“Locating pipes and cables with utility locators is usually a matter of applying a signal to the utility with a transmitter and then detecting that signal with the receiver.” The first paragraph of “Introduction to the Basics of Pipe and Cable Locating” says it all. I came across this publication of the Schonstedt Instrument Company the other day. And while I want to next share information about upgrading the knob-and-tube electrical system of my childhood home in Albany, California, for all I know, utility mobbing is as simple as where you leave the equipment and its direction. So here’s a quick bit of information in hopes of helping investigators put 2 and 2 together, and to once more make plain that On being mobbed is a blog about a crime—not a conspiracy theory.
Utility locating technology wraps up the foundational components of mobbing in a tidy bundle. Despite the failure of cities like Albany, California to acknowledge mobbing when it is reported, perhaps access to this equipment or knowledge of how it might be used against residents is part of the equation in mobbing towns.
Utility locating equipment includes solutions for locating or tracing conductive materials used in piping, telephone and CATV cables, fiber and power cables, and more. The basic technique is to transmit radio signal at the frequency of the conductive surface of the line to be located, and to then detect the signal on the surface of the target line with a receiver. In scenarios of neighbor mobbing, equipment with sender and receiver components might be deployed on either side to establish continuity. An active “flow” of the utility might enable carrier current transmission of rogue radio frequency. For metal boxes underground, electromagnetic location can be used. Some of the equipment essentially uses radar. Modes of transmission include conductive, inductive, and inductive clamp mode. Induction technologies have been of interest on this blog given the mobbers’ leveraging high-efficiency lights, “noisy” appliances including refrigerators and furnaces, and charging processes. The introduction describes the one of two inductive modes of utility locating as “[p]lacing a transmitter fitted with an inductive antenna on the ground, above the target utility.” Low, medium, or high frequencies may be applicable to different utility lines.
Perhaps the utility locating process relies on or creates carrier current transmission, something else I’ve suggested is involved with infrastructure mobbing. This equipment is something that those involved with utilities or city services would understand, and the use of this equipment in mobbing might also tend to crop up in neighborhoods where those who would sell this knowledge reside or in which utility projects are underway. Because utility locating is essential to digging and siting construction, contractors certainly know of it. In my neighborhood, I have wondered whether some of those who are clearly involved and come and go in safety vests might be leaving such equipment in their vehicles or in their parked cars over sewer cleanouts and under hotspots on utility poles.
