[TowerTalk] Tower, rotator and antenna maintenance

[David Gilbert]

Speak for yourself.  There are a lot of people on this reflector well 
past 60 who do their own tower work with relative ease.  It is 
definitely NOT a "fact of life" that everyone's body and will starts to 
break down in their 50's.

Dave   AB7E



>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: TowerTalk [mailto:towertalk-bounces at contesting.com] On Behalf Of K0DAN
> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 6:22 PM
> To: Rick Kiessig
> Cc: towertalk at contesting.com
> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Tower, rotator and antenna maintenance
>
> 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
>