[TowerTalk] Not in my neighborhood!

[Jim White, K4OJ]

Ya know....

A funny thing happened when the Board of County Commissioners met to 
discuss the antenna tower question at our family QTH.

They were very concerned that by allowing us to pursue our antenna plans 
they could be creating an environment in that particular neighborhood 
which would lead to a lot of hams putting up towers in there...

Needless to say the 150 plus hams whop supported our family by showing 
up at the county commissioners meeting all looked at each other and 
smiled knowing the last thing in the world any self respecting ham would 
want to do is move in close to someone who could overload his receiver!

I swear this is true! One member of the BCC said "we would not want this 
development to become overrun with these radio towers".  Fortunately it 
was not necessary to bring to the commissioners attention that this 
would not happen...

I mention this, as a friend had pointed out that the idea of creating a 
directory of municipalities that are "ham friendly" could lead to high 
ham population density there!  Guess I should log my comments that it is 
hell trying to put an antenna tower up in my community to discourage 
other hams looking for land - eh?

I feel that the arrays at our station sufficiently dissuade another ham 
from moving in "next door".  And once again we have found yet another 
reason to have big towers - to keep help other hams away from your QTH! ;-)

Jim, K4OJ

p.s. - to those who asked - in an earlier post I mentioned TA - that is 
Terrain Analyzer (software for predicting antenna performance over 
non-level ground)