Total posts : 45366
“The top of the church roof appears to be about 30 feet high. A long, thin, pipe, perhaps two inches in diameter, is mounted on the roof. The pipe extends far up into the air. The visitors could not guess how high the pipe extended. They only said it is “very high.” We know from the citation that it is about 30 meters above the earth. On top of the pipe, a thin whip antenna, perhaps a quarter inch in diameter, was visible. This must have been the CB whip connected to the top of the transmitter. The visitors could not tell me anything about the conductive path from the bottom of the pipe to earth ground.”
Ok, well that isn’t even “whip and mast”, that’s something like “whip and mast and *then* some”.
“So, it appears that the FCC does not buy the notion that that the top of the pipe is the “ground” to which the “ground lead” is connected.”
Considering the pipe wasn’t actually in the ground, I’d think it’s not sufficiently clear to conclusively say what they buy or don’t buy. However, obviously this precise model is not considered universally approvable by the FCC. Since it’s very unlikely that they put the pipe all the way down through the building so the bottom of it was in actual earth ground, I’d say it’s more indicative of a specific case being a clear “no-no” than what the FCC approves/disapproves of as a general rule.
Also, with the tip of it over 90 ft above ground, shouldn’t it have had a marker light or at least highly visible paint or something? Even from the top of the building it was “very high”. It’d be almost invisible day or night to something like a low flying emergency helicopter. I would hope it was guyed, considering the damage that much pipe could do, depending on how it fell?
“There seems to be some confusion about the name “lglesia de Dios Ebenezer.” It is not the name of an individual, or even the name of a particular congregation. It is the name of a Protestant sect that has several churches in various places in this country. The entity that was cited was the Iglesia de Dios Ebenezer church in Oceanside, CA.”
I doubt it really matters much. A specific church in a given location is a legal entity with a board of directors and etc. They are legally liable just like any corporation or individual and generally enjoy no special immunity other than certain tax privileges. If someone falls and breaks a hip in the church parking lot and they decide to file a lawsuit, they would usually sue the church, not the pastor. The church might concievably file suit against the pastor to recover that loss if it was due to neglect or carelessness on his part, but that would be another matter.
Daniel
