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New Cable Designed To Deter Copper Thieves
Hugh Pickens writes "Pervasive thefts of copper wire from under the streets of Fresno, California have prompted the city to seal thousands of its manhole covers with concrete. In Picher, Oklahoma, someone felled the town's utility poles with chain saws, allowing thieves to abscond with 3,000 feet of wire while causing a blackout. The theft of copper cables costs U.S. companies $60 million a year and the FBI says it considers theft of copper wire to be a threat to the nation's baseline ability to function. But now PC World reports that a U.S. company has developed a new cable design that removes almost all the copper from cables in a bid to deter metal thieves. Unlike conventional cables made from solid copper, the GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel Cable consists of a steel core bonded to a copper outer casing, forming an equally effective but far less valuable cable by exploiting the corrosion-resistance of copper with the conductive properties of steel. 'Companies trying to protect their copper infrastructure have been going to extreme measures to deter theft, many of which are neither successful nor cost effective,' says CommScope vice president, Doug Wells. 'Despite efforts like these, thieves continue to steal copper because of its rising value. The result is costly damage to networks and growing service disruptions.' The GroundSmart Copper Clad Steel cable is the latest technical solution to the problem of copper theft, which has included alternatives like cable etching to aid tracing of stolen metal and using chemicals that leave stains detectable under ultra-violet light. However the Copper Clad Steel strikes at the root of the problem by making the cable less susceptible to theft by both increasing the resistance to cutting and drastically decreasing the scrap value."
As someone who has been hit repeatedly by these morons, a few thoughts. Radio in general offers a very attractive target to these thieves, especially (believe it or not) older installations like AM radio stations. (At low frequencies like AM, the tower itself is actually the antenna -- that's why there are insulators in the guy wires -- and the tower field is laced with gobs and gobs of soft copper that acts as the ground plane.)
1. Copper-clad steel is nothing new. Some of this is just marketroid hype (though to be fair, I don't think anyone has ever made clad *telcom* cable before). But other types of clad conductors have been common for some time -- not just to deter theft, but because of the price of copper.
2. The real problem is the scrap metal dealers. You can't tell me that they're not suspicious when a couple of teenage guys come dragging in the core from a big honkin' three phase HVAC unit. But THEY want the copper even worse than the thieves, because they turn around and sell it in ton lots at a huge profit.
3. Copper is considerably more conductive than steel. We can get away with it at RF frequencies because of skin effect (i.e., the signal travels through the "skin" of the conductor, rather than the center), but it's not a perfect solution. It's much more difficult to work with and it's easy to accidentally strip off the copper cladding, leaving you with far less desirable steel at the connection point.
4. These thieves really are morons, and yes, most are repeat offenders. They even talk to one another in jail and compare notes. When we were hammered in February of 2010, the deputies who investigated our incident told us that they even knew who most of these people were. We had video cameras and they scoured the images to get a clue as to who it was.
But sometimes I have to laugh. One of our FM stations here is in the huge metropolis of Pumpkin Center, Alabama, which defines "middle of nowhere." The house up the (dirt) road from the transmitter site has been hit repeatedly; I drove to the site to do routine maintenance a couple of years ago and noted that the air conditioner had been ransacked. But they won't mess with the FM site.
I guess the fact that our landlady likes to go out and there and shoot with her boyfriend gives them pause. The sight of all those targets with bullet holes all around the center makes them think twice. :)
Then some thieves tried to cut the gigantic, 6" copper coax going to our 100,000 FM in North Central Alabama. I posted a note that said, "Dear morons, if you try to cut this line, please have your life insurance paid up .... "
They've stolen our grounding several times since, but they haven't touched that big coax again. :)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
A partial solution that seems to be working here in Oregon: for all scrap sales over a certain (relatively low) amount, the scrap dealer has to mail you a check rather than paying cash on the spot. Having to provide a working mailing address deters thieves, and the time delay discourages the druggies.
Heh. I feel for you. Been there, done it. But I'll tell you this -- we get hit just as frequently at our big 100,000 watt FMs in Birmingham as we do at the remote sites. My colleague at the Clear Channel site right next to our FM on Red Mountain in Birmingham has video of a guy jumping the fence, clipping a handful of copper, and then gracefully jumping back over the fence, into his car and down the hill -- all in less than a minute. By the time the cops arrived, he was long gone.
The cameras at that same Clear Channel site also provided a (somewhat scary) image of a different copper thief shooting out the lights before proceeding with his theft. He got caught, though, because even though he was wearing a mask, you could see his (unmasked) girlfriend crouching in the trees. She was identified and later sang like a canary when she was brought in for questioning.
These guys know how long the police response time is and make sure they can grab and scoot before they can get caught. The deputies who investigated our big theft at a 50,000 watt AM a couple of years ago said the best way to catch them was to set a trap (but even then, they got discouraged because the thieves would spend a few months in jail, then be right back out to steal again).
The deputies told me that on a slow day, they'll actually cruise the neighborhood with the windows down, sniffing for the smell of burning plastic. Whenever thieves steal telecom cable, they often try to burn off the insulation before scrapping it to get a better price.
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
We have signs like that. Our signs also point out that stealing from a federally-licensed facility could result in a federal investigation. Shoot, the Birmingham Police have their antennas on one of our big FM towers, and the thieves DON'T CARE. They get hit all the time.
The thieves will destroy the cable to determine if it's clad or pure copper, then throw aside the stuff they don't want. It still leaves *ME* with a ton of cleanup and repair to do.
That's what I love about this crap: they steal $20 worth of copper and do $10,000 of damage in the process. They'll take the three ground cables from a 700' tower (worth about $10 for scrap) -- and those grounds are what keep lightning out of my equipment. A storm rolls along and I get hammered, while they sit back with their six pack of beer and think they've done well for themselves. (Whimper.)
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
Really? Then you must be the ONLY person alive not to have. With so many laws on the books, it's impossible NOT to have unknowingly broken one of them, whether it's your dog mating with another dog within 1,500 feet of a public school (California) or other such stupidity.
We had the city pass a really stupid law - because kids were holding on to the back of buses during the winter and "sledding", they passed a law making it illegal to hold on to or grasp any part of a vehicle in motion inside city limits. So how are you supposed to steer?
Ditto with the law they passed trying to ban massage parlors by defining massage as the physical manipulation of any part of another persons body - making everything from handshakes to helping your kid blow her nose.
It's a safe bet you've broken a few stupid laws.
You overestimate the intelligence of thieves. The word is out that cable is valuable so the average thief will carry right on stealing it.
Also by the time the thief discovers the cable isn't valuable the damage has already been done. As happens with telephone cables. Since the typical thief can't tell the difference between copper and fibre cable before cutting it.
Most of them don't care. It is pretty obvious when someone is a copper thief.
I think anything less than full photo registration of sellers, and a bureaucracy to make sure sure no scap is being "laundered", is about the only way to stop it. However that would probably cost more than the copper thieves do.
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CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
Because we have open borders. People from former eastbloc states, who do not have any social welfare, come in and steal the copper. This must look like a harsh statement but the statistics do not lie; 90% of copper theft in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium is performed by people from Poland, Romania, Bulgaria etc. (I know, missing reference)