In a message dated 6/26/03 6:55:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ke9r@ke9r.com
writes:
>
> Namely, working in the tower industry is hard, it's dangeous, it's scary,
> and it isn't Ham Radio. The towers we personally own are small, delicate,
> easy to install. Incredibly easy. The things that XX does for Ham towers
> is starting to be what commerical boys do. You basically start working
> after your jaw has dropped.
Thanks for the "picture" Greg!
Looking at some of the commercial monsters, you almost have to be superfly to
do the work on them. Our ham towers are toys and we try to do as much as we
can ourselves. Especially contesters with few towers and M/M setups find that
it is almost year round maintenance effort.
I loved my Big Bertha, self supporting tubular 110' tower. Has claiming steps
which serve as fall arrest for "cheap" belt with safety loop. No guy wires,
easy to install antennas, looks gorgeous too. I have been up there with 50 mph
winds and swaying around (gotta do t, contest is here and that feedline broke
off) in freezing Canadian winter night. Or walking out on piece of 4x4 to fix
that broken feedline way out on the boom. Stupid things happen and it is big
help to talk about them, for others to realize that we are not fool proof.
Yuri, K3BU, VE3BMV
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