Mark: outside of the discussion about your neighbor's marriage, all the rest of the information is either incorrect or has serious issues with it.
First: you don't /need/ a tower to do Ham Radio. Yeah, maybe you'll /want/ one, but it's not a /requirement/ to have one to get started. Almost all of my personal Ham Radio activities doesn't use a local tower, even though we have one. For instance: you can listen and talk on repeaters over the Internet using EchoLink (the package to use for this on Linux is 'qtel'). No tower and no radio required for that, but you /do/ require a license in order to get a username/password for this service. Besides the Internet I most often use Ham Radio using a hand held radio (Baofeng UV-5R, carefully programmed so that it only transmits within Ham frequencies), or a mobile rig in the car with a mag-mount antenna. Mark Wallace: > The neighbors will definitely think that you are either running a TV station > in your basement or providing a location to a cell phone company. > > Or maybe drilling for oil. > > You might also be able to do air refueling of helicopters with it. I take it you're worried about what your neighbors think, rather than actually talking to them. That's your choice. Not only have we talked with our neighbors, but we've discussed the fact that our tower acts as a local lightning arrester, that the guy wires hold the tower in place with 6,000 lbs of force, and that the tower is calculated to hold to at least 140 mph winds. After some discussion each neighbor signed papers to allow our tower to fall on their property should that very unlikely event arise. And we do our best to make sure it won't. > My previous owner's marriage survived his putting up his antenna, but it was > close. It's been twelve years since he sold to us and the neighbor hasn't > come by to introduce himself yet, but he has let his shrubs grow high enough > that we can't see each other's houses anymore. There's a historical discussion about relationships and ham radio in a thesis paper I was sent recently. The issue has more to do with loss of time and focus to radio rather than it having anything to do with the /tower/ itself, which has only a tiny ground footprint. > Seriously, you might need a zoning variance, I am sure that you will need a > building permit, and there is a good chance that your home owner's insurance > will go up. You might want to read federal PRB-1 concerning preemption of state and local regulations concerning Amateur Radio facilities: https://wireless.fcc.gov/services/index.htm?job=prb-1&id=amateur&page=1 Local townships can still cause one hardship concerning towers, if it comes to that, but with an Amateur Radio license my understanding is that they don't actually have the legal authority to force you to remove it. > The FCC prohibition against using an ART license for commercial purposes is > so total that selling a used piece of hardware over the airwaves is a > federal offense. Ham Radio 'swap-and-shops' are common and this is the first I've heard anything about this being illegal let alone a "federal offense" which I consider to be an outrageous claim. > This is Linux related because it is easier for Linus to maintain the kernal > than it will be to put your antenna up. Linux also does less damage when it > crashes, which it doesn't do as often as an antenna could. I'll just say this: there are a few types of towers: - crank-up - self-standing - guyed The crank-up towers are telescoping sections that extend using a winch with steel cable. They're popular because the Ham can leave the tower "down" most of the time, therefore not making it obvious that it exists, but they have a number of issues making them undesirable for the "serious" Ham. Self-standing towers are okay but require additional work to install than guyed towers -- namely pouring concrete blocks a the 3 mount points. The base is then significantly larger than a guyed tower, and the tower itself isn't as strong as a guyed tower either -- but it is more attractive since it doesn't have guys. I believe it's also more expensive. Guyed towers are the strongest of the three and the easiest to install, with one catch. The typical installation uses screw anchors into the ground, and one needs to understand that the /depth/ of these screw anchors is critical -- the force they'll hold goes up exponentially as they are sunk deeper -- so if they're only sunk halfway because the installer is lazy, they're nowhere near as strong as they should be. But again putting up a tower is quite optional -- there's a lot you can do with Ham Radio without one. -- Chris -- Chris Knadle chris.kna...@coredump.us _______________________________________________ Mid-Hudson Valley Linux Users Group http://mhvlug.org https://mhvlug.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mhvlug Upcoming Meetings (6pm - 8pm) Vassar College * Dec 2 - File Systems From Simple To Distributed High Performance Jan 6 - Why We Can'T Have The Internet Of Nice Things: A Home Automation Primer Mar 2 - Consuming The Cloud: Shoot Out
