This thread came up a year or three ago. Evidently, the strobe
lights on tall towers were causing dissorientation in migrating
birds, and they were colliding with the towers.
I think a fairly persuasive argument could be made for unlighted
amateur towers.
If you HOPE that ARRL is on top of the matter, I would recommend
contact with the league's regulatory affairs officer. He'll let
you know where we stand, and what we're doing. Hope can be replaced
with knowledge.
N2EA
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 09:00:12 -0800
From: "Eric Hilding" <dx35@hilding.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Potential New FCC Tower Construction Threat
To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Message-ID: <000c01c71c7c$a9369ec0$60228bd8@ownerf927ea04c>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
As if BPL and CC&R's aren't bad enough, it appears we may have a new
potential tower construction threat issue to deal with in the future.
I'm passing along some info that I just read in a newsletter from my
Attorney in Washington. It appears to pertain to commercial tower
installations, but you know the drill...give the environmentalists an inch
and they'll take a mile. Most Enviro-Nazis do NOT distinguish between
amateur & commercial towers...they hate 'em all. Hopefully the ARRL is on
top of this, because even a remote possibility that future tower
constructions might all require costly Environmental Assessments if the FCC
adopts policy changes requested by the US Fish & Wildlife Service could be
bad news for us. In abundance of caution, we might want to all file
Comments on behalf of Amateur Radio in the Proposed Rulemaking in Docket
03-187 before the January 22 deadline.
The USFWS is estimating between 4 and 50 million bird collisions with
communications towers each year. This was a MAJOR issue for Mike, K9AJ and
myself in negotiating our IOTA NA-178 trip with USFWS last Spring. We had
to take down our small Sigma 5 vertical dipole on the Island at sunset due
to concerns over bird collisions with the teenie weenie horizontal T-bars.
Only the slender "Farallon Special" (Super-charged mobile screwdriver
antenna with extension shafts & whips) was allowed up during the night and
installation was restricted to the adjacent shaddow area of the tiny
Carpenter Shop we operated from on the Island. We could have no
"horizontal" antenna components of any size in the air at night & no guy
wires. And you think you have CC&R problems???
In January I will have been a licensed ham for 50 years. I have never had
any bird collision situtations myself, nor heard of any occuring with any
other ham operator I've spoken with on this subject.
Many City and County Building/Planning Departments have already been known
to cause grief to ham operators seeking permits. The last thing any of us
need is to see a costly environmental assessment requirement added to the
mix...anywhere in the U.S.
IMHO, we need to formally distance ourselves from commercial tower
installations in this Proposed Rulemaking. It might be prudent to contact
your Senator/Congressperson folks as well.
FYI & 73.
Rick, K6VVA
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End of TowerTalk Digest, Vol 48, Issue 38
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