Alex: I would urge you to look elsewhere for an antenna location. I worked
for a state forestry agency for ten years and we did not let anybody except
other governmental agencies on our lookout towers or radio towers. There
were just to many liability and cooperation problems when a problem comes
up. I even refused access to the FBI until they gave us the technical
details of three repeaters that they wanted to place on our tower.
If you are able to get approval, there are quite a few coverage problems
associated with the lookout towers because of their large size. When you
side mount an antenna the antenna should be perfectly vertical, which means
you will have to design special mounting brackets. Any side mounted antenna
will have very deep nulls. I have experienced nulls as deep as 50 db off of
the antenna. On one site I could see the tower and antenna from 6 miles
away, but could not key up the repeater with a 100 watt high band mobile. If
you top mount your antenna the forestry dept. will want to know how you will
do it. There is no easy way. The next problem will be routing the coax down
past the observation windows. If the tower is still used for fire detection
during fire season, they will not want any obstruction in the way for their
tower man to view 360 degrees, hence your coax for a top mounted antenna
better be invisible as it passes by the observation room at the top of the
tower. Your next problem will be the type of enclosure you will be using
for the equipment and how you will get power to your equipment. I would be
sure the forestry dept. will not want to supply you with power at
governmental expense.
Fred W5VAY
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alexander N Tubonjic" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <Repeater-Builder@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, July 28, 2005 12:36 AM
Subject: [Repeater-Builder] Department of Forestry Tower, Any Experiance???
> Hello All,
> The local department of Forestry has an observation tower that is
> over 200' off the ground. I would like to put my UHF Amateur repeater
> on that tower. I stopped by yesterday and talked to the Fire Fighter
> that was stationed there. He had told me that cellphone companies had
> asked if they could put some equipment on the tower and the DOF flat
> out said no; however, the guy I talked to said a friend of his was a
> Ham and had expressed an interest in putting a Ham repeater on the
> tower and it was okayed but the Ham moved before anything was put into
> effect. The guy I talked with said to leave my contact information and
> he would pass it on to his boss and have him contact me with more
> information.
> I was wondering if anyone has done anything tower related with the
> Department of Forestry? If so what was your experiance like? I
> remember reading somewhere that hams and the DOF have an MOU together
> for tower space, anyone know anything about that? Any past experiances
> and tips would be greatly appreciated. Thanks and 73.
> Alexander KG4OGN
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> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
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>
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