Yesterday I had the opportunity to finally get a nice tower for the backyard. Me and Tim W5TAH drove down to Holdenville, a little over an hours drive south east of Oklahoma City. The homeowner wanted it removed from his property and I wanted it so it looked like a pretty sweet deal.
The tower is roughly 45 feet tall which is perfect for what I need. We hooked up the trailer to Tim's Truckster and headed south-east. Everything looked great when we arrived and it was turning out the be nearly perfect weather for the project. We got the J-Pole set up and the rope ready to go. Tim got suited up in his harness.
Tim started his climb but once he made it past the first section the tower became really wobbly. The tower was put up in the 1960's and was never guyed. It looked to have a nice concrete base but for over six decades it with stood the winds that came sweeping down the plains. Over time the connection point between the bottom section and the rest of the tower became wallowed out. This allowed the top of the tower to sway over a foot at the top. So decided that even though Tim had a nice climbing harness, it was unsafe for him to climb it. There was a real good chance of it toppling over. We thought about just cutting it down at the base and letting it just fall down, but the yard that it was in was kind of small and surrounded by elevated power lines.
The homeowner has a friend from church that may be able to bring it down safer. So in the meantime me and Tim will be trying to come up with a plan to get it. If we have to pass on it then I will have to keep on looking.
I'm not wanting a big tower to hold up a big stack of yaggis. My desire is something in the neighborhood of 30-40 feet tall. I want it as a tilt over tower because I'm in no shape to climb a tower and I have seen a lot of people around town put up nice towers in their backyard then their prized yagi gets damaged and they have no way to fix it because there are so few people who can climb towers. To me that seems like a waste of resources and I'm extremely limited in resources. I just want something that can support a wire antenna and small TV rotator with a small dual band yagi for repeaters.
So at the end of the day we made it home and no one got hurt and that is the important stuff.
So if you have any questions or comments you can leave comments in the comments section below or you may contact me directly at Aaron@K5ATG.com. You can be notified of any future post to this blog and support this blog at the same time by simply subscribing.
Aaron K5ATG
