[TowerTalk] ballpark costs for a tower (installed)

[Jim Lux]

Well, "horses for courses" or "non disputandum de gustibus" etc..

Certainly, there folks for whom scrounging and improvising are part of the appeal (that would be me!), but there are probably equally as many for whom spending dozens of precious leisure hours would be prohibitive.  I'm trying to "bound the tradespace".  Some hams are cheap and scroungers, others have significant time commitments, but larger cash resources.  $10K sounds like a big pile of money (to me, anyway), but compared to a $30K swimming pool, maybe not.  Consider the demographics.  You might have a technically sophisticated wanna be ham who makes $100K/yr in the .com industry, but doesn't have hours to spend at hamfests or scotchbriting the joints between sections.  For them, if they're interested in fooling with ham radio, it might be a good trade to just buy the tower and pay someone to put it up.  Hey, if you're Paul Allen, you can put up your own OSCAR if the mood strikes.

As several of the posters have pointed out, one can put up a better configuration for substantially less cash (but at a substantial outlay of time and effort and luck).  I'm sure you can also spend a whole lot more, and achieve less.

And, yes, of course, one can have a perfectly good time with a wire over a tree, however, I was trying to describe a sort of middle of the road (capability wise, not necessarily the average ham's) station in a suburban area.  Not a multi-monoband DX contest killer, nor a random wire fed by a tuner.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Tom Horton 
  To: Bill Coleman ; Jim Lux 
  Cc: TowerTalk 
  Sent: Monday, August 23, 2004 9:39 PM
  Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] ballpark costs for a tower (installed)



  Bill said
  "If you write an article saying that even a modest tower will cost $3-7 
  large ones, there's a lot of would-be tower builders out there who may 
  likely give up the hobby."


  Bill,
   Boy, do I agree with you. 
  If putting out that many large for a tower and antenna
  was the norm for most of us, I fear that most of us
  would not be on the air ! 
   Hams used to be cheap and scroungers...what has happened to us?
  My tower is a few old sections of 25G and just scrounged 1 
  or possibly 2 more today. My quad has been moved and rebuilt 
  a bunch of times and it's getting ready to be rebuilt and installed 
  again here in TX (where it got started).
   No wonder a lot of folks think ham radio is a rich man's hobby.
  Doesn't have to be if you are resourceful enough!
  73, tom K5IID