Email from Nick’s Adventures

Berg’s Email from Iraq

Sun, 4 Jan 2004 15:17:53 -0500

[ indicate edit for privacy ]

Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 11:43:44 -0600
Subject: Howdy from Prometheus Towers/Nick in Mosul

1935
4 Jan 2004
"Raya Net" internet services; Shara Ejammual
Mosul, Iraq

Hello Folks. I hope everyone is well and enjoyed an excellent holiday
season. For those who celebrated – happy whatever... I apologize in
advance for sending one message only – the e-mail is very slow and this will
take several hours to send. It's just too much of a time drag to send
several. Please alert me if you would like to be removed from my list.

I am well here in Iraq – for the last two days I have been in and around
Mosul (Northern Iraq, on the outskirts of Kurdistan) which is a welcome
break from the smog and crowds of Baghdad. Of course Mosul, Iraq's second
largest city, is crowded and smoggy too, but at least we're only 20
kilometers from some bonafide hills and open space. I think this country is
as crowded as California, and very similar in some ways. There are large
parts of California which are un-populated, just as here – but along the
rivers and in the north Iraq is chock full of people. There is also a great
diversity of land type here – from the border in Jordan it is very arid
desert, sand and rock and this. But along the Tigris, it's sort of half
tropical (still not very humid) with palm trees and plenty of agriculture.
Up here, it's more mountainous and even to the east, on the border with
Iran, there are some good size hills and more temperate, even cold,
steppe-type lands. Enough geography, I guess everybody wants to hear about
the towers and the people. For those of you who don't care about the
business side of things – the tower stuff is first, followed by the people
stuff.

In the last two days I have inspected two surviving towers for the IMN
(state run broadcast media). IMN is now being "managed" or overseen
by the
CPA, through a contract with an American consulting company who does not
specialize in broadcast, telecommunications or anything nearly so specific.
They are possessed of some excellent, very experienced staff, though, and
they seem to have recruited some excellent engineers. I finally made my way
to the head broadcast engineer on this project (Lou Brown, a former VOA guy,
for you radio engineers) and gave him the hard sell. He has a huge number
of damaged and down sites, most of them victims of the looting following the
fall of the regime. Anyhow, since I was planning to go to Mosul, I offered
to inspect a few tower's of his choice so that I could show him what sort of
experience and knowledge we have. Saturday I got onto a really
over-engineered 328 meter tower just on the edge of Mosul, currently
supporting Channel 7, a 20 kW VHF television station around here. The tower
was fabricated in Iraq and has more steel per vertical foot than any tower
I've ever been on, the 2000' kings down in Texas included. It's a
four-legged guyed tower (with three guy alleys – do the math on that one)
and has legs made of four 4"X4"X1/2" angles. Everything is
bolted –
everything. It probably took a crew a week to assemble one twenty foot
section – I stopped counting bolts at 100 per vertical foot! So anyhow,
this massive tower is home to a cantilevered, on-air VHF antenna and a
6-1/8" flexible transmission line. That's it. No lights, no lightning
arrester, no grounding, nothing else. WARNING TO CASUAL READERS, TECHNICAL
STUFF AHEAD: Of course the antenna matching unit (it's a 48 panel - 12X4 -
C&S manufacture antenna) is all shot up and has four kinked feed lines, no
weatherproofing, and a VSWR of around 1.4. Plus, Uncle Sam now overseas an
1100' lightning rod about two miles from a very active airfield and ten
miles from a civilian airport – no lights. So I hope we can get involved in
this work.

Sunday we went out to a site called Al Khayzer, which used to house an AM
broadcast site on 607 kHz or so. What's left is the 150 meter tower, guyed,
with 1" guy wires, sitting on the biggest base insulator I've ever seen –
probably 4 feet high and three feet in diameter. The whole tower was
looted, including some of the diagonals on the first 50' and the lighting
system. These have been replaced, but it was kind of un-nerving to inspect
this thing with so many incongruities. Monster guy wires, with monster
Johnny-ball insulators, but little 1/2" stainless hardware at the guy
takeoff points. And there were fox-holes dug all around the tower, which
was right on the edge of Kurdish-controlled territory. Still, it was
beautiful, a really superb piece of engineering nestled on a beautiful
riverside. It was much more peaceful there and I would have taken a good
long hike in the hills if I had not hopped a ride with the ultra gung ho
contract security guys. Tomorrow (Monday) I'll inspect a site in Sinjar
(west of Mosul, towards the Syrian frontier and as close as I'll ever come
to Syria). Then I'm back to Baghdad to hire our local business manager and
hopefully get on two 1000' towers outside of Baghdad at Abu Ghreb (the site
of a notorious prison for Army and political prisoners). So I am reasonably
confident we can score some work out of this. It's treacherous, though –
there are so many parties involved in this work and they all sub-contract to
people and none of them are specialists like us. It's unheard of for a
company to actually have skilled specialists here – I think this gives us an
advantage, but we have to get past the "I have a friend" stage. I'm
hoping
a good business manager will move this along.

END OF (MOST) OF THE TOWER STUFF

Otherwise, I came to Mosul to meet [a friend]. It was very easy to find his office (it took about
one hour of broken Arabic and a few [...] sketches). Unfortunately, I
had missed him Saturday morning while I was on business, and he doesn't keep
afternoon hours. So today, after I got back from Al Khayzer, I went again
and had missed him again. This time I had the afternoon to devote to it,
and through the much appreciated assistance of one of his colleagues and
many hours of questing, we finally arrived at his home off of Sharaa Soma in
Mosul. Again, he wasn't home, although I did meet his son, [...] (about 20)
and caught a glimpse of his wife (name unknown). [His] brother
doesn't live at the same house. I still don't know where he is. Back to
the Ninaveh Palace (where I'm staying tonight) I went, and I see a man
gesturing at the desk with one of my cards. Ever the opportunist, I put on
my best Arabic and introduced myself as "Bodgne Berg" (tower guy). Of

course that was [him] and got along splendidly. We spent a few hours and I
helped him establish an e-mail account. The bank account is still waiting
as he claims none of the Mosul banks will do international wires – I'll
probably have to open in Baghdad. It was a very interesting time and I
noticed again that there is a huge disconnect with relationships here. My
presence near [my friend] made him more concerned (about his own safety and
probably mine too) than I've been the entire time I've been here. Mosul is
very calm – except for the Army convoys and check-points, you can't really
tell there is an occupation. Baghdad every night you here IEDs and such,
but here I've yet to here or see anything except a few aged craters. Still,
there is obviously quite a difference to someone who lives here and will
face the same people and situations day in and day out.
The funny thing about this experience is that it's very hard not to have
opinions about the Arabs I meet. Most of the Saharan and nomadic people
I've met or worked with (like the Maasai) have some very culture-peculiar
characteristics that can be un-seemly to Westerners. Like the Arabs, they
are very rude when waiting in lines, driving, buying things, etc...Same goes
here – one thousand times. There really is no line waiting, even when you
are half-way into a transaction and have dinars waving and such. Same with
driving, although in their defense, a lot of the roads are strangely laid
out or have been detoured due to checkpoints and such. Another thing that's
off-setting to the westerner is it's very hard to get details. This is
another characteristic for which I was somewhat prepared, but not to the
extent I've found. The Maasai will give directions like this – " Go down

the road (there is only one road so no need to name it), pass the tree
(same) and you'll find such and such near the wadi – creek." At least in a

dry, almost desert-like place there are very few landmarks so when you find
one it's obvious. Here, the directions are something like: "Pass to Sharaa

Soma, the shop is near the University." Of course there are thousands of
shops along the Ejammual (University) street, all of them near the
University. So anywhere I'm looking, the guy did OK. But to find the
place? Anyhow, I find myself walking the usual fine line between the other
Americans I meet who have next to know contact with the "average"
Arab, and
still have very advanced opinions, and the local contacts I have, who are
mostly Arab, a few Kurds, and exhibit these and more characteristics that
can be frustrating to a Westerner. Another thing that's tough for me is the
language – in Bantu languages the accents are easier to pick up and there
are more vowels. Arab is a very intricate language with very fine accents
and tons of consonants. So as much as I know the right words and can
understand some of them being spoken, I can't say them worth a damn to the
fellow who doesn't understand English (about 95% of the people I meet).
It's actually quite a bit like Maa (the language of the Maasai) which is big
on inflection and short on syllables).

So that's it for now. One more day to play in the hills, then back to
Baghdad and hopefully some contract signing. I will not be returning on 8
Jan, as originally scheduled. The way I see it, we're this far in (time and
money) – I've got to stay the course to see some of these opportunities to
fruition.

Best Wishes to all!

Nick Berg
Prometheus Towers

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Berg’s Email from parts of the Middle East

Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:14:53 -0500

Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 11:57:52 -0600
Subject: Prometheus Towers/Nick howdy from the Middle East

Hi folks -

Knowing in advance that most of you will madly delete this message due to
its generic form-letter quality, I submit this brief summary of my travels
thus far.

If you would like me to remove you from the receive list, or want to add
someone, please let me know. Sorry to clog the boxes of those who are
uninterested...

So I flew El-Al, just barely, on the 22nd (Monday). They were not able to
check my equipment on the same check, meaning I arrived at Ben-Gurion with
some climbing rope, my notebook, and a jacket. I did manage to scrape
together some olive leaves for rigging, but not much in the way of change of
clothes or anything. After a rather lengthy interrogation courtesy of the
Israeli Airport Police and then Internal Security, I set off to City Center
and found my way in to my first real gyp of the trip. Being tired and
anxious to set down my 200' climbing rope (wrapped around my head in a
manner suggestive of certain Palestinian tribes), I wimped out and got a
room at a "regular" establishment, rather than a C-W or C-H Motel as
those
of you familiar with Prometheus Towers SOP whilst traveling, will
understand. Anyhow, I ended up at the beautiful Metropolitan Hotel nearly
on the Mediterranean just south of City Center and (I found out the next
morning while running) adjacent to the US Embassy. It really was a nice
place and for the 300 some Shekels it cost I really rammed them for almost
two days worth of service and several free gallons of tap water.
Grandpop/mom Berg would have been proud... My conclusion after about 24
hours on the waterfront there is: coastal Tel-Aviv is sort of like Atlantic
City, only backwards, and not as much Yiddish.

Anyhow - those of you who recently consulted in the great clothes-buying
epidemic of December 2003 will be horrified to hear – rather than spending
my first (and last, for a little while) full day in Israel in the Negev
looking for a good rock to climb, I found myself in the common market buying
clothes. I left there looking rather dapper, I must say. Olive green
slacks and a khaki vest, sure to say "I might be a westerner but I won't
admit it" right away. On my way to Jordan I got several comments from the

many border guards I saw, so I am confident my mission succeeded.

OK – I'll summarize here. This anecdote will necessarily leave off before
my current location, so don't anyone get wise on me and pick up a map. I
left Tel-Aviv for the Jordan Valley Border Crossing, passing some beautiful
land and a large prison on the way. The crossing was not as involved as I
expected but still very lengthy. I had no problem leaving Israel and only a
little suspicion entering Jordan. At the time my combined Hebrew vocabulary
consisted of about five words, though, so I was in a weird way happy to
leave and get back into good ole' Arab-speaking lands (seeing as how my
pre-trip Arabi vocab sported at least 15-20 words). Five minutes into the
150 km-long taxi ride to Amman, though (it was too late for the public bus I
tried to catch), I realized how different the East African/Swahili accent
and the "true" Arabi are. I'm just now realizing that, although I can
write
words and expressions for a number of occasions, and say them, too, my
pronunciation is so off that I must sound to these guys like a Texan Mexican
does to a Peruvian or Spaniard.

So I safely reached Amman and found a really cool place called Firas Palace
which featured an Elevator and a tape recorded sound track reminiscent of
the Havana Inn in Kampala, circa 1998. (Michael Jackson, over and over
again). Other than several beautiful Minirets and a good 600' tower, I
can't say much about Amman.

I will give more detail on my next message. For the stockholders out there
– we've made some contacts and I am seeing some opportunities here. Bear
with me and I promise dividends. For the mean time I hope everyone had a
safe and happy holiday of whatever form you chose. Feel free to respond
anytime you like…

Sincerely

Nick Berg
Prometheus Towers

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Berg's Email from Africa

Sun, 23 Mar 2003 15:13:28 -0500

Subject: howdy from Nairobi Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2003 05:46:37 -0600

Hey guys and ladies. This may be a repeat for some of you and some may have missed the original - I'm still hashing out this whole contact list feature on Hotmail. Perhaps someone could send me e-mails for David and anyone else I forgot...

This Sunday afternoon I'm waiting away here in Nairobi. We should be heading off to our project site up-country either this afternoon or tomorrow (or Tuesday). It's as usual tough to confirm details like this. Someone who's involved has always got a last minute wedding or a brother from somewhere up-country to attend to....

So I've had an interesting (at least to me) thought here. The big frustration we so-called Occidentals complain about on trying to work here is the casual and sometimes ridiculous way "business" happens here. You set an appointment with someone and he doesn't show for hours. You call and he has left the house (a good sign), alas not for our meeting but for someother elaborately planned operation. Finally frustrated and annoyed after waiting, you head off and find yourself delayed by a traffic back up or some such. Or maybe you struggle to break through this traffic on the way to an appointment. After some noble effort you break through, finding no sign of your contact. After wading through the backup once again, you find him waiting on the original side, where he's been for hours... Anyhow, we all get frustrated about this aspect of life and business on the continent. The oppposite side, though, is the baggage we bring with us. Most of us Occys are very private/proper and that seems to foster mistrust. Also, we have weird habits and that seems to get in the way of clear communications. So, my local friends go to great lengths to accomadate my strange ways and appear to be accepting if skeptical. So I guess theres some kind of quid pro quo of our baggage. (although mine seems to bring less on the open market due to its general smelliness...)

Here's an interesting geo-political update from the only African country in which the US embassy closed due to action in Iraq (not including those who don't have US embassies). The Nation, and also the East African, the two more reputable papers in Kenya, are carrying all sorts of stories about opposition to the war and the newly elected President Kibaki strongly condemns this action of the coalition. Still, every where on the streets and from every African with whom I've talked there is incredible support of the campaign and real hatred of Hussein. (not counting the fact that many folks think I'm US DOD)

The other side of that coin, though, is the Chinese influence. The several Chinese to whom I've talked seem to dislike the use of force as a tool of political change and are openly hostile towards GW. Still they are very excited to meet an American and they go to great lengths to prepare exotic, outlandish stir-fries for what they are convinced is a US Marine...

I'm still hunting for a Synagogue. I did slip up and inquire, while enroute London-Bahrain on GulfAir, if they by chance had any spare kosher meals. Luckily, the attendent was Indian and didn't understand what I asked for... There is a beautiful Mosque here, sprawling and very clean. The muezzin is very quiet and I can't hear him from where I stay on the other side of town. Ironically, the mosque is right next to another large, beautiful building with two NYC-style lions on its front steps - the American McMillan library. There's actually an American university here like the one in Beiruit, although they're currently on break.

So I'm actually staying at a YMCA hostel. It's clean and they offer boiled water service to their guests. Works out that I get a 20 Ksh /day discount (about 30 cents) owing to my special status in the YMCA organization. Still, I don't want to hear anything about the Village People song. With the addition of the 45 Kg punching bag I made yesterday, it's become a very manly place, oo-rah!
So now for the obligatory language exchange:
Habari ya (si mbaya)/jioni?                  How is (the morning)/the evening?
(Nzuri...)/Pole pole...                          (It's good...)/It's OK.
Check your letters from 1998, folks. The Luganda phrase mpola n'pola means "slowly by slowly" or "so-so." So you can see some of the similarities between Swahili and Luganda, both Bantu-language based.
Asanti!                                                    Thanks!
Karimbu...                                               You're welcome (also, you're welcome here)

More to come just as soon as I can learn it...
OK. I hope everybody's well and enjoying the spring.
Take it easy from Nairobi (for now) Nick Berg
Prometheus Towers

1646

5 April 2003

Lazards @ Simmers

Kenyatta Avenue, Nairobi

Howdy folks. I hope this message find you all enjoying the spring if and when it shows its face. I’m so used to being constantly bombarded (literally, for those AM customers out there) with “hour’s latest, most up-to-date, weather and traffic reports” that I am a bit shocked to not even know what the weather is like in my beloved Delaware Valley. At least I have been bombarded with the latest, most popular song around Nairobi sufficiently – “Bomba Train” – on average once every fifteen minutes or so while working on local radio station towers. For the time I’ve spent on local TV station towers I think I have the “CNN” logo permanently branded on my leg, right along-side the Uchumi slogan (recall from last week’s letter about the East African Wal-Mart) and perhaps the occasional “Yeh Ssebo” beer bottle (Uganda horse-swill roughly translated as “yes sir!” Anyhow, I hope everybody’s doing well. For those on this list who are at NAB in Las Vegas I hope you give all of your money to the casino swine and come back with little more than a sun-burn and more confusion about Ibiquity and Digital AM. Las Vegas in April… (Sorry, inside broadcast engineer’s joke…)

So the last week I’ve been pretty involved with business for Prometheus Towers, quickly becoming the largest and most popular revenue-free tower service company in all of East Africa. We’ve been to see the Managing Directors, Technical Directors and even some Charimen of just about all of the Kenyan broadcast organizations. Some of these are multi-country companies, too, so we’ve touched on the Kampala (Uganda) market and even the Dar es Saalam (Tanzania) market. Mostly I’ve run into considerable interest about upcoming expansions and new stations to be built. With the departure of what’s-his-name Arap Moi, Kenya’s 25-year popularly selected president, the airwaves have opened considerably and now look more to me like the wild-west days of the early 1900’s in the USA. It was only in 1997 and 1998 that the first two private radio stations were allowed licenses – until then and even now KBC was the sole (legal) voice and picture of the country. Now, there are about 10 commercial radio around Nairobi and something like 5-6 commercial TV. There are also several non-profit type or religious stations which broadcast locally. Still, the up-county market is still largely dominated by KBC and so this is where most of the large media companies are focusing – we have requests-for-proposals to build at least ten new stations or repeater stations in areas ranging from Kisumu to Mombasa . Some of these RFQs are to be taken lightly as the request comes from an organization which probably can’t support the expansion, but I’m very confident that four of these ten requests are genuine and will result in actual projects. That said, there are other competing companies who attempt to do tower work and there are also two reasonably established engineering outfits who do a good job of the transmitter/antenna design and sub-contract the tower work. It’s probably a 50-50 chance that we’ll land at least one of these projects. I’ve seen my rates to be competitive for engineering and even for tower work but not, obviously, for mobilization and logistics.

There’s no question that we’re one of only two quality tower service outfits in town (excepting the ex-pat firms which are brought in from time to time by the mobile phone market, something we aren’t really exploring.)   There is one local company called Webb Industries which is a very competent, capable design-purchase-build firm that handles a good majority of the mobile business. Still, they don’t really specialize in broadcast and I think our experience and knowledge about broadcast leaves us on the same footing. So we’ll see…

Interestingly, we just missed a good opportunity to dive right into the shit and build a small tower in Mogadishu for a Voice of America affiliate. Because this project was for an affiliate and thus not an IBB-run outfit, we did not have an opportunity to bid this through normal US government means. I met the regional operator for VOA and it seems they have a few projects like this in the works – a stand alone FM in Kampala and one in Addis Ababa, Eithiopia. I think he’s a good guy to know because he is friendly with and helps wherever possible all of the VOA affiliates in East-Central Africa just like the good folks at ESPN Sports or PA Radio Network help (usually) their local affiliates…

Anyhow, that’s business. We’ve done a few complementary inspections and perhaps two revenue inspection/repair jobs this coming week (in all reality probably not so likely). We’re also heading to Mombasa on Tuesday to inspect a large array operated by the Department of Meteorology who has regional responsibility to provide weather information broadcasts to the entire Central African, Indian Ocean coast region. As of right now they maintain sizable SW, HF and some VHF and point-to-point services. Like everyone else they are attempting to mechanize and transition to satellite, but meanwhile they still have hundreds of towers in the air and a burning stick to their butt owing to the recent collapse of a few…

Otherwise, things here are cool. We went to Meshanani again this last Tuesday for a full day – it’s about a 3.5 hour drive each way but we saved the expenses of hiring a tent and all that. We got in a good six hours on-site and accomplished quite a lot towards revising the well project. It’s looking like our best option is going to be using a hand-powered drilling machine rather than attempting to dig a large-diameter hole by hand. This will substantially reduce the time needed to hit the basement and hopefully still train local folks sufficiently to repeat the process without outside influence.

We (me and three of the guys from MERC) also met Anya Guyer, the program officer for AJWS, on Friday afternoon. She happens to be in Nairobi for some work with other NGO’s with which AJWS is involved. It was strange but very pleasant to meet someone with such similar ideas after weeks of “Mzungu buy me bread” and of my Maasai friends shaking their heads humorously as I mangled their language. Mahta enya maali…

So last night was the first Friday in months when I was actually in-town (i.e. not on a job-site) and new where the synagogue was. There is a beautiful Orthodox synagogue in Nairobi, apparently built or at least sanctioned by one of the Governors of the East African Protectorate in something like 1912 (read off one of the cornerstones). It’s a good size building in a well-fenced compound which serves a small (50 permanent) Jewish population in Kenya. It’s also orthodox meaning I was totally clueless without the grammatical transliteration I use at “cheater” services for us who can’t read Hebrew. It was still extremely nice to visit and I met some very interesting people. I was actually the (unexpected) tenth adult male when I showed up and so, I guess, the only reason the heart of the service could proceed. I felt kind of phony though, because I was greeted with a sort of relieved “finally/let’s get on with it/soups on” handshake as my jean-clad figure crossed the Mezuzah (sp?)…

Otherwise we’re planning to go to Mombasa Tuesday and Wednesday to do some inspection repairs and we’ll probably swing by Meshanani one more time if my new toy arrives. I have this strong desire to visit this new station in Mogadishu and am very tempted since the bus ride only costs about US$25 each way and there isn’t, needless to say, a very strong visa-contigent at the Somali border right now. We’ll see. It’s apparently very stable right now and the VOA guy I met had just returned when I saw him with all ten fingers. I may leave my kippah behind…

Here’s a brief list of mixed Kiswahili and Maa phrases:

Kiswahili:

Hapanafanya                               It’s not working

Haifanyi                                       Don’t do it Ibiniyini                                       What’s this?

Anti?                                           Pardon? (same in Luganda)

Aya…                                          Yes, uh-huh

Akuna matata                             There’s no problem.

Tulia…                                       Keep it cool, calm down

Ny yako?                                     and you?

Haraka                                       Quickly

Twa zienda                                 We are going (in Nairobi slang, dancing)

Kupewa tunapewa                    We have been given

(These last three taken from the smash hit Bomba Train, a dance song mostly in Kiswahili. There’s even some rapping in Kiswahili. Alas, the author died two weeks ago in a car accident, another one-hit-wonder.)

Tafjadhali piga maji baada ya haja ndogo aukubwa.

I’m not so sure about this one, but based on context I think it’s roughly equivalent to “If you sprinkle when you tinkle be a sweety and wipe the seaty…)

Maa:

Mahta enya maali                         there’s no problem Kakuyia sopa                               Formal respectful greeting to a real elder (i.e. older          than everybody else) Eiro sopa                                     There’s no consensus on this one. Jacque, Motto Tours secretary and my most reliable source for spelling and pronunciation says it’s a general hello to someone in your age group but not in your village. The idea is that you are gently putting them down by acting as if you are not sure they’ve been circumcised (i.e. passed through the warrior ceremony) and therefore they’re something like a grown child. I think. Other people tell me it’s just if you truly don’t know and only for folks younger than you or your own age. Whatever – it’s definitely not appropriate for someone older than you.

OK, I’ve got to vacate this computer and head back out onto the Saturday streets. The favorite past-time of many of the market hawkers has been to figure out my occupation. They started as “hey John” assuming I was USMC. Then one day they saw me in my lifting boots still slathered with paint from WMAL and they moved to “hey John, you are a painter, sawo, you paint very well, sawo.” Today I only had my green notebook and I think they took me for a student. It’s a shame that my Kiswahili is not up to conveying sarcasm just yet. It’s not really beyond a “Hi, goodbye, where’s the toilet, let’s go (home, not let’s go to the toilet) “ level. I have secured a short book of Maa proverbs (some hauntingly familiar to certain Yiddish expressions I can remember reading) and am going to concentrate my language learning efforts on Maa when I return.

Best wishes and howdy from Nairobi. See everybody soon…

Nick Berg

Prometheus Towers

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Berg's Email from Prometheus Towers

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 14:27:04 -0400

Thu, 25 Jul 2002 00:58:14 -0400

Greetings!

We've been busy here at Prometheus Towers over the last few months. In early
May we completed the long-term renovation of WNPV's (1440 AM out of Lansdale,
Pennsylvania) day array. As part of this job we removed an obsolete lighting
system from their towers, installed leg reinforcements, and applied coats of DTM
primer and acrylic aviation paint to their towers. In late April we replaced a
damaged guy wire for WDIH/WBN radio/TV in Salisbury, Maryland. This guy wire
had been snagged by a construction vehicle during grading operations for the
nearby US50 Bypass project and was badly kinked, endangering both a radio and
television installation in addition to studio equipment.

More recently, also on the Eastern Shore, we moved an STL for WBEY radio (96.9 -
Bay Country for Delmarva's Eastern Shore). The studio dish had been installed
on a substandard and very short tower as a temporary measure and suffered from
frequent interference and degradation of signal. We were able to install the
component at 200' on a hot AM tower with a minimum of off-air time.

Meanwhile, development of our proprietary post-tensioned tower technology
continues. At present we are preparing to stack the first modular
post-tensioned structure of its kind as a demonstration project. Pictures to
follow...

I hope this note finds everybody doing well. I'd like to thank all of you who
have given us the opportunity to serve you in the last several months. For
those of you who have not yet given us a try, I encourage you to find out what
the Promethean difference is. As was the mythological son of a Titan, we are
your patron - tomorrow, next week, night, day.

Remember - Man is more than fire tamed...

Best Wishes,
Nick Berg

President
Prometheus Towers

Fri, 29 Nov 2002 15:30:16 -0600
Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc. An insured tower company based in the Delaware Valley
Greetings! I hope this letter finds everyone in good health and happy spirits. We wanted to take this opportunity to update some of you we haven't seen for a while and to remind everybody about the services we offer.
August brought an emergency situation with our friends at WILM 1450, a small AM station in Wilmington, Delaware. The 1st tier, Southeast guy wire on the station's 350' guyed Stainless tower had been accidentally snagged and severed while the field was being mowed. We had someone on site the same day to inspect the tower and we managed to replace the damaged wire and re-tension the tower the following day. All the more reason to keep your guy anchors fenced, gentlemen!!!
During September and the first half of October we were busy with two paint jobs. The first was on a 350' guyed tower owned by WLAN 96.9, a Clear Channel radio station outside of Lancaster, PA. The following week we were contracted by ABC radio in Washington, DC to complete the ongoing painting of the four 400' self-supporters which broadcast WMAL 630, a news-talk AM station in Bethesda, Md. This job was ongoing for much of September and the first half of October. Luckily, we no longer own the 1977 Dodge Tradesman (a white cargo van) we used in Texas and Oklahoma. Next time you're on the DC beltway, take a glance at this array on the outside (NW) side of the beltway about half way between the Old Georgetown Road and the River Road exits. No painting until this spring…
Since the WMAL job we've been busy with several relamp/inspections, some antenna installations and two full-tower insurance-company-type inspections. It looks like some more of the same for the foreseeable future, although we are anticipating a few medium sized new tower construction jobs in the coming months.
On the equipment front, the biggest news is the purchase of a new crew truck. No longer will some of you have the pleasure of ridiculing our 1993 Geo Metro convertible as we pull up to your tower, laden with equipment and splotched with Aviation Orange. As of Monday, 2 Dec 2002, the little trooper will be the property of the Salvation Army. Just remember - what mortal man lacks for in space, he makes up for in ingenuity… Some of our other equipment purchases include a Graco-made airless paint sprayer for large self-supporters and improved surveying equipment for more accurate measuring of tower plumb and tension.
I'd also like to take this opportunity personally to thank all of you who have given us a try. We pride ourselves on timely, quality and thoughtful service, and I hope some of the many jobs we've completed over the last six months have been a testament to those core values.
For those of you out there who haven't yet tried us, we encourage you to give us a call or send an e-mail anytime you need an estimate for an upcoming project. We want to show you the Prometheus difference.
Happy holidays, everybody!
"man is more than fire tamed…"
President, Nick Berg

Fri, 7 Mar 2003 22:37:25 -0500

Howdy, folks. Has the start of another winter week got you down? Looking for
some distraction this Monday morning? We invite you to click on the attached
word file to be regaled with a few (short) stories of adventure, history,
Macgyver-like engineers, and melting earthworms. Short of that, we welcome your
calls or e-mails any time you may have a question or concern. We pride
ourselves on our quality service for the broadcast industry!

Two other business items: we've included an updated copy of references for those
of you who are still on the fence. Also, please note that we now have a one
million dollar umbrella insurance policy. This, in convoluted insurance-speak,
means that our total coverage for liability is now two million dollars for any
one occurrence.

Best wishes for a healthy and prosperous springtime.

Nick Berg
Prometheus Towers

Fri, 7 Mar 2003 22:37:25 -0500
Prometheus Methods Tower Service, Inc. An insured tower company based in the Delaware Valley
Greetings! I hope this message finds everyone healthy and prosperous. The spring is blowing its way into our calendars, sounding of windy afternoons and smelling of defrosting earthworms and roadkill.
We've been busy here the last few months, considering the interruptions offered by the winter weather. We began in December of 2002 an ongoing program of inspection and service of the historic Chester, PA station, WPWA. This station has, at various times, served as a popular Philadelphia-area music station, most notably as WEEZ (your country cousin) in the seventies, and currently carries both foreign-language and religious programming.
During December and January, we performed some routine service for our friends at Worldcom/Intermedia out of their local office in Boyertown, PA. The sites these guys have!!! Armed with 4X4 Dodge Trucks, chains, and heavy plows, these guys keep a clear path open to some of the most remote sites we service. Also in the first week of January we were called by one of the DC-area Infinity Broadcasting engineers to do some emergency investigative work on one of his STL systems.
Another FM story came to us in the second half of February, when we replaced the two-bay WZBT antenna and parts of their transmission line. This college radio station for Gettysburg College is located about a half-mile from the historic battlefield monument outside of Gettysburg, PA.
The adventure of this young year so far has probably been our service trip to central NY. The good folks at Backyard Broadcast contracted us to relamp one of their remote FM sites, a short self-supporting tower at the top of an 1800' hill called Denmark Hill. 18" of packed snow and a smooth surface of hard ice run-off from a nearby stream rendered this normally rugged trail impenetrable by vehicle. We ended up hiking this mile and a half hill with all of our gear. Onsite, we found a sick incandescent lighting system responsible for their dark tower. We were able to secure the system with temporary wiring thanks to the ingenuity of a McGyver-like engineer and some of our time-trusted helpers: alligator leads, electrical tape and an old light bulb. At the end of the day we had a lit tower and some interesting pictures for the engineer's office…
The big story this February has been a new part-time addition to our crew. Scott Hollinger has several years experience training young soldiers with the United States Marine Corps cliff-assault unit. We welcome Scott to the team - hoorah! We're looking forward to several large painting jobs and two new tower installations poised to begin this spring and summer - Scott's experience and gung-ho attitude will be a real asset for us.
I hope to see many of you in the near future. We take this opportunity, also, to remind you that we're always available for questions, free estimates and site surveys for any of your future projects. To those of you who have given us the nod over the last few months, we thank you. To all of you who have not yet, we urge you to try the wings of Prometheus Towers!
Best Wishes, Nick Berg , President

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