[TowerTalk] Stealth Paint ( was Rohn 25 Rusting)

[David Gilbert]

For what it may be worth, the picture at the link below was taken 
roughly 300 feet distant from my tower.  The tower is 70 feet tall, four 
feet across at the base tapering to about 20 inches across at the top, 
and there are two Optibeam yagis on the 15 foot mast.  Both tower and 
antennas were painted with flat exterior grade latex paint in the colors 
of black, brown, and olive green.  The tower is about 1/4 of the way 
from the right hand side of the picture, and the neighbors tell me they 
rarely can spot them.

http://i228.photobucket.com/albums/ee141/xazdave/AB7E_OB2-40_over_OB16-3_camo_from_1.jpg

It helps, of course, that I have a hillside for a visual backdrop, but 
even out in the open flat dark colors are much less conspicuous.  
Compare a wooden telephone pole with still lots of dark creosote to a 
typical ham tower at the same distance to see what I mean.  I gained 
brownie points with the neighbors simply by virtue of the fact I made an 
obvious and significant attempt to mitigate the visual impact of my 
installation.

The paint sticks great to the tower, but less durably so to the aluminum 
antennas.

73,
Dave   AB7E



David Gilbert wrote:
> I agree.  When I wanted to paint my heavily galvanized AN Wireless tower 
> with a dark color for stealth reasons, KK3AN (the owner of the tower 
> company) recommended I simply use a good exterior grade latex paint.  I 
> also did a lot of web searching on the subject of painting galvanized 
> steel and came up with the same recommendation.  Lastly, I had painted 
> the galvanized trim on the roof of my previous house in Scottsdale 
> (admittedly a dry environment) and it lasted 20 years with no flaking.
>
> 73,
> Dave   AB7E
>
>
> Pete Smith wrote:
>   
>> I had quite satisfactory results on my used Rohn 25 tower by 
>> scraping, painting with galvanized primer and then following with a 
>> coat of ordinary latex house paint.  It's been up since 1995 and very 
>> little rust showing.
>>
>> 73, Pete N4ZR