A thief cut a live 100,000-watt FM line for scrap — engineers in the thread marvel he survived

The crime

Per Radio World, 100,000-watt country station 93.7 WDGG ("The Dawg") in Ashland, KY had its main transmission line cut and stolen in broad daylight. The alleged thief, Paul Crisp of Catlettsburg, reportedly disabled the site's surveillance first, then cut the pressurized, gas-filled cable running from the transmitter building across a bridge to the tower, dragged it home, and cut it up to scrap the copper. Repairs are estimated at $70,000–$100,000 (the line runs about $160/foot); the station is limping along at roughly 10 watts on a backup transmitter. It wasn't even the first time — the same site was hit on May 23.

The economics, quantified

The thread couldn't get over the math:

"Working backwards from clues in the article, thief maybe stole 200-400 ft of wire … Somewhere between $1,360 - $6,400 of scrap value. $70k-$100k to repair... Absurd." — a commenter running the scrap-vs-repair numbers

The physics of surviving a live 100kW line

Several engineers explained why the thief is alive to be charged:

"I'm guessing the station has a modern(ish) solid state transmitter, which has great foldback protection. I've seen (and personally tested) AM transmitters dead shorting, and within less than a second … it will fold back on a dead short to like 1% of its operating power." — Jeff Geerling, engineer and author

Others backed it with hands-on respect for the danger:

"I replaced the 100W FM transmitter on our college radio tower and got in front of the emitter beam for like 10 seconds and my head rung for a week … I can't even imagine messing with 100K line that's a solid block of copper." — a commenter recounting college-radio transmitter work

"I've had cable stolen from a tower site like that, but it was cable we had spooled out for installation the day before, not in active use." — an ISP operator with firsthand tower-theft experience

The bigger picture

This is what copper-theft desperation looks like when it collides with RF physics and infrastructure economics: a few thousand dollars of metal, a six-figure repair, a community station knocked to a whisper, and a thief who got lucky that modern transmitters fold back fast enough not to electrocute him. The copper price ticked up; the externalities did not.