At 06:50 PM 9/4/02 -0400, K7LXC@aol.com wrote:
>Rohn 25G wasn't widely available in 1963 but these days it is and you can
>get used sections for a relative song so you don't have to spend a fortune on
>a tower.
While I basically agree with your point about not homebrewing tall
structures unless you know very well what you're doing, this piece of data
is off target. I had 2 sections of Rohn 25 on the roof of my parents'
house in 1957, when I was 16, supporting a CDR rotator and a 20m quad. As
I recall the tower sections cost about $20 apiece, which was real money in
those days -- roughly equivalent to $160 today. I didn't even know there
was such a thing as a Rohn catalogue (there may not have been in those
days) and you can be sure that the base and guying arrangements were not
anything an engineer would bless today. Somehow it all stayed up for 4
years, till we took it down.
Anyway, those were less litigious, more adventuresome times than today, and
I remember a lot of people had major beams on telephone poles, wooden
masts, TV tower and just about anything else that would stand
upright. Compared to them, a well casing mast would have been considered
first cabin.
73, Pete N4ZR
Sometimes a tower is just a tower
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