At 07:28 AM 3/30/2005, Joseph W. Morgan wrote:
>To avoid tower restrictions, simply do not purchase a house in a
>subdivision with CC&Rs (covenants, codes, and restrictions) and a HOA
>(Homeowner's Association). If you do you have no one but yourself to blame.
>
>If you want to get serious about ham radio, you need to buy acreage away
>from highly developed areas and build a house and an antenna farm.
>
>Joe, W6BCZ
Moving to the boonies for ham radio is a sort of extreme position.
Yes, you may not be competitive in a contest with the guy with stacks of 20
m monobanders or the full size 80m 3 element beam, but that doesn't mean
you're not serious about ham radio.
I think that one can be serious about ham radio without building an antenna
farm. At last month's JPL Amateur Radio Club meeting, I heard about a guy
who did DXCC on 160m (serious ham radio, or at least, serious interest in
listening to static) doing all portable ops at the beach. There are people
who do quite well with a dipole hanging hidden in the trees. One can also
be serious about ham radio when trying to design antennas that are HOA
compatible. Sure, it may be 10 years before the technology gets there, but
you'll have certainly made a contribution to the radio art. Mike Tope
(W4EF) just posted a message about one possible solution... put that
antenna farm somewhere a long way away, where land is cheap, and operate
remotely.
Cost alone might make the antenna farm prohibitive, even if the HOA/CCR
issue didn't exist. In the Ventura County (where I live), the median price
for a house is about $600K, and I'd venture to say that's on a lot that is
(much)less than 10,000 square feet. Los Angeles county isn't much
better. Even if a non-HOA controlled property big enough to put an antenna
on were available, I suspect that the vast majority of hams couldn't afford
to buy it. (Although, I am always on the lookout for "unbuildable" large
parcels in the Santa Monica mountains.. what's unbuildable for a trophy
house might be perfectly buildable for a shack and a tower)
There are a lot of reasons to live in an HOA controlled community. Maybe
the job that pays for your ham radio is surrounded by such communities, and
if you moved far enough away to be out of HOA territory, you'd spend all
your time commuting instead of playing with radios. Maybe you have
children and the schools are better in the area where only HOA communities
are available. Life is full of tradeoffs, and ham radio is, after all, for
most people, a hobby. You have to weigh the benefits and disadvantages.
Personally, I think that given the increased prevalence of restrictions on
antennas in communities (PRB-1 notwithstanding), and just the trend towards
smaller lot sizes, improvements in technology that allow more participation
in HF radio on a meaningful scale by people who choose to live in such
places will be good for amateur radio.
For those who say that urban and suburban dwellers should be happy with
VHF, whips on railings, hideous RFI from all manner of appliances, etc., I
say bunk. HF radio IS important.. it's a unique communication technique
with worldwide coverage that doesn't require supporting infrastructure. HF
comm should be available to everyone, regardless of where you happen to
live. The technology challenge is in doing it in a hostile
environment. Issues such as physical restrictions, interference (BPL and
otherwise), RF safety, and so forth are a fact of life, and only going to
get worse. Amateur radio will advance the state of the art by accepting
these problems, and finding ways to get around them or mitigate them, and
still communicate. It must, or else it will be increasingly viewed as
anachronistic, quaint, and not economically useful, and be relegated to
being considered an "interesting hobby" like clock face restoration or
beanie baby collecting or buggy whip manufacturing or single cylinder steam
engine making.
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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