Steve, you have a potentially complicated situation. Your town has a very
restrictive ordinance against towers. In my experience, you may have a 20
feet above the roof line ATTACHED TO THE STRUCTURE limit. If you are not
sure, check it out right now. Variances are very difficult to obtain.
Every town has different regulations. You will, at least, have to get
permission from every neighbor in certain close proximity. It might be a
few houses or it might be a radius distance. You will probably run into a
scenario where speaking to everyone first is necessary. Going from house
to house is a bit embarassing. Be sure NOT to point out what you are
doing is legal, a potential eyesore and might interfere with every
"home entertainment device" in a 500 ft radius. You might be surprised
with the immediate "nice" "friendly" responses from you potential new
happy neighbors at first. However, when the town meeting comes up you
might be surprised by the negative or just plain unsupportive things that
could be said. If your town is like mine, JUST ONE MINOR NEGATIVE COMMENT
will sink you. The thing you have to know, is these people on your town
board are likely on the take. In my town, a certain lawyer takes just
about all the variance cases. The fee is $5K. That is for one meeting.
Yes, you get your permit for your sign or whatever, but at what cost? Not
one person on this reflector will tell you that 40 ft is a decent height
for working DX. Yes, it might work really well, if all you want to do is
ragchew on 20 to your cousin in St. Louie or work Europeans or South
America on 10 or 15. It is a low height to really enjoy things and have a
super good time at it. It does not give you much advantage in the
"pileups" or much height to put up a decent low band dipole. Now on to
you plans to get a higher tower and use it at 40 ft until the variance
comes through. BAD IDEA. The town will not like this. They might NOT
issue you a building permit. That is necessary because it goes into
concrete. Every footing needs a building permit. The argument will be,
you can raise it when nobody is looking and not be in compliance with the
ordinance. So what, right? Wrong. How would you like it if the
neighbors second unlicensed car magically appeared with a license plate
every time you called and complained about the piece of junk sitting on
your property line? They will say, you can't apply for the permit unless
you own the property. If you do, fine. If you have not closed, they will
not even talk to you. You can go down there a million times, but I bet
you they will not give you anything in writing until you actually own the
house. Get everything in print too. On the other negative side of this
plan, you have to get a engineering stamp from a NY state licensed
Professional Engineer. He will have to review and RECALCULATE the tower
plan from US Tower. In order to certify the structure, he just won't take
the certification from a California stamp. His license is on the line if
it falls and kills your neighbor's cat. Unless you are luck to know a PE
or your brother-in-law is one who will look the other way, you will find
this will run about a thousand dollars for the plans. There will be many
questions about the antenna and the issue of "ice". When was the last
time you had 3 inches of radial ice on anything in Fishkill with 50 mph
winds? You know your tower is built like a brick, but the Uniform
Building Code treats it differently. Engineers love to be anal retentives
about small details, you know. Now, lets say you have gotten frustrated
now and decided to consult the ARRL about this. They are our saviour,
right? Wrong. Yes, they know about PRB-1 and Federal interests and the
like, but there NO absolute cases that will get you a 55 or higher foot
antenna with a 40 foot restriction. There certainly HAVE been cases where
lower height restrictions have been overturned in NY by lengthy court
cases and expensive litigation. The hams have individually bore the costs
of this and in my experience, since case law is not necessarily
transferable, the next guy might have to do it too. That is very
expensive. It might run you $5-10K without a hint of any outside
financial help to do this. I would ask you, Steve, to be very cautious
about your expectations and limitations before getting into this project.
I am very familiar with it, because I ran into similar roadblocks.
Finally, I got so frustrated by the whole situation, I purchased a country
property and moved the bulk of my serious operating there. I have found
that the residential restrictions of height and electrical noise and
consumer electronic "interference" were not worth the hassle. Be
carefull, the town is not your friend on this project. Good luck!!
David J. Rodman, MD
Assistant Clinical Professor
Department of Ophthalmology
State University of New York at Buffalo
FAX 716-859-4565
Office 716-854-1137
e-mail: rodman@acsu.buffalo.edu
--
FAQ on WWW: http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html
Submissions: towertalk@contesting.com
Administrative requests: towertalk-REQUEST@contesting.com
Problems: owner-towertalk@contesting.com
Search: http://www.contesting.com/km9p/search.htm
|