Like Ball Bearings

     Yesterday was a long and busy day.  One of the towers I'm responsible has white strobe lights.  This carries some advantages; since the lights run day and night, you don't have to paint the tower the usual red and white bands and can match the paint color to the surrounding structures.

     Until recently, it has also carried some disadvantages: the strobe fixture itself is an overgrown version of a professional photographer's flash: a strobe tube a foot and a half long and an array of electronics to light it up (at different intensities depending on sky illumination), time the flashes and keep them in sync with the other strobes, and to monitor and communicate the status of all that.  Operating several hundreds feet in the air means it is exposed to the full range of weather -- and producing the high voltages needed to make the thing flash generates copious amounts of ozone.  Electrical contacts that switch brightness levels arc and pit; exposed metal corrodes.  Wires and circuit-board traces eventually melt away into smears of green-blue slime.  The normal life of a strobe fixture is twenty-five years.  These were installed in 1981.  I've been keeping them going (with the help of a succession of skilled tower climbers) since 1987.

     Yeah, I'm pretty good.  So are the tower guys.  But nobody outruns rust.  And nobody outruns technological obsolescence.  These strobes lost manufacturer support fifteen years ago, and FAA rules mandate only OEM parts can be used to keep them running.  There's a thriving cottage industry of what I am sure are New Old Stock and refurbished used parts.  I'm sure of it because I have had to be: there was no budget to replace the old strobes and you can't just turn 'em off and hope the FAA doesn't notice.

     Over a decade ago, the first solid-state tower strobe systems came on the market.  It's a sealed-up widget, no user-serviceable parts inside.  They were fiendishly expensive, but came with a warranty good for the normal life of the system.  And they got a little less expensive every year.  Meanwhile, the cost of sending someone up the tower to do work kept going up, over a thousand dollars per technician: they have to be trained and insured, and fitted out with the right safety equipment.  (You can thank the cellphone industry for this: they kept hiring the lowest bidders and those crews kept having accidents, often fatal, and every time, local, state and Federal governments made moves intended to increase safety.  Now the low bidders are very nearly as safe as the best crews always were, so there's that.  Also, fewer dead guys, which I do count as a win.)

     The converging lines of old, worn-out strobe lights, falling hardware prices and increasing costs of getting anyone up there to swap out parts several times a year finally crossed this year.  We got on the wait list and this week, a crew has been hard at work on our strobed tower, taking down the old stuff and putting up the new.

     The sun was going down yesterday when they needed some semi-obscure conduit hardware to hook onto some existing wiring.  I had dug it out of our supplies and was carrying it to the tower base.  This tower sits next to a paved parking lot, surrounded by oak trees.

     The oak trees produce acorns.  Any more, they produce a lot of acorns.  I was walking across the lot, both hands full, and managed to look one direction  while turning the other way.  I put my foot down on a mess of acorns, and it started to go out from under me.  I took a big step to get my balance back -- and put my other foot onto more acorns.  They might as well have been marbles.  Zip!  I was going over and I knew it.  I tossed the conduit parts away (a condulet and some 1" rigid couplers and locknuts), tried to get my hands up, managed to avoid smashing my face into a curb and came down hard and sliding on my right hand and left knee, followed by right knee and right breast.  Knocked the wind out of me and I laid there.

     The boss of the tower crew, who I'd been talking to at the time, leaned over: "Are you okay?"
     "I don't know.  Give me a second."  I was sore already.  I moved my arms and legs a little -- okay -- and sat up.  Both knees hurt, but no tears on my slacks.  Dirt and -- oh, damn -- a big abraded patch on the heel of my right hand.  I looked around for the conduit parts.  "Did you see where the LB went?"
     The crew boss shook his head. "No."
     I spotted it, stood up shakily, picked up my purse, went over and picked it up along with the other parts, which I gave to him.  "Here.  You take this.  I'm going to go inside and clean up."

     I did just that, walking through the (large) building to the breakroom where we keep the first aid kit while the cupped palm of my right hand slowly filled up with blood.  I washed all the damage (and dirt) with strong soap.  It hurts but it's worth it.  Got it dry, put a bandage on it and some other scratches, took a couple of Tylenol and went back out.  The crew had decided they were done for the day: not enough light left.  Yeah, I could have told them that when I failed to see the layer of dark acorns on the blacktop, right before I fell.

     Got home and discovered the damage to my left knee when I was getting ready for bed.  Washed that with hydrogen peroxide and slept with ice on it.  Today, the knee is much larger than my right one, and we'll see how that goes.

     They'd better have those new strobes working by the time I get in today.