Antenna Radiation Level - safe distance

[rsibbald 0]

I've searched around on the forums and found a lot of general advice about antenna radiation safety.

I was hoping one of the tower workers on here could give me some more detailed information about their minimum safe distances for a >500kW FM stinger. Would you want this shut off before working near it? Would you stay a minimum of 50ft/100ft below it when exiting etc?

It just seems like quite a powerful beast compared with some of the other stats I've seen. I didn't find any quantitative information on the other posts I found.

Thanks for any info.

[truckerbase 0]

500 kW is a baby. A hatchling. Most base jumpers would strip naked and dance the macarena with so nasty a needle...1 megawatts, 5 megawatts, and apparently 10 megawatts are regularly jumped. I was unaware 10 megs was in use till one city took me off one. People have jumped off next to the stinger, touched and burned themselves on the stingers, and sat around singing Barry Manilow songs 10 feet below stinger pads half the night and none of these people will do the decent thing and drop dead.

All appear fairly normal, (except for the Barry Manilow guy ).

However, none of this stuff is good for you, it is an accepted risk, but if there are any true consequences, they seem unsupported currently by any hard data. Youve already read it--get up, get off, get away. Dont hang out next to pods, dishes, or arrays. Stay below the stinger by 50 or a hundred feet. However, in practice I find most people get used to being around this stuff, and, when they dont grow extra arms, or turn green, they adapt to the proximity of the risk, cease to be worried about it, and focus on more tangible deaths: like impact. On FM Ive never heard of anyone actually having a problem. Most Base careers are short, meteoric if you will, as people accomplish and realize this most esoteric of achievements, retiring content and happy to a life free of long term, close range exposure to FM antenna radiation. This limited exposure to this ambiguous threat may be why there are no reports of people waking up dead after a particularly intimate antenna binge. But regardless, people are jumping off near the stingers, off ice shields right over pods and dishes. And often use arrays as
handholds.

That being said, most engineers and tower rats ive talked to say the minimum safe distance to energized radiative systems...is the north pole on a dark night.

Got Wool?