Man Builds 60-foot Tower to Get Highspeed Access

Matt Russell writes "A church was blocking the only high speed signal in town, so he decided he needed to go higher. This is the story of one man's quest to build a 60-foot reception tower in his yard and retire his modem once and for all." From the article: "Well, if you want to have a tower, you need to find one. Buying a new tower is not a good idea, since there are plenty of used ones. In my case, I was in need of a tower that was at least 50', which would cost around $1,000 USD for a new one. The way I searched was pretty simple. I spread the word around town that I was looking for one, and I drove around to see if there was a house with an old TV tower or something like that. If a 30' tower would be enough for you, go to a small town and look for TV tower. If you find one that looks to be in good shape, just go knock on the door and ask if you can buy it. At least 90% of people don't use them anymore, so it's a good place to start! "

Re:oh

[coaxeus]

okay read it a bit.. "and not when everyone around me, just far enough away from the church, would have it." .. "I would build a sixty-plus foot tower so I could intercept the signal! " Why not buy one or two $30 wireless routers and a directional antenna and share with a neighbor that isn't behind a church then. Honestly.

Planning?

[megla]

That's some impressive DIY.
However, in my country (the UK), you can't just slap up something like that without going through an extremely tedious planning consultation with the local authority - usually your city or district council. This is both expensive (all has to be nice and legal etc) and time consuming. If you put it up without planning, you can apply for retrospective planning permission, but if it's refused then you have to tear it down (or the men in suits come do it for you). Quite a deterrant to similar DIY projects.
What sort of approval (if any) is needed for this sort of thing stateside?

Two Points

[Trip Ericson]

1. In the discussion over on Digg, it was noted that he was able to build this cheaper than most would because he had "connections."

2. To those asking if this is Wi-Fi, it could be what I have. I'm not sure what it is, but it operates on the 900MHz band (I know, my cordless phone destroys the internet). I have a UHF Yagi in the attic pointed at a tower at the elementary school 3 miles away. The signal barely makes it over a hill in front of my house to get it. But I'm not complaining, I get 1Mbps both ways (128kb uploads, 128kb downloads) with it and it's neither a telco nor a cable co.

Lightning protection

[Tiger4]

I saw he put a grounding line on the thing, and a ground rod. But Something that tall and close to an inhabited structure should really have a heavier line that goes right to the top. Lightning will fry that #6 conductor pretty fast, and then where will it want to run? Oh, by the way, he has thoughtfully provided a fortuitous conductor that leads directly into his computer! Two words, " lightning arrestor "

And I wasn't too thrilled with his weld quality either. Looks like it was showing rust in the picture. And the bottom plate looked like it would hold water, not shed it. Overall, I'm not sure I'd want it next to my home.

So what.. I built a solar powered repeater...

[cowmix]

I built a solar powered repeater for my Internet access. Where is my cookie?!

http://cowmix.com/solar6/compressed/ [cowmix.com]

Picture of the tower?

[Zaurus]

Four whole pages with pictures, and NO PICTURE OF THE TOWER?

I want my $0 back.

This reminds me of the time...

[dtrmp4]

Some random guy came over to our house about 5-6 years ago after my dad moved out and asked about our tower that my dad didn't bother to take with him. He told us that he'd take it to his house and check it out and make sure it still worked and give us a price etc. We haven't heard from him since. But anyways, he must be pretty lucky: I've been using this service for quite some time without any problem. Rain and storms do not affect the speed in any way I could notice. Our old antenna (not the one mentioned above) got owned by lightning.

I did this as well

[ksm2552]

I built a 62 foot tower in my yard to connect to buddy with high speed access. Just when we about to start his tower, they ran cable-internet done my road. I was pissed, yet happy at the same time. Still out about $800 though.

Re:Rohn 25

[tcgroat]

Rohn 25G topwers on hinged bases [radiancorp.com] are not self-supporting at any height. They must always be guyed or bracketed to a building.

Also, since he mentioned paying Canadian dollars for it, ice loading will limit the self-supporting height [radiancorp.com]. With 1/2" ice load the best you can do is 20 feet, in a low wind area and a small antenna. Even in a mild climate, the safe limit for self-supported 25G is 40 feet.

Do what the manufacturer says. They know where the failure point is. Overloaded towers will fail, it's a matter of when--not if.

Re:used tower == death wish

[NoMaster]

Hear, hear. (Sorry, but I'm right with you on the "talk about things I do rather than things I fantasize about doing" thing.)

But, did you read the article? The fsckin' tower itself is the safest bit of the whole project! It might be 30+ years old, exposed to the canadian weather, and been knocked around by trucks in the back yard of his father's workplace, but I'd trust it a damn sight more than I would his built-over-several-weeks-out-of-waste-concrete base, his made-from-old-leftover-gal-plate baseplate home welded to the base of the tower, or the 3 bolts and 6 nuts which hold it in midair (look carefully - the baseplate doesn't touch the concrete slab).

Not to mention that the hole filled with water in 12 hours - he's got a serious problem with his soil stability right there.

Personally, I'll wait for the story telling how the bolts broke, the welds cracked, the baseplate tore, the slab delaminated, or the whole thing floated out of the ground and fell over...

Re:What is exactly so dangerous?

[beast6228]

Erecting towers isn't all that hard, hell I've put up 40 foot towers by myself. and I've put up 100 foot towers with 12 element,40 foot boom antennas attached to them with less than 5 people. We never had any cranes or 14 thousand pounds of concrete either. A couple pizzas is all we wanted. I even painted the very same 100 foot tower 10 years later with nothing more than a tower belt and a two by four to slide in between the rungs to hold the paint can.

But I will admit, you do need a quality tower if you are going over 100 feet. a wide base is very important. Alot of the older commercial towers were the same size from top to bottom, especially the ones over 500 feet tall. and they relied on guy wires for most of their support. Imagine climbing up a 500 foot tower? I don't think I would want to go that high, 100 foot is scary enough.

Anyone remember this story about one of the tallest structures in the united states falling down and killing two? http://www.eham.net/articles/4033 [eham.net]

Of course, it was a 1,965 Foot Tower in Nebraska.

Photos of another tower install, but taller

[deanpole]

My buddy posted photos of the 96 foot tower he installed [kr2020.com].