Angry Birds! – A Tale from the Tower
We spoke to Bill O’Neal, an Energenecs field service tech, about an interesting installation story. Bill is responsible for installing radio antennas, switching out control panels, plus instrumentation work including installing flow meters and pressure transmitters.
Energenecs field technicians, such as Bill, are trained and competent to climb water towers and antenna structures to install and properly terminate antenna cables to ensure long term radio path performance in a SCADA system. They pay attention to properly sized antenna cables to reduce line losses, proper antenna grounding practices, as well as fall safety regulations using quality professional gear when climbing elevated towers.
How did you get into this line of work?
I started out as a foreman for a concrete finisher crew for 7 years during the summers. One winter I had an opportunity to wire control panels on the bench for a different company, and they made me an offer to stay full time. The company was small, so I had to learn many different things. I then worked at Kamp Synergy for 18 years, a system integration company, which was acquired in 2013 by Energenecs. It’s been great!, I like working at Energenecs.
What is a typical antenna installation like?
When installing the antennas, I hoist the cables, antenna, mounting bracket and my tools. I have a second guy on the ground for safety. It can take between 4-8 hours to install, every tower is different.
So I heard you had an interesting encounter on an installation job…
In 2001, the city of Wauwatosa was installing security switches on the top hatches of their water towers, so I was going around installing limit switches on all the hatches and running cable. Water towers are usually about 160 feet high, and the one where this particular incident happened had an outside ladder. I was climbing up the ladder on the outside leg and was just below the ball at about 90 feet when suddenly I felt like I just got punched in the back. It turned out to be a couple of red tailed hawks which hit me with both feet out!
I quickly climbed around to the inside of the ladder, then kind of hung out, banging my safety harness clip on the metal to try to scare them. The male and female hawk took turns every 30 seconds or so dive bombing me. I sat there for about 20 minutes and have to admit it was kind of cool seeing them up so close! You can see the color of their eyes as they are coming in. When they dive, they come so fast! As soon as I could, I climbed down the inside of the ladder, then jumped around on the outside and climbed down as fast as possible, They finally stopped coming at me, since I was going in the right direction, as far as they were concerned.
Afterwards, I went back and did some research on red tailed hawks, and figured out when the chicks fledge from the nest… so now I schedule my work for several weeks after that time to avoid future incidents.
What do you enjoy about your job?
I enjoy being able to do a lot of different things as part of my scope of work at Energenecs. I also enjoy the challenge. Usually I can work through things, but we have many other guys on the team with various experience that I can call on.
What do you do for fun?
My wife and I love riding motorcycles, we put on between 12-15,000 miles every summer. We enjoy riding around Wisconsin and going around lake Michigan. We also go on longer trips, last summer we rode to Savannah, Georgia. This year we are planning to go to Pennsylvania and spend a week riding around in Amish country.
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