Several years ago I found out that our local county government here in South
Carolina was in the process of drafting a tower ordinance. After viewing the
draft copy it was apparent that if it was implemented as written ALL future
amateur radio tower installations would be very expensive and almost
impossible to install.
I placed a call to the person charged with writing the new tower ordinance
and asked if he would be receptive to having lunch to discuss the new
ordinance. During our luncheon meeting I quickly determined that the real
purpose of the tower ordinance was to control Cell tower growth and
installations and NOT to harm or hurt amateur radio tower installations.
The person writing the tower ordinance was really not aware of the
detrimental effect the ordinance would have on amateur radio towers. As it
turned out the writer was an avid SWL.
Briefly after several additional meetings with the county staff and several
local DXers with big towers the county government staff simply inserted one
line in the ordinance that basically said "If the Tower was to be used
exclusively for Amateur Radio then it was exempted from the Ordinance".
Attached is a copy of the tower ordinance. I have removed the name of the
county and replaced it with a "X" and removed the names of persons signing
the ordinance.You can see the sentence in section 10.16.1 that really
relaxed all the problems that amateurs were about to be faced with. The
sentence is in BOLD text and has been underlined so you can spot it easily.
My message is that if you have an opportunity to meet with your county
government officials it could be very helpful in resolving tower problems.
Realistically, most of them are not out to "Get the Hams", but the tower
ordinances are being written to solve big commercial installations and the
little Ham towers just get caught up in the problem if it is not solved in
the early stages.
I hope the attached copy of our tower ordinance might be helpful.
73s, Gary, K4MQG
ARRL DXAC Representative: Roanoke Division
ARRL Field QSL Checker
DXCC=371, 5 Band WAZ #1 USA, 9 Band WAS, 8 Band WAZ, 8 Band DXCC
80M=339/337, 40M=343/336, 30M=337/307, 20M=367/364, 17M=327/314,
15M=356/353, 12M=322/304, 10M=345/339, 6M=98/91
QSL Mgr.for these Old Stations: KB6CZ, K4ERU/KB6, VK9MM, P29MM, MP4QBK,
MP4BHH, MP4MBB, 4S7JD, 9L1GQ, 9L2SL, C6AFR, JY9MQ, 5B4/K4MQG, FS/K4MQG,
XE3/K4MQG, VP9/K4MQG
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