This was my old tower.
Why am I building a NEW tower you may ask?
Good question. This was my old guyed tower (1984 - 2004) It was 57 feet high with a 23 foot antenna, it's top was at 80 feet.
20 years ago I had been given a permit for my original 57 foot Rohn 25G tower. It required a lawyer and a little work
even back then, but it was granted. Now, 20 years later I wanted to change one antenna on the top and replace the guy wires to make it stronger and safer. I wanted to make sure I was legal before doing all the work, I went to the County to check (my first big mistake). They were a real pain in the butt
because (as
you
can see) it was only 27 feet from my property line. I was told "any time you lower a fold-over tower you will need a new permit to raise it back up, and we will not give you another permit!" I could not believe what I was hearing. I asked [the main guy] "Are you telling me you would rather I kept the old tower "as is", instead of lowering it, putting on stronger guy wires and putting it back up in a SAFER condition?" I was told one word, "Yes".
I think we can start to see the problem,
they seem to dislike towers, and the people who own them. :(
This is what started "THE QUEST". Had they just said "yes" to me repairing my old tower, there would not be a huge 7 foot wide, 100 foot tall, tower on my block!
On the next trip down town I was told [point blank] by the County Building Permit Office, "For Amateur (Ham) antennas and towers, the very tip of your top antenna (not just the tower) can not cross your closest property line if it were to fall". For this reason I was first told I couldn't build any tower with an antenna top more that 27 feet to the top, no mater what. [They look at towers and antennas as all one "antenna", the top is the top]. Later when push came to shove and I hadn't taken "NO" for an answer they added "UNLESS YOU BUILD AN **ENGINEERED** tower." This was the clue I needed. They didn't volunteer that last information in the beginning. After a little talk, I was told if I engineered the entire tower and concrete base I could build a tower to 100 feet, even with the property line only 27 feet away. They never thought I would do it. I went back the next day and requested a permit for 99 feet, 11.90 inches, keeping it below 100 feet :)
AND SO IT BEGINS!
Here we are removing the old tower's brackets no longer needed before taking down the tower.
The blue rope is a temporary guy wire.
The old tower is now gone. The orange marking paint is were the base will be dug, 13 feet square. I stopped painting the back of the house until this is done.
We are trying to dig out the old base. It didn't really want to come out.
After a lot of digging it finally came out.
June in Tucson gets a little warm, it is 97 deg. at only 10 AM (in the shade).
I am digging outside by hand.
We could just barely lift the old base, it took all we had. We haul this to the dump to get rid of it.
The trailer was a little small for this load! The tires were aired up but still mashed way down.