When I put up my first tower (40 ft. of Rohn 25) in another neighborhood from
where we live now, back in the 1980s, my neighbors thought it was so "nice"
that I was erecting a carillon "bell tower" for the neighborhood and they
wanted to know what "melodies" it would play (yes this is really true, I
couldn't make something like this up.)
I had put up 40 ft. of Rohn 25 with a Ham IV rotor on top, but I had to wait a
few weeks for my Mosley TA33Jr beam I had ordered to arrive, which I guess they
thought the rotor were the "bells". I never laughed in their faces, but when
out of sight I couldn't control my laughter.
I did eventually tell them with a straight face what the tower was though and
no one objected after I got the TA33JR on the tower. I was always letting many
of my neighbors know when we had a Skywarn callup and the NWS would issue
severe storm alerts. I now live in another neighborhood with a Tennadyne T-12
log periodic on top of a 50 foot crank up and some folks think I watch DX TV,
even though I have a small satellite TV dish on the side of the house. I still
let neighbors know when severe weeather threatens and Skywarn puts out an
alert.
A couple of nearby neighbors have complained to me years ago by phone that my
tower was cranked up during a thunderstorm and when was I going outside to
crank it down. I told them if they wanted to come over and crank it down
during the storm they could, I wasn't crazy enough to go outside with heavy
rain falling and lightning flashing all around and crank the tower down. Yes,
all the coax was disconnected.
One nosy neighbor whose back yard is filled with Live Oak trees, which are
growing into the power lines. I have mine professionally trimmed away from the
power lines periodically by a tree trimming company NOT hired by the power
company), said my tower caused her house to get repeatedly hit by lightning
(they have one of those metal fireplaces and metal pipe chimney extending past
the top of their roof.. I wrote the Polyphaser folks and one of their
electrical engineers wrote me a letter (which I forwarded to the neighbor)
which said I was in more danger from their Live Oak trees attracting a strike
to my tower than my tower was attracting a strike to their house. Never heard
another word from her.
Tom, WW5L
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