whats the dumbest install you've ever done

teufler · Nov 10, 2014

I was a navy pilot and radios , to me ment, you pushed a button and they talked. Being adventerous I came home with a reverberation box to install. The was the days that stereo radio had not happened yet. So spending a saturday afternoon, I mounted, spliced wires and really tried to follow the instruction. Well the moment of truth. Turned the reverberation box on and nothing happened. Then a neighbor came out and asked why my headlights were on, Seemed my wiring had turned the headlights on. Then turned the headlights on and the reverberation unit came on. So many years later, learning with cb radios, became a ham operator. At least now I have learned, what I can do and who I call now for the things I don't. Ham radio, ity was a tower install where I was putting a home brew with a base that allowed a foldover base. poured the concrete, put the base on some boards that allowed me to insert some bolts thry a hindge plate. The base was near the side of the house, so the tower would lay over away from the house. In my haste to place the tower, I placeed the base 180 degrees from where it should have been placed. The hindge plate allowed ther tower to lay into the house rather than in the back yard. The last screw up was at Katrina where I was operating am emergency staion for Hancock county. We arrived late in the day, hurried to erect the antenna. I used a B&W folded diploe. The antenna has a balum at the feed point. The balum is supposed to face towards the ground and have the coax attached before the antenna goes up. I admired my fast erection of the antenna, then looked at my partner who was an operator standing there hold the coax in his hand. Those are the three dumbest things I can remember doing.

hamstang · Nov 10, 2014

I once installed a Larsen glass mount antenna on the back windshield of a Jeep Cherokee forgetting there was a windshield wiper. Duh!

n0nhp · Nov 10, 2014

I pierced the tire inflation monitor hose on a brand new Hummer looking for a hot wire.....

n5ims · Nov 10, 2014

We were using a come-a-long to help pull one of the two cabinets for our 20,000 watt FM transmitter up the final 3 flights of stairs from the top floor of a building to the elevator equipment room on the roof where it was to be installed. The cable from the come-a-long was attached to a heavy duty hand truck holding the cabinet. Each step we had 4 guys helping move the assembly along while the come-a-long provided most of the force needed to raise (and hold) the very heavy cabinet. As the front wheels reached the top step, the caught on that step and caused the handle (where the cable was attached) to break off and that heavy cabinet raced down the flight of stairs and through the wall into a senior VP's office. Fortunately the only damage was to that wall and the hand truck. Everyone managed to scatter safely to the side and the metal studs on that wall prevented the cabinet from hitting the VP.

Voyager · Nov 10, 2014

The dumbest install I've ever seen (not installed myself) was one where they connected the radio power leads directly to the battery. The vehicle lost the ground going to the chassis, so the entirety of the starting current went through the radio which caught fire. Luckily, it did not spread to the vehicle.

Unfortunately, I've seen a LOT of similar installs. People just don't realize the consequences. ALWAYS ground to the vehicle chassis, not the battery.

Voyager · Nov 10, 2014

n5ims said:
We were using a come-a-long to help pull one of the two cabinets for our 20,000 watt FM transmitter up the final 3 flights of stairs from the top floor of a building to the elevator equipment room on the roof where it was to be installed. The cable from the come-a-long was attached to a heavy duty hand truck holding the cabinet. Each step we had 4 guys helping move the assembly along while the come-a-long provided most of the force needed to raise (and hold) the very heavy cabinet. As the front wheels reached the top step, the caught on that step and caused the handle (where the cable was attached) to break off and that heavy cabinet raced down the flight of stairs and through the wall into a senior VP's office. Fortunately the only damage was to that wall and the hand truck. Everyone managed to scatter safely to the side and the metal studs on that wall prevented the cabinet from hitting the VP.

That's why they make service elevators. Which was the dumb part? The manual lifting or the potential install in the elevator equipment room which is against the electrical code?

BTW, a competitor had a similar incident. One guy was trying to hand-truck a transmitter up the steps because it would have taken too much time to use the lift to get to the second floor. I'm not sure he ever went back to work after it landed on top of him. He did survive, though.

ofd8001 · Nov 10, 2014

As a former fire chief, I've seen several installs that didn't work out so well.

Most of them involved way too small power wire or the absence of over current protection.

n5ims · Nov 10, 2014

Voyager said:
That's why they make service elevators. Which was the dumb part? The manual lifting or the potential install in the elevator equipment room which is against the electrical code?

BTW, a competitor had a similar incident. One guy was trying to hand-truck a transmitter up the steps because it would have taken too much time to use the lift to get to the second floor. I'm not sure he ever went back to work after it landed on top of him. He did survive, though.

The installation passed all codes (it was checked several times by several inspectors and passed every one) and the installation was validated by the local officials as well as the building architects prior to the plan being started. As a very high profile installation (this was the tallest building for several counties) we were very closely monitored at every step and when necessary (due to the uniqueness of the building for the local inspectors) we also had inspectors from a several counties away that had several tall buildings as well as inspections from the state inspectors since it was a state owned building. I feel certain that our install not only passed the spirit of the codes, but passed based on the strictest interpretation of them.

There wasn't even a service elevator that went to the roof, only to the top floor. As far as isolation from the motors, pulleys, and shaft holes, this wasn't an issue. Our room was isolated from all of those and had our own access door to the roof.

I believe that our "dumbest part" was going up stair by stair. After the incident, we placed plywood over the stairs where the hand truck went (actually had rails to keep the wheels inline) and had no issues after that. This idea was raised initially but was rejected by the supervisor as being too much trouble and unnecessary. He was busy apologizing to the VPs and President while we threw down the plywood and raised the two cabinets and transformer assembly for the final tubes. My suggestion (thrown out as too expensive) was to use a helicopter to lift them. I never expected them to do that, but figured I'd make the suggestion since I thought it would be fun to have a copter as part of our install.

Voyager · Nov 10, 2014

n5ims said:
As far as isolation from the motors, pulleys, and shaft holes, this wasn't an issue. Our room was isolated from all of those and had our own access door to the roof.

OK. What threw me was:

n5ims said:
to the elevator equipment room on the roof where it was to be installed

It's a well known fact that nothing non-elevator can be installed in the "elevator equipment room" per the national electric code. If yours was elsewhere, no issues.

mmckenna · Nov 11, 2014

When 800MHz rebanding was happening, myself and a coworker went out to inventory radios on our system. Found a Spectra installed in a small shuttle bus. We couldn't figure out where the antenna was. I started tracing out the coax. I found the NMO mount with antenna attached, along with about 6 feet of coaxial cable all wadded up and ty-wrapped to the clearance light wiring harness above the driver.
Turns out they had decided that could save a whole bunch of money by having the local car stereo shop install the radios instead of the two way radio shop. I had a talk with the guy who ran the bus fleet...

teufler · Nov 11, 2014

forgot one other dump thing, our ham club was taking down a phelps dodge antenna off a watertower. One crew decided to rest while the other crew took over. Well the "down" rope got confused with the rope that pulls the tool bucket up and down. When the antenna was released for going down, it came down for 125 feet very fast. No one was holding the rope and it came down point first. Fortunately no one got poked or hit. The antenna hit ground and wasn't any worse for the wear. The club now uses outside climber companies , and we watch.

zz0468 · Nov 11, 2014

An IMTS mobile phone with the head on the transmission hump. Every time the car was put into gear, the handset popped up into the air. Seems one of the bolts was a bit too long and was actually resting on the case of the transmission. My gawd, that was a funny sight to see!

Project25_MASTR · Nov 20, 2014

There is an old Honda civic hatchback I know of that has a through the roof mounted fiberglass cb antenna. It's a 4 ft antenna and only 2 ft is above the roof.

hamstang said:
I once installed a Larsen glass mount antenna on the back windshield of a Jeep Cherokee forgetting there was a windshield wiper. Duh!

I pulled the wiper on my XJ…the lip I left on the spare tire carrier for a trunk lip mount (I was being lazy and it's worked great) didn't like the arm. Not like you can really see out of the back window to begin with with a 32" tire.

PACNWDude · Nov 21, 2014

My dumbest install was in a Kenworth tractor. I cut the red "wire" going up the channel between the split windshields to install a USB charging port. Well the red "wire" was actually a very small air line for the air horn. That horn blew for about an hour before I found a quick splice kit.

Dumbest install I have seen done by someone else, Kirkuk, Iraq. Someone complained about their cable television not working. Arriving at the site, I see coax, RG-6 quad that had worn its outer sheathing off from rubbing against concertina wire. The coax had been ran so it scraped the concertina, slicing the cable. The end user tried to fix the coax, by tying it in a knot as you would tie your shoes.

Tying cables in knots seemed to be common in that part of the world. I saw Cat5 for data and Cat3, telephone satin cable and RG-58 coax tied together too.At least it made it easy to find the problem.

The most common dumb thing I see often is equipment turned off, (or not plugged in) and operators wondering why it does not work. I am guilty of this too.

chekoz77 · Nov 21, 2014

I started a small fire in a Chevy Suburban installing a keyless entry.

I was having an off day and mistakinly hooked the positive signal wire to ground. So when I hit unlock to test it turned about 6 foot of wire into a big heating element. Lots and lots of smoke and a tiny fire. It was the joke of the shop for a few weeks.

teufler · Nov 21, 2014

the dumbest installation I have seen was at the Salvation Army building in Jackson, Miss, when I went down for Katrina. Up the street was this nice Red Cross installation, beam, tower, looked real good. GFot to the Salvation Army and they had a G?? on a mast feed with coax, that entered an office where the Radio Operator had a radio locked in a closet, and the radio had infinite swr. So climbing on the roof, the connection had a splice in the coax. Two pieces of coax, with the shields soldered together and the center conductors soldered together, then the wires touched, and were all taped together. to keep the water out. Well after we repaired the antenna, we came down, had a nice lunch and a prayer meeting, then headed to Biloxi. I went down to operate. Same radio Comm guy had 10 d700 kenwoods in new boxes in the closet, and wouldn't install a one.

KZ9G · Nov 26, 2014

Dumbest install I have ever seen and had to fix was from one of the local radio shops. They had installed some x9000 Motorola radios in new squad cars and they had been back to the shop a ton of times for the radio fuses blowing in the dash. In the dash. The tech installed the radios by tapping into the line for the blower motor for the heating and ac in the car. The dept had ended up buying a bunch of 30 amp fuses for the officers to change when their radio went out. They had to shut off the blower to be able to talk on the radio each time. I ended up running the power correct on one squad car and after that and that officer not blowing fuses every other car was sent back to the shop for them to do it right.

Project25_MASTR · Dec 13, 2014

I just remembered another dumb install I once saw. Someone drilled a hole in the roof of their F350 that needed to be retired 800k miles ago, ran the coax, caulked it up and left the mag mount sitting on the roof. This was actually done for a commercial UHF radio...

03msc · Dec 15, 2014

Voyager said:
The dumbest install I've ever seen (not installed myself) was one where they connected the radio power leads directly to the battery. The vehicle lost the ground going to the chassis, so the entirety of the starting current went through the radio which caught fire. Luckily, it did not spread to the vehicle.

Unfortunately, I've seen a LOT of similar installs. People just don't realize the consequences. ALWAYS ground to the vehicle chassis, not the battery.

Funny, on this very forum I've seen countless post saying to wire both directly to the battery and that it will cause no problems. They also said that some had the opposite opinion but for "unfounded reasons". So I read this and remember why I had asked in the first place - varying opinions make for confusion when both sides state their opinion as absolute fact.

Voyager · Dec 15, 2014

I've replied in some of those threads. It's stupid to wire directly to the battery for the exact reason you quoted. The naysayers say that could never happen. Tell that to the owner of the truck that nearly caught fire.

Unfounded? I gave you the exact scenario which is provable. If you don't believe it, wire your radio in like that and remove the ground from the chassis and test it yourself. This is not opinion - it's physics.

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