[TowerTalk] rope in elements

[Brad Bradfield]

--- MGB <mgb4@mindspring.com> wrote:
>   Stealth airplanes are mostly flat black, You can hardly see them in
> certain conditions. I figure antenna and tower designers are going to
> catch
> up with this technology some day.

Hi y'all - - 

I've gotta share a story with y'all about "stealth" towers.  In 1976 I
worked for a TV station building two new transmitter sites in Western
South Dakota.  One was a 600 foot stick topped by a six-bay RCA super
turnstyle antenna on channel 5.  This tower was on US Forest Service
property on a 7000 foot mountain top.  The Forest Service has never
been real easy to deal with on towers, and we negotiated with them for
a solid year about what we could and couldn't build at the site.  They
finally settled on allowing us to construct a building that was just
barely big enough to get the Gates ashcan transmitter into.  Anyway,
about a year after we built this site, I was sitting in the director of
engineering's office when he got a phone call from the local Forest
Service office.  Now I was only hearing one side of the conversation,
but as he relayed it to me after hanging up, it went like this:

FOREST SERVICE:  "We have some new tower regulations for you.  We want
you to paint your tower green up to the tree line, and blue the rest of
the way to the top so it will blend in with the trees and sky."

ENGINEER:  "Well, ok.  Do you want to notify the FAA, or should I?"

FOREST SERVICE:  "Well, guess we didn't think about that.  We'll get
back to you."

But of course he never heard another word from them.  All through this
conversation, it was all my boss could do to keep from breaking out
laughing.

73,

Brad, W5CGH

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