complain

I'm from Jasper and have some friends-of-friends in local entertainment, and let's just say the broadcasting scene around here has never been... normal. The saga of Terry Keith Hammond is really something to behold, and largely a matter of public record. There are FCC memorandums about his denied request for licensure that are amusing to read. Took the local authorities on a wild goose chase a few years ago and served a while in the local jail for theft, during which he received an extended sentence after hatching an honest-to-god terror plot. And that's all just one guy. Jasper's not a fun place to live, but I do get the exhilarating experience of hearing about local happenings from non-local news sources on a pretty regular basis, so it's got that going for it.

This whole thing smells fishy beyond a simple theft

The elites don’t want you to know this but the towers at the station are free. You can take them home. I have 458 towers.

The AM equivalent to an insurance fire lol

The station is so popular, nobody knew it was gone and radio station wasn't on the air until landscapers went out. LMAO

I've been waiting for you guys to cover this since I hear the story on the news. If ever there was a story for Geerling Engineer, this is it. I hope you both do drive down there this weekend and investigate what traces actually exist of the theft.

An interesting thing is if you use google street view from the interstate, a bit west of where the interstate crosses the railroad tracks, and look north towards the tower, the past street views you can see two towers, this one and it's neighbor to the North. June 2022 is the last date they both show, March 2023 and January 2024 you only see one tower.

They mentioned "without a trace" but if you read the message @1:28 you can see that the bush hog crew reported that "wires are scattered everywhere". Not sure if they were talking about loose small wire or the larger guide wires?

Sounds like an inside job right here lol

I used to work in radio part time. It was a requirement to call the tower daily and get a status report of its condition for the FCC log. Everything from the tower lights to operation temperature was relayed back from the transmitter when you called it.

Having worked around this industry early in my career, there is just no way it disappeared without a trace. This is hugely suspicious, and the push to keep that FM translator on the air, coupled with several reports I have seen about the a.m. transmitter regularly not operating, don’t help my suspicion index. This has become an international story very quickly, so you know people have got to be on that site right now and I can’t wait to see some pictures.

It appears that the owners "stole" their own stuff in order to have a reason to launch a fundraising campaign.

Near me, we had a tower that was not used after crooks broke in and took all the repeaters (7) in the building. The owner was formerly the local RCA dealer. It sat unused for years and finally the land was sold. This was 180 feet of Rohn 25 with 7 runs of 7'/8 and 7 antennas. Since it had sat idle, the guy wires were sagging. The real estate folks had a hard time getting anyone to take it down. They finally got some local ham radio guys to come get it in exchange for having the tower. They had to tighten the guy wires first, then bring it down and haul it off. The building the RCA guy had was much like the one in your video, but smaller. Do keep us advised.

I'm from nearby and witnessed a discussion among a few radio (ham and broadcast) people from even closer to jasper. they haven't heard from the actual tower owner and license holder yet (its not elmore mentioned in the articles) apparently there has been drama in "the jasper broadcast scene" filling in these blanks makes me assume the owner might have something to do with it, but I nobody else has outright said that. allegedly the FCC had noticed the translator had been operational without the AM being on air a while back.

200' is a short to medium height tower. If it was Rohn 55G sized (about 17" on a side, can be up to 400' with guying), each 10' section weighs about 100 pounds, so you're looking somewhere around a ton. Let's say 2 tons for the sake of argument. Any flat bed equipment trailer can easily handle the weight. Box truck and a truck with equipment trailer roll in just before dusk, cut power to the transmitter, cut one of the guy sets to set the fall direction, and down she goes. A couple of oxyacetylene torches to cut it into 10' or 20' sections and load up the equipment trailer while another team of 2 guys start gutting the building. They're not taking this to sell on eBay or Marketplace, they're going to scrap it, so the condition doesn't matter. I can see this being done in under 8 hours. Now if you wanted to take it down so it's still usable, then yeah, there's no way. Does the scrapping theory make sense? Not really, because let's say scrap steel is at $0.07/lb and they get 5000 pounds total. That's only $350. So an inside job does seem more likely. And why are they raising money on GoFundMe? Was this facility not insured? That'd be somewhat surprising, and an insurance claim would be far more lucrative. As for notification if the transmitter went down, that's easily explained. Poorly run station, occurs at night, they're not going to worry about it until at least the next morning, although apparently it was longer than that. But who knows, they may not of even had any remote monitoring if it's that old and poorly run. I'm sure most of this has been speculated on the forums, but that's just my take.

As a radio station they need to be able to broadcast EAS test alerts weekly, so they have to have some way to know the test is going out, yet this sounds like they didn't know that either if they didn't know the tower was gone. They could end up with some heft fines in addition to the costs of replacing the tower and transmitter.

Having helped lower and raise just a 60 ft ham tower, there's no way a 200 ft tower just disappears, over-night, without a trace.

I have spent about 40 years visiting radio sites here in the UK, some sites are in poor condition but nothing like this. My armchair detective instinct thinks this station was dismantled before 2017. They appear to have been lying to the FCC for many years in order to keep the FM on the air.

Occam's razor folks. Obviously the station has been violating the FCC rules for years, not actually translating the AM to FM (which must be done by receiving the AM over the air at the FM site). They have obviously been directly STL to the FM this whole time.

how did they steal it with out know one knowing about it. I mean if it was on would they have got shocked ect from the power out put. like how.

Glad to see your dad back always enjoy listening to him because I love broadcast transmitters (especially tube type am)

Maybe they set out a long wire antenna to keep the station on the air, then got the tower down at their leisure. They then remove the long wire along with the transmitter once the hard disassembly work was done, that way there could be only minutes between going off the air and fully clearing out.

If the station's electric meter is monitored in near real time (the one on my house is read daily), it would be interesting to see when their power usage suddenly dropped.

I’ve seen the other video where he looked at the site. There hasn’t been a tower there for years. Someone’s going to jail when this is all done. That being said, my buddy and I dismantled a 130’ Ham radio tower in just a few hours from the backyard of the operator’s widow. It was bolted together and we simply took it down piece by piece. Being from 1954 I’d guess that the tower was also bolted together. No need to topple it or cut it up. So, an overnight theft isn’t any sort of stretch.

"without a trace"?!? I have to go with the alien abduction theory.

someone monitor the local swap shops and see if someone calls wanted to sell a radio tower or trade it for something

THE TOWER! THE TOWER! Rapunzel! Rapunzel! We are going to the tower. . .. .

I bet it was a Bonnie and Clyde duo between a Karen that thought it was a 5G tower, and a tweaker that sold it all for $20 in scrap.

This sounds suspicious enough to be an insurance job, conveniently on the heels of 95.5’s vandalized tower in Hugo, Oklahoma. Rumors on Facebook are that they wanted to keep the translator going and ditch the AM tower, but the station has a thin budget to get the proper paperwork done.

Bust out the oversize magnifying glasses and tweed, Geerling family investigative road trip!

I've worked in radio since I was 15 years old. I'm now 61. This is the most bizarre thing I've ever heard of. The station (obviously) goes off the air and no one notices. The tower is apparently cut down, taken apart and hauled off and no one notices. And the most stupid part is that the lawn care guys are the ones who discovered it. The stations I owned has a remote control system that would call my cell phone day or night or whenever there was a problem. This thing stinks to high heaven. Sorry, but someone at the station knows something... at the least, where that tower got hauled off to.

I recently watched some footage of the property we're the tower "was" one week before recorded by William Collier. It was clear that the transmission building had been out of service for a very long time. Weeds had grown inside the fence and the power meter was clearly decayed and wires that had been cut were corroded not freshy cut. That radio station also didn't have insurance on the tower which is very fishy. It appears that the radio station was in debt and had failed to maintain the AM tower that they were required to keep in operation. So instead of asking for money to maintain it they decided to claim it was stolen and play the victim to get money from their go fund me page.

Thanks for doing this video with your dad. His knowledge made this a fun and informative video. I'm interested in where this story and tower lead.

wow the screen capture you show of the gofundme page shows them stating "unfortunately the tower site was not insured".... ...their primary license transmitter was uninsured? wonder if their FM site is insured... also very good detective work finding the old previous example of their AM going off air. the lack of monitoring is also really really curious; i don't know too many technical production environments where their realtime monitoring is "the landscapers"... would be fascinating to see if there's any vegetation/ground indication of a felled tower; but then again, perhaps those signs may have been lost with the landscapers work - if there's no monitoring and no insurance, then what's the odds there's no fortnightly landscape maintenance and a huge vegetation growth may have momentarily buffered permanent indication. wow the more you look the more questions than answers! thanks for the share.

Great views on the sand and waters,one of the great views on this earth. Fantastic for you to be a part of it and to share.

Well done. Thanks for this!

what if it wasnt actually stolen, but "selectively destroyed" I've seen similar things in realestate to get around demo permits. Wouldn't be surprised if someone this allows the station to get around am permit requirement? No idea how that works though.

When no one is listening to the station. Nobody is going to call. Working at a radio station studio as a subcontractor. The DJ announced they have 4 tickets to local concerts. Listeners have to be the 3rd caller. The phone never did ring.

We had a translator for our TV station out of Salt Lake City in Rock Springs Wyoming. Our RF guy went to find out why we weren't on the air. Turned out the entire site had been removed. No one in town knew anything about whereour transmitter and antennas might be.

Good reporting. Thank you

I could be wrong but the tower looks like Rohn 50g . I think if you cut the guides on one side let her fall and cut it up with a demolition saw you could have the job done in around 6 hours. I think it would require a skid loader or similar machine and a flatbed. Feed line appears to be 1 inch Hardline or heliax. A Demolition saw would cut through that like butter.

Hey from Jasper!...Missouri. My communications/telecommunications/IT career began in 1981 with 15 years at Motorola. Along about 8 years in, I started doing tower work as a side gig and eventually went on to own a tower service. This story is just nuts and very fishy. No trace? More like no way! The first time I climbed a AM tower was pretty sketchy, I didn't want to become a crispy critter (like the frog). Good story! and I really enjoy your tower and station videos! How about a video on Mt. Pisgah North Carolina? It is probably the most unique site I've been to (and I've been to hundreds). It site is only accessibly by foot or by a flat rail car winched up (that is how we took equipment up). Look into it. Very interesting place.

I remember working on some local electronic equipment and a circuit fault tripped the breaker to the outlet that the device under test was plugged into. Normally, not a biggie, fix the fault, reset the breaker, reapply power and move on. Turned out that the transmitter was powered by that same breaker, as the college radio station was in an ancient building. The chief engineer noticed dead air and had come to the room to investigate and related that with 30 seconds of dead air, studies showed a 90% loss of audience. No telephone calls to the station, no calls to police, no rockets red glare, just a change of the dial to a transmitting station. Dead air time, around one minute. He chuckled, as it was unavoidable and I was unaware of the transmitter not being hard wired to an independent breaker (again, old building and well, no money). For this place, they filed for an STA (special temporary authority) for dead air (otherwise after a year of dead air, their license is forfeited anyway and there are a few other regulations I've not tracked over the decades since I had a 3rd class license). Repeatedly. Doesn't look good, but small operations and some oddball emergencies like wildfires, floods, etc have impacted the same areas repeatedly, so doesn't necessarily meet the kiss of death, the FCC evaluates the request and either grants it or denies it. It's not as if, stop transmitting and we'll open fire with the machine gun nuke launcher. Hell, while in the Middle East, our technical control facility (big time communications node for the DoD for that region, most bases have their own, but ours was a theater wide facility) went down, dropped satellite links, fiber links, no network, no phones, tons of virtual ink pens gave their lives in service to an angry General whose phone and e-mail stopped working. Cause: Power issues. Failed main base generator #X dropped power, which broke crypto, took 8 hours to reset all crypto. Failed building UPS on a power distribution transformer failure (several of which supplied the building). Another transformer failure, building UPS still offline due to all of the batteries in the battery room being defunct (mentioned in the weekly IA meeting by yours truly after the first outage made me aware of the issue). Yet another transformer failure, UPS ran with its room full of brand new batteries, alas, they died and one primary emergency generator failed due to undetected flood damage (yes, a flood in a desert - ruptured 1" pipe poured water underground, which entered the diesel fuel tank for the generator, displacing the fuel (whoinhell plans for a flood in a desert where 1" of rain per year is normal?! (we did afterward))). All required the military side of communications STA authorizations. Then, a ship dragged an anchor across the main fiber ring around the Persian Gulf. Suffice it to say, multiple nations naval forces had some words to say with the vessel's master, chief among them, "You are under arrest". The area was well marked on maps and with buoys. They got that fixed, then a main fiber to Europe got dragged the same way off of Egypt, similar events ensued. 5 years of never boring or cold... Actually, kind of miss Qatar! What saved our butts was 7+ years of uninterrupted service, declining budgets causing many of the causes of the outages and rapid recovery. Still doomed the base, which originally was a prepositioned stock storage base anyway. Oh, entertaining is getting a message to request the STA and report the outage when the networks, telephone and IP based aren't working. Fortunately, we did have some independent and nearly forgotten capability there. If the DoD, with more money to spend than the Almighty can have those problems and have them accepted, mom and pop stations certainly have a good chance of doing so. Otherwise, AM would be ghostly silent nationwide.

In Oregon, scrap metal recyclers are required to keep records of anyone recycling non ferrous metal in case of reported theft. Takes 3 business days to get your check from the local recycler.

Thanks for adding actual captions for the Deaf

For any that may care about such things... The tallest tower in the USA and the world at 2063 feet is no more having been lowered by some 75 feet. KTHI/KXTV/KOVR TV Tower at Blanchard, North Dakota has been lowered to a miniscule 1987 feet. From one that signed the registry kept in the base of the lightening burned beacon lamp long about the later 1980's. ;) As an additional historic foot note that Kline Metal tower was raised in the later 1960's in just over 30 days in the month of November by 11 insanely-brave men that would ride the guy'lines to the ground each day rather than spend the time/effort to crawl down the tower before retiring to "Beer-O-Clock"! It was a assuredly different time in our history!!!

This is the most wholesome and awesome channel I can imagine. Love it!

Thanks for covering this

I heard about this this morning. Definitely needs follow-up and very sus to ask for funding before we know the whole story. I also don't see how they wouldn't have a monitor alarm system. I wonder if it was off the air for other reasons before it got taken.

Too many insidious stories about this AM site. Sounds to me to be an inside job. The transmitter site was uninsured, the maintenance was sketchy, the owner obviously didn't care if the AM outlet lived or died. A little sleuthing around the owner's finances will unearth the unsavory reasons for this "mystery".

Without a trace = Insurance scam.

never underestimate tweakers and metal thieves.

Somebody cut down a 500 ft Tower here in Oklahoma last month to steal the copper off of it! They said it was a half million dollars.

No insurance? Isn't insurance an FCC requirement? Same for the daily check, also an FCC requirement (albeit usually done remotely these days to save manpower cost)? That said, a UK military tower went missing some years back. Nobody even seemed to notice the crew taking it down inside a secure area. Only when the all the services mysteriously came back online a few days later did the serious questions arise. In that case someone had reused a previous work instruction for a contractor and didn't change the coordinates in both boxes - the antenna was accidentally relocated to a base about 30 miles away. Again, contractors were let in and nobody seemed to notice a new RF tower being erected.

The incident sounds totally fishy to me, especially with a nearby processing plant so close to the site and nobody noticing a tower collapsing.

As a radio ham, i have assisted in putting up and taking down a 50 foor lattice tower, using a gin pole ad vehicle, we left no trace (this was for ham field days) I can't imagine doing the same with a 400 foot tower that's much heavier duty, it would need a big truck or powerful winch to do it the same way Then there's all the bolts to undo if you don't use cutting tools.

A similar storey - a company I used to manage has a 150' tower feeding MMDS 2.4 GHz signals with waveguide (coated copper waveguide). We had a very strong wind that tore the waveguide from the tower and took the signals down. We went out took pictures of the down waveguide . Three days later, insurance companies came to write reports, but the wave guide was gone. We have them on video cutting it up with a chainsaw and throwing it in the back of a truck and driving off.

Wow we can see the upgrade in sound and lightning good work on the studio !!!

What I don’t understand is why the scrap metal company wouldn’t be asking questions and shedding light on receiving this metal similar to pawn shops and their rules. I guess they are all rogues and louts and don’t report anything or question anything. It’s all about the almighty buck$$. Unbelievable!

Shows how popular the station is that no one rang up to let them know the TX was off air.

If you're only going to use two screws (instead of four) to rack up equipment, use the bottom two. Mark of a true pro! Retired CPBE here.

My local AM has a "superadio" in the studio, running continuously at low volume. The know rather quickly if the transmitter has gone out. The transmitter is a lot older than me, and of course vulnerable to lightning strikes.

There are some very hard questions going to be asked about this! I remember up in Detroit many years ago, I was helping a roofer put a new roof on my house. He had a heavy duty 30 foot roofing ladder leaning on the back on the house. I went in the house for a few minutes. I heard the roofer yell to me about where I put his ladder?? Someone, while the roofer was about 10 feet away with his back turned, managed to take the ladder down, move through 80 feet of back yard, over a 5 foot fence then a 8 foot fence and disappear without making a sound within a couple minutes!

I hope ownership didn't have anything to do with it, but I smell something fishy in Denmark. The station is apparently owned by a very elderly gentleman, maybe he thought they wouldn't go after an old man if the truth came out. I bet nobody noticed the tower was gone because the AM was either non operational or barely operational and an afterthought to the FM translator, which was virtually forgotten. But they realized; hey our tower is old and rusty and our transmitter is shot, lets make it disappear and see if we can get GoFundMe to pay for a new tower and transmitter. My guess is there is more here than meets the eye. I imagine the FBI or the US Marshalls will get to the bottom of it.

There's a local AM station with translators here... The owner once tried to turn off the AM transmitter at night to save a little electricity. The locals complained and he relented and turned it back on at night. (1kw daytime, 37w night time). Either that radio station has no listener audience, or the owner is cooking up something.

A few years back in WV, someone stole a whole bridge over a weekend.

In Brazil it’s very common to have the electric wires stolen. Once I had my Sky TV antenna stolen. Then, I had to replace it and added a chain with padlocks IN A FREAKING TV ANTENNA !!!

sounds like insurance fraud to me

According to a few local sources, that station had been illegally (without an STA) off air for a few years. The tower fell a couple of years ago due to years of no maintenance. Locals cut it up and took it away back then. However when the FCC began sniffing about recently the plot was hatched that the tower would be suddenly 'stolen'.

9:39 the setup and lightning was excellent, really good to watch

That's one way to justify no longer transmitting

If they didn't realize that their equipment was missing and they were off the air for some time, the commission should pull their license. None of the damage looks recent to me, and they have a reputation for being shady operators.

I worked for a major telco and was sent to repair a T1 at a COW (cellular on wheels) site late one night that had been used for a golf match. These are mobile cell towers that are moved by 18 wheelers. I could not find the tower so I went to the security desk of the resort and the security officer there made a HUGE deal that the telco had sent an absolute moron (me) out to fix something when I was so dumb I could not even find a massive tower on a massive trailer, and even got his boss and the resort general manager to come to the office. When he made a big show of opening his office door leading outside there was nothing there. Somebody had removed the tower earlier and he had not even noticed. There were profuse apologies and I did not stop laughing for a week!

Our radio club, located in Alberta, Canada also recently had a 150 ft tower stolen. While it hadn't been in use at the time, there was no evidence as to who might have taken it, or for what purpose.

I'm not saying insurance job but insurance job

1st of all the ad on Craigslist said FREE Tower, come & get it. 2nd of all it was only 10, 20 foot stackable sections that took less than 3 hours to take down and load on the trailer. Hey, if they really want it back, I will gladly drop that junk off somewhere and they can put it back up themselves. 🤣

Where I worked decades ago at a paging company, that also had an FM, someone came in one night and cut a guy wire that took down the about 250 foot tower. It was in a suburban area with 24 hour businesses nearby. Part of the tower came down on a garage and damaged a couple of classic cars. Both us and the FM were back on the air in a couple of days with 100 foot crank up towers. The station should start the process to convert the translator to a LP-FM. Most of the time translators are allowed for commercial stations if there is a "city of license" coverage issue but non-profit they can be licensed for almost any use like covering another city.

Requiring an AM station to broadcast FM is not something I've heard before in Europe. Seems to be an US-only thing.

I wonder if the adjacent business would have CCTV which covers the access roads either in the immediate area or the main roads? I do have to say this whole story is very suspicious.

We've not heard the rest of this fish story I'm sure....

This story sounds as plausable as a Dalek victory! Thank you, keep working.

Former Chief Engineer here. I had a daytimer AM (250 watt with 13 watt PSA) I took care of may years ago. The transmitter was in the now abandoned studio building, with about 400' of 7/8" foam dielectric coax running out to the ATU. The coax was on metals poles about 10' in the air. One morning I get a page from the AM morning guy that the transmitter readings looked "funky" and he was having trouble hearing the station (the studios were about 7 miles from the transmitter site). I head to the transmitter site and confirmed that the readings did indeed look funky, and that there was no indication of base current. I start walking out to the tower, figuring something fried in the ATU. Then I realized that the coax was gone. There were tire tracks in the fiend, and I figured someone tied a rope around the coax and pulled it off with a truck. I wound up going to Radio Shack (this is 1985...they still sold something besides satellite dishes and cell phones). I bought a full roll of CB radio coax (big stuff, rated for 1kW), and got the station back on the air with that. I notified the police, and they wound up finding the coax behind an apartment complex about a mile from the station. Apparently the thieves discovered just what a pain it is to get the copper out of the jacket and foam.

Maybe an hour north of me, I loled when i heard

😂 We were just laughing about this, this morning! 😎✌️

I heard from my dad who works in radio that this tower was not stolen by some scrapers overnight or anything and that the station owner has not been using the site properly violating FCC rules and all sorts of things. Hopefully those that donated to the go fund me can cancel or something.

Years ago they stole a 1700ft tower from a transmitter that was working on a backup site because the main transmitter was broken.They did not find out until several weeks later when they wanted to repair the transmitter...strange thing is, nobody paid attention to the tower light alarm.

I'm going to give everyone a little clue here. They're a satellite data that is available to the general public that can show when those tower actually disappeared. It's available online if you decide to pay for it 😊

I think Carmen Santiago was involved.

It is a requirement of the licensee to monitor your signal 24/7/365 or face fines and loss of license. That, and the fact that it would take a great number of knowledgeable individuals to get it down, disassembled and trucked away. And thats just the tower.

This doesn't pass the sniff test for me either. I thought it was a requirement to keep transmitter logs, daily if I remember right. No status monitoring of any kind? No alarm system of any kind? No trace? C'mon. There must be tire tracks, trampled grass, shards or scraps of fresh cut metal showing the presence of lack of rust, something. Easy enough to tell when it lost power. Pull records from the power company.

Stray Phaser fire incident from a landing party?

Where in the world is Carman Sandiego

They can pick up a used transmitter on Facebook marketplace, there is even a new local listing.