Subzero temperatures, subway dwellers, and airborne rattlesnakes were among the challenges that tower climbers have shared with Anritsu as part of the company’s 2013 Toughest Site Competition. The test and measurement equipment maker has held the contest for four years to highlight the harsh conditions that climbers face and the ways that Anritsu’s handheld equipment helps them to complete their jobs.
Dozens of climbers submitted pictures and write-ups, and Anritsu said that most of them were stories of repairs or installations conducted in the mountains. “They are usually on a high mountaintop,” said Donn Mulder, vice president and general manager at Anritsu’s microwave measurements division. “It seems like there is always snow, so they need snow cabs to climb as close as possible before they begin the actual manual climb.”
Mulder says the most memorable entry this year came from Nashville’s Betacom. “There was one where there was actually a warning sign at the site that said ‘Caution, falling snakes!’ he said. “This site was on the side of a mountain, off the side of cliff, and evidently snakes would get close the edge of the cliff, which was above the site, and they’d fall onto the site where people were working, and these were … rattlesnakes.”
Not all the dangers that technicians faced were on mountaintops; in fact one of the most difficult jobs submitted this year was underground. A contractor responsible for maintaining wireless communications in the Boston subway sent details of his job site to Anritsu. “You talk about one of the dirtier, nastier environments, that was definitely one of them,” said Mulder. “Having to deal with 30,000 commuters a day and having to work around them, plus the people who use the subway tunnels as living quarters.”
The winner
In the end, the toughest site designation went to Wayne Bradley of Intellecom Communications. Bradley scaled a frigid 8,500-foot mountain in Potosi, Nevada on a freezing winter night to find out why GPS communication had been lost at a downed LTE site. The original thought was that the GPS antenna was improperly installed or cabled but Bradley used the Anritsu Site Master S332D cable and antenna analyzer to find the real problem. He conducted return loss and distance-to-fault (DTF) measurements followed by GPS antenna sweeps and finally voltage tests. The test results verified that Bradley had properly installed the site, and helped the team reveal the true culprit – a faulty GPS module on the BBU.
Mulder said Anritsu sponsors the contest to “highlight the fact that with this handheld, highly portable, easy-to-use test equipment that Anritsu offers to this installation and maintenance end of the market, it makes it possible to have easier and more efficient access to getting the job done for these poor technicians that have to go these extremely challenging environmental and geographic sites.”
As the contest winner, Bradley will receive a 2013 Harley-Davidson motorcycle from Anritsu. The company said that although Mr. Bradley entered the contest in order to try to win the Harley, he does have one more obstacle to overcome before he can fully claim his prize: he needs to make time to get a motorcycle license.
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