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Re: [TowerTalk] Need help with tower id and price

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Need help with tower id and price
From: Jim Lux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 06:42:09 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 10/6/14, 11:25 PM, Jim Pruitt wrote:
I have been asked to help the daughter of a silent key (W7ZZV) liquidate her 
father's gear.  I have some pictures of the tower at:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/w2o5eeo7l6uwos3/AAAfQZRvgBewZKgRWMVbVi96a?dl=0
of a tower that says "Short Bott 40) at the bottom.  The tower is not tubular 
but uses heavy sheetmetal and appears to be about 25ft tall (as a guess).  It 
currently has a commercial vhf/uhf JPole on it.

Can someone help me with a value for the tower and where it might be listed?


Towers of unknown age and maintenance history are usually not worth very much: the cost and risk in bringing it down is more than the value of the scrap metal in some cases. If someone happens to have free use of a bucket truck or crane, that can change the situation a bit, because you can bring down a pretty manky tower more safely, and once it's on the ground, you can take a good look at the parts to assess the strength. Tubular leg towers in places where rains, for instance, can look fine from the outside, but be rusted out on the inside of the tubes.

This one, at least, it looks like a group who had a spare morning could probably lay it down safely (someone on the roof to tie off a lowering line to a pulley, etc.). It's not like some of the rusty light duty lattice TV antenna towers I've seen where the best thing is to chop it and let it fall like a tree: nobody in their right mind would climb it. The bolts might be rusted, which means dismantling it could be a challenge (air tools, impact wrench, air chisel are your friends).

All that takes time, and while people probably aren't being paid, time is still money in some sense (the value of the tower has to be more than the time you spend taking it down and then fixing it).

Now if someone happens to have a need for spare parts (e.g. there's a lot of Rohn 25 sections floating around) and this fits the bill, then again, that can change the calculation.

Your best bet is to find a local ham club where the members might actually be familiar with the tower and related equipment.



The silent key also had a CDE AR22 (tv) rotor and control head that just came 
back from Norm the rotor doctor.  The silent key had a tag on the rotor that 
said it should be worth $50.  I suspect he spent that much getting it fixed.  
Can someone give me an idea what that rotor with control head and some 4 
conductor cable would be worth?

He also had what appears to be a 5 element Radio Shack TV antenna that has been 
converted to vhf ham band per an article in one of the magazines.  There is 
also a push up mast that is 2 section.

Thank you for your help.

Jim Pruitt
WA7DUY
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