YUP, I don't disagree with any of your comments but you have a pretty
narrow mined view, prolly because you're so into the business of HAM
RADIO.
Lots of hams these days are retired and on fixed incomes...as you say
it's easy to find the $150 tower but the $1,000 plus expense for
installation makes the tower project out of reach for some. If folks
don't buy towers because of the overall expense i.e. the cost of the
associated materials, like concrete, then less towers get sold. That's
a macro view. Something many, if not most, of the folks in the radio
business fail to develop and is also the reason so many of them
eventually fail....the examples are numerous.
Believe it or not for some retired ham $75 is a big deal. If you
weren't an executive at WCOM, XEROX or ENRON and you were considering a
tower project I'll bet those "BIG DEAL" cost you mention become show
stoppers!
Ref. you comments on the design engineers. Again, you have to consider
where they are coming from. The Toe design is the optimal configuration.
It's not the only one.
The companies that sell and build these towers aren't interested in
providing a multiple choice selection for their customers when it comes
to base installations. They want to pay the engineer once and leave it
to the tower owner to make the choices or look for the options, etc. I
wouldn't expect anything different. Those engineers charge $$ for those
designs. Prolly upwards of $1.00 a minute.
THE POINT IS that it's significantly more expensive to install a tower
today than it was 30 yrs ago when most hams were working and bringing
home good salaries. My 1st tower cost me $195 new and $30 later it was
installed. The last tower I bought cost $28,500. I don't think the
average, retired ham would disagree that a couple hundred bucks for a
back-hoe is unreasonable for what it can do, that is obvious. The point
is the stuff adds up and for some, perhaps many those costs make the
project beyond their reach, DUH!
73s,
dave
wa3giin
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