On Jun 15, 2007, at 9:24 PM, Don E. Wisdom wrote: > I wouldnt do it if it was a former long lines site (aka owned by > american tower) > They make everything a PITA and you also have to get a radio > engineer to do your site design.
Many of those sites were sold off by American Tower and were purchased for a song. A few around here went for $10K or less, including building, tower, and all. All the way down to their properly engineered AT&T outhouses. (Yes, I am a telco guy, and I have a digital copy somewhere of the AT&T engineering drawings for a standard outhouse saved on a hard drive around here somewhere, because it made me laugh.) To answer the guy's question -- one of the nicer things about the old AT&T Long Lines towers, is that they're typically "platform" style towers with ladders, and most have been fitted with Safe-T-Climb's on the ladders. If you use the proper procedures and equipment when climbing them, you'll generally feel a lot safer (and more rested) standing/sitting on a platform bolting your antenna to a rail or arm sticking out from the tower frame, than you will hanging from a traditional tower. One caveat: Where equipment has been removed like the large "cornucopia" microwave horns, there are some wide-open holes in the "floor" at some levels, and you shouldn't ever let the fact that you're standing on a platform make you feel safe walking around unprotected for falls, nor should you work on the platform without being tied off to something with proper safety gear. But generally, I like working on the big Long Lines platform towers more than I like standing on the top few rungs of a floppy Rohn 25 guyed tower, reaching out to a cross-arm... that's for sure. ------ As far as having an RF engineer design/approve your system? Welcome to commercial tower sites. Grow up or get off, would be the phrase that would most accurately describe most site manager's opinon if they were allowed to express it to many hams, who also might happen to be their customers... so they can't say it "out loud". If they let you show up, plop down some mystery equipment, and can't tell the other tenants they required you to at least submit basic engineering information -- information you should already have in your documentation of your repeater system, anyway -- they'd be negligent as landlords. PITA ... okay, maybe. But we've all seen the photos on some (clueless) ham club's websites, with bad installations of equipment, that don't even meet the basic quality level of the cheapest commercial tenants. That type of installation on shared/commercial sites, is what brings about rules... when people don't install quality systems, the sites react and take charge of protecting their investment and other customers on the site! At one of our sites, we're required to provide engineering diagrams, the frequencies and radio model numbers of every receiver and transmitter, all other equipment mode numbers and usage information, including antenna model and weight (for tower load calculations), and there are restrictions on types of feed line, antenna types and location documentation, and a whole addendum to the contract stating things that are NOT allowed at the site, for the protection of all. We don't mind. -- Nate Duehr, WY0X [EMAIL PROTECTED]
