Field Notes

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Gilbert Tract: 2025-01-17 13:00:00 (DOY 17)
Author: Joe Verfaillie
Others: Charlie

Summary: Inspect battery theft and try to make it harder to steal again.

Gilbert Tract
2025-01-17

Charlie and I arrived about 11am. There was two workers cutting plants on the degraded road to the south. Katie had called us late yesterday afternoon to say that someone had stolen some of our batteries. It was not as bad as I feared. They cut a lock, and some of the security hardware I had, probably with bolt cutters. But they didn't seem to have a wrench or wire cutters to get the batteries loose from the power cables - two cables were totally mangled and only one of four batteries was missing. Last time I also took the handles off the batteries so they are really hard to carry. And the battery they took was on the end of the string so it didn't even take down the power to our tower - only lost data while we reconfigured things today.

Today we updated the security hardware so it can not be cut with bolt cutters. We also move the box up head high on the scaffolding. It's easier to see from the road, but it took two of us to get the batteries up there and doesn't provide much space to get leverage on anything. The two batteries I left (they are wired in pairs) are also strapped together with steel straps.

The power was out to the tower for a little less than two hours while we worked on the batteries. I forgot to bring my laptop so I could only look at the idiot lights to see that everything seem to be running before we left.

We left at about 13:00

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8 sets found

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