[TowerTalk] Tower Climbing Business

[K3BU at aol.com]

In a message dated 6/26/03 6:55:21 PM Eastern Daylight Time, ke9r at 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