Those of you who have towers in remote locations where no one lives the area (such as a hill top), how do you protect your equipment from being stolen?
Use at least a 6 metre high pole of 150mm diameter, mount all the equipment at least 4metres up the pole. Any thief’s will need a pretty long ladder to get at it.
Another trick I have seen here in New Zealand, is to wrap barbed wire around the pole around 3metres up so it cannot be climbed, and then put your possum/squirrel guard above that.
If you need to mount gear on the ground, e.g. batteries, mount them in a sturdy plastic housing, or welded steel housing on a concrete plinth with no external bolts. They will not be able to get in very easily.
Also, make your site less visible. Paint the pole and housing with a UV stable “forest green” color.
Here in Kenya this is what we do:
The highsites tend to be lattice towers of about 25-30 meters. The lattice tower is guyed.
1: After the tower is up, build a chainlink fence around the entire base encompassing also the guy wire footings. On top of this we put coiled razor wire. the kind they used in world ward 2
2: We place more coilec razor wire at the three meter mark just as nz-mokey says. When we come to climb the tower we come with telescoping ladder that goes above the barbed wire. Its a pain though because if you are lowering or raising antennas etc with a rope the rope gets caught in the wire so you have to remove it. Dangerous stuff.
3: Then we make an agreement with one of the many security companies that have emergency response vehicles in the area to park up next to the tower to guard it. (see pic.)
One site I know belonging to the UN at a refugee camp actually takes down the site at the end of each day, packs up the antennas, solar panels router and batteries as well as all printers etc from a refugee feeding station, as it would all go missing…
Welcome to africa!
alex_rhys-hurn, I would be interested in seeing a picture of one of these towers you describe.
OK, next time I go to one of my hi-sites I’ll take a snap.
You’ll have to wait a few days…
Alex