[TowerTalk] Tower, rotator and antenna maintenance

[K0DAN]

The older you are, the less you'll do it!

If you're in your 40's (or younger): No problem, you do it just for fun and 
exercise! You like to go looking for problems and challenges. You are 
disappointed if everything works perfectly. You regret that your tower is 
the only place you are able to do "technical climbing".
If you're in your 50's: You can still do the work but are tired of it, the 
risk, and the unexpected. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If you go up the 
tower, you pray you don't find the unexpected and hope for a miracle. You 
are tempted to ask people for help.
If you're in your 60's: You have a motorized tower and lower it to the 20' 
level and do the work using ladders and safety equipment. You still don't 
enjoy it and it is still a lot more difficult than it used to be. You 
occasionally pay the high price to rent a bucket. You hate doing the work 
and hope & pray you can avoid it. You are no longer ashamed to ask other 
people for help. You especially hope it is only routine maintenance and not 
something seriously broken.
If you're in your 70's: You hire young guys to do it all, or you have 
already moved to a non-ham-friendly condo location. You are probably happy 
with a dipole in your attic and are actively looking into stealth antennas. 
DX is now a 300 mile QSO on HF.
If you're in your 80's: You have made friends with some younger ham who has 
a remote controlled station and you operate his station using Skype + 
TeamView.
If you're in your 90's: You mostly read the SK section of QST. You show off 
your WAS certificates made when there were only 48 states. Your DXCC and 
other award certificates have two-digit certification numbers. 85% of DXCC 
contacts are on the "deleted" list.

No disrespect meant towards the young or the old on this spectrum....it's 
just the facts of life!

73
K0DAN

-----Original Message----- 
From: Rick Kiessig
Sent: November 08, 2012 06:02 PM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Tower, rotator and antenna maintenance

How often do you go to the top of your tower and do maintenance on the
antenna, rotator, coax, antennas, etc? Just when something breaks? Or more
often?

When you get up there, do you have a set routine? Do you look for anything
special, other than obviously misplaced wear-and-tear?

Do you go up more often when the tower is new, for reasons other than
something being broken or obviously wrong?

73, Rick ZL2HAM (ZM1G)

/listinfo/towertalk