Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geerlingguy | Hacker News Reader

While reading through the comments on that article, I was reminded of my Dad's own journey through the years as a radio engineer.

When I was growing up, he was the market engineering director for one of the two or three local FM conglomerates, and through the past 30 years or so, they kept getting gobbled up by larger corporations until probably 90% of the AM/FM radio audience was owned by either Clear Channel or CBS-then-Entercom-now-Audacy.

These groups also cut back substantially not only on local radio talent (there used to be shows through the day run by local DJs, now you're lucky to get a morning show and maybe an afternoon drive show), but also on the radio engineers deployed to the stations.

A lot is due to automation and ease of IP audio (and popularity of alternative formats like YouTube and Podcasts), but it's a bit of a sad, slow death of something I remember more fondly as a kid.

I recently had my Dad take me on a tour of a 'megawatt' (ERP) FM tower site in St. Louis (we posted a YouTube video of it) and it's incredible the engineering that goes into getting a signal (in the case of this site, 10 signals) into an FM antenna system 300m above the earth!

>it's incredible the engineering that goes into getting a signal (in the case of this site, 10 signals) into an FM antenna system 300m above the earth!

this is what always amazed me. we used to drive by/through the local antenna farm in my area, and it always impressed me as a kid that these towers was where the radio/tv signals originated. driving by, you could see the bases of some of them were on a single point of an inverted pyramid which revealed the importance of the guide wires. these were the first structures that i understood to be designed to move. then learning stories of the power of the signal, the amount of electricity to create that power, the fact that the AM signals could change their wattage at night to be more powerful, that video was an AM signal with the audio being FM all multiplexed together.

then there was the time that a military jet clipped the guide wires forcing the 2 occupants to eject and causing the station on that tower to go off the air. or the much more gruesome time a local teenager climbed one of the smaller towers, thinking he could recreate an action movie scene, attempted to slide down the guide wires. the attempt was not successful as it sliced off his fingers causing him to free fall catching a lower wire which created 2 halves of him. in case anyone thinks of trying this, don't.

after all of that, wound up becoming a video engineer.

FYI, they're guy-wires not guide wires.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy-wire

yes, sorry, but you're clearly "not from around these parts".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guide_wire

•Alternate spelling to guy-wire

Enough people say it wrong it eventually becomes right. There's nothing definitive about language except for usage...

> Enough people say it wrong it eventually becomes right. There's nothing definitive about language except for usage...

This is a view that is common among English speakers. Among many German native speakers it is instead common to love to analyze words and tell why some word is wrong even if it is actually in common use sometimes for decades.

But it doesn't make sense to call it a "guide wire", it's not "guiding" anything.

It is however guying the tower. guy; 3rd person present: guys; past tense: guyed; past participle: guyed; gerund or present participle: guying

secure with a line or lines. "it was set on concrete footings and guyed with steel cable"

Linguistically it’s easy to see why people would blur the line from cables that did guide something.

People use cables or ropes to guide long poles or similar structures into position and then tie them down for stability. Cranes of are of course easier, but not always available such as when replacing a sailing ships mast at sea.

Guy wires are often used similarly if for example wind loads are an issue during construction their tension need to be adjusted appropriately.

I suppose that makes sense if the wires are plotting to blow up antennas with gunpowder.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/guy

> guy (n.1) "small rope, chain, wire," 1620s, nautical; earlier "leader" (mid-14c.), from Old French guie "a guide,"...

pretty wild what circles language may run in.

That is interesting to see that connection, thanks for sharing!

Maybe we should just call them pedant wires?

Man on internet tries to correct things outside his control, news at 11.

Today, a random person on the internet took it upon themselves to let the rest of the internet know that someone was doing something they did not like. Themselves, in all things being perfect, decided it was high time to correct the pedantic use of a word in a way that differs from their personal use. In other news, the internet yawned, and went about its day.

I'm just trying to share that the vast majority of people involved in towers would call them guy wires and not guide wires. Feel free to use whatever word you want to describe them, call them party lines or whippy clips or pedant wires or whatever you wish to call them. The people involved in actually running them will still call them guy wires in the end.

I mean, just do a quick Google image search. Search "guide wire" and then "guy wire". Which one returns images of towers?

I'm sorry you took offense to me sharing information with you. I definitely didn't intend to make you upset by letting you know those cables are almost universally called a different term.

AM stations generally reduce their power at night, rather than increase it.

Yeah that was later because the power stations caused too much interference. The reach of medium wave increases at night and you get some local interference of far stations. They mitigated that by raising their local power causing even more interference. FCC stopped that :)

The noise these wires make when struck became the sound of blasters in Star Wars.

> could see the bases of some of them were on a single point of an inverted pyramid

I was under the impression these towers were AM because such a long wavelength is needed for AM radio stations that the whole tower is the antenna, with an insulator between the point of the inverter pyramid and the ground.

FM towers are not like this; the wavelength is much shorter and the tower is not part of the antenna. The antenna is a short element at the top insulated from the tower.

Happy to be corrected.

FM antennas are indeed placed as high up as possible on these towers, but the tower itself, being a guyed model and not freestanding, does come down to a "ball and socket" joint at the bottom, which allows the tower to move around slightly under the tremendous pressure of the guy wires yanking it down to earth.

Apparently there's a deep 25'x25' slab of concrete underneath that holds the socket the tower rests on.

I saw that video the other day - it was seriously amazing! That you for sharing it! I shared it around with a bunch of people who I figured would find it interesting as well. I would love to tour a facility like that one day, though chances are slim the stars will align in such a way. Who knows, maybe one day! haha :)

Small world, the youtube algorithm put that video in front of me the other day, enjoy it a lot.

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