Hey electronjohn:
I was at the north 105.3 transmitter when "who shall not be named" got pissed at that Harris transmitter for melting down the diode stack a few years back. A whole pile of 1N something small stud mounts on flanged heatsinks all decided to short at once taking down everything and it turned out to be lightning damaged. Well he put in another diode stack alright and promptly blew that one up thanks to a lost phase, the pole transformer had also shorted and the internal transformer was not only feeding the transmitter but also the back-swing was feeding the shorted pole pig and created a harmonic that took out the new stack.
As for towers... I was on the old motorola tower in Arden Hills last week tracing a coax down for a 450 repeater that was recently installed. Turns out the 'other crew' had screwed the coax onto an 890 paging stick, whats wierd is I only had 12 total watts reflected power. The upshot was being lost at 6db for that 500 foot run and the reflected was also being burned off at 6db... THEY PUT THE DAMN THING ON 1/2" LINE AND NOT THE 1 7/8 LIKE WE REQUESTED! And this was supposed to be a professional tower crew from out of Chicago.

All I can say is WOW
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