Aging Tower Riggers

You realize there's trouble on the tower. Who are you going to call? If you're like the large majority of hams, you need someone else to do the work because you won't or you can't.

That is the question for most hams with towers since they don't climb. So you call a friend who climbs, ask your local club for assistance or you turn to a professional.

I don't have statistics to back me up but I don't believe it was always this way. When I was young, and for a long time after, I was one among many. It was common to ask a younger ham to help with their tower and antenna needs. I've been doing tower work for other hams as long as I've been doing tower work, and that is half a century!

It shouldn't be surprising. As we age we are less willing or less able to climb. It took me some time to notice the trend and where it is headed. Hams that still climb into their 80s are rare. Even the most ardent stop in their 70s. Many give up far younger. 

It is important to recognize when the time has come and willingly hang up the harness. Others are pressured by family. There are a stubborn few that keep going and pay a heavy price. I know hams that have taken down their towers when they realized they could no longer maintain them on their own. Help may be hard to find and some are too proud to ask. So they avoid the problem entirely.

It is older hams that are most interested in big HF antenna systems and most of the climbers in this cohort have aged out doing tower work. Few young hams are taking their places. Why would they bother to learn and practice those skills when they don't have a tower themselves. Many young hams are more attracted to portable operation or low profile wire antennas.

That's the situation: our number are declining so the downward trend will continue. I can count on one hand the number of local hams I personally know who climb. Many are eager to help, but on the ground. Indeed there is only one local ham willing and able to climb my tallest 150' tower. But then he has towers of his own that high.

Since it is getting harder to find hams to help on the tower, many turn to professional help. That can be expensive. Well, many things are expensive these days, whether it's a vehicle repair, redoing a roof or many other specialized jobs that require skill and experience. Everybody needs to eat -- so you pay.

How much can you afford to pay for the rest of your ham career? Can you find competent help? That is more difficult than you might think. Incompetent help is, unfortunately, far from rare. Not all that advertise their services deserve to be called professionals. It may mean little more than someone who charges for a job, whether or not it is done properly.

You can't inspect what was done from the ground so poor workmanship may remain undiscovered until well after money changes hands. I've often had to fix what I could when shoddy work causes trouble. I don't enjoy seeing fellow hams ripped off.

Few tower riggers are hams so that even if they are competent they may be unfamiliar with our equipment and practices. For example, weatherproofing connectors for ease of future disassembly, rotation loops and rotators, adjustment of feed point matching networks, the fragility of many aluminum and wire element yagis, etc.

There are alternatives. If the tower isn't too high you can rent a bucket truck and do the work yourself. It isn't as easy or safe as you might expect but at least you don't have to climb. Or you can install a crank-up or tilt-over tower. None of these come cheap. If it's important to keep your HF capability, you have the money and can't rely on hiring competent tower workers, by all means go ahead and do what you must.

I won't climb forever. At the moment I am in good physical condition and I have the requisite skill and experience. Since I'm retired I have time to help others, so I do that despite having my own large station to maintain and grow. I enjoy helping others. That said, my "best before date" has passed. My time is coming. Not soon, I hope, but it is coming.

Let's say that time is 10 years away -- 2035. What then? Will there be a younger ham, perhaps with operating opportunities, to do an old man a favour? Do I hire professionals? Many of the ones I know are also getting older.

I expect that I'll be able to afford the expense for a time. To minimize the need my plan is to cease antenna projects when the time approaches and harden the station as well as I can. The inertia of a solid tower and antenna installation may take me over the finish line. 

I have enough antennas that the loss of one or two is survivable. When I say loss, that could be an item as minor as an intermittent coax connector or a corroded wire on a rotator. But if I can't fix it, it's no less a loss of capability than if the antenna were to fall to the ground.

Sad to say that when I'm gone the towers will likely be cut down for scrap. I doubt that I can pass the station on, and it is too expensive to dismantle for sale in the unlikely case that there is interest in the towers and antennas. 

Ham radio will survive me but it will be nothing like what those my age grew up with. Tower work will become a skill lost to hams, just like what will eventually happen with CW and other traditional practices. Time marches on.