[TowerTalk] Introduction

[Paul Beckmann]

I'm new to the list, old to ham radio, new to towers and contesting, and I
thought I'd introduce myself and as a few basic questions.

We just retired onto 23 acres of land, 8 of it cleared on the top of a 400'
bluff above the Mississippi River valley. I've purchased a used 72'
motorized US Towers crankup with TH5, an A3WS beam, and Yaesu G-2800SDX
rotator from a decommissioned Courage Center station. I plan to go over the
tower, replace cable, hardware, and other questionable pieces and find a
TRX-80HD raising fixture.

Lots of questions! I appreciate having the Tower Talk archives to scan and
the modeling tools that are available to help answer them. Here's a general
one that I'd like to throw out:

Siting: The 8 acres "on top" is not totally flat but undulating. The
highest points are where the house & garage/shack are located are near the
south edge of the property. To the north we look up the Mississippi River
valley for some distance. We don't want to disturb the aesthetic view from
the house of the valley but would like the tower to be away from the
house/garage "cluster" so putting it on the south side of the house/garage
may not be well received. The house, reasonably, was sited at one of the
high points of the property. I plan to use HFTA (I just found out about it)
to evaluate different locations.

Question set 1: Considering coax losses/expense how do you balance them
against tower distance from the shack? What distance is "typical" and what
distance is generally considered "unreasonable" from shack to tower?

Thank you in advance for any input.

73
* Paul Beckmann*
*Vista Meadows Homestead*
*30125 719th Street*
*Lake Township, MN 55041*
*wa0rse at gmail.com <wa0rse at gmail.com>*
*612-414-0302 (cell, leave msg)*