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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
Man is more than fire tamed...
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