I have a friend who has a Rohn self-supporting antenna tower (like the one pictured) with a directional cellular antenna at the top. The tower is probably 40 feet high and was erected by a previous homeowner. They would like to make it useable again but the antenna needs to be turned to point at a specific cell tower.
The manufacturers documentation indicates that the tower is climbable but I’ve never dealt with these towers and thats outside my expertise. Who would I even call for that type of job?
jqubed@lemmy.world 3 days ago
At the high end, the professionals who do this for a living are typically called tower climbers. They’re highly paid because it is dangerous work when you’re climbing hundreds or even thousands of feet up a tower, especially considering the radiation output on a broadcast antenna (at my last station I once met the tower guys doing a regular inspection and he mentioned years earlier his brother had gone up the same tower but hadn’t coordinated with the station engineer and I guess hadn’t followed a proper lockout/tagout. As he climbed down the engineer was in a panic yelling at him that he hadn’t cut the transmitter. Fortunately I think they were already digital at that point and had already switched to half power for the work, although at the antenna that still would’ve been 12,000 watts IIRC. The climber spent the night puking a bunch but seemed “okay” after a few days). They have climbing equipment and special insurance coverage.
It’s a dying industry, but you might check to see if any TV antenna installers could work on it. Sometimes older VHF/UHF TV antennas would get mounted on a mast or small tower for better reception. It was more important in the analog days.
Going more amateur, you could reach out to a local Ham radio club to see if any of their members can help. They probably have people familiar with this type of tower. If there’s a local rock climbing club some of their members might be interested in climbing since towers are usually off-limits (we would sometimes find evidence of people trying to access our broadcast tower or hotwire control of the elevator, which was exactly why we would physically disable the elevator when not in use). You might want to review your insurance coverage in case anyone is injured working on it, though.
Another option might be to rent a cherry picker. At 40 feet that is probably within reach and someone could just ride a bucket up, although I don’t know what that costs or if any training is required to operate it.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Some places they are also called Riggers