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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! "
er, what? Wouldn't GPRS or something be a little more bang for buck ? (no, I didn't RTFA)
My name is coaxeus, and I approve this message. In fact, I think it is awesome.
In Scouts we used to lash wood together to build structures. A forty foot tower is not hard to build this way.
Man installs TV aerial
plans to install new mailbox and gutters next weekend
details at 11
I for one welcome our new pickup truck, towerbearing oooooooooooverlords. :-)
Chuck
I'll be damnd if I sell my tower. How could I get my pirate station out otherwise?
Those who wish to control their own lives and move beyond the existence as mere clients and consumers- those people ride
I didn't see the protocol (was it wifi?) in the article, but why not ask the church to put a repeater in their tower in exchange for setting up their computer to access the same ISP?
Another case of over engineering the solution to the problem.
I'm wondering what sort of internet access this actually is. Wi-Fi? Anyway, this seems a little silly; it seems like he could run some co-ax and position a smaller antenna so that it's not being obscured by the church. Or how about just asking the church if he can put a small antenna in their steeple and re-broadcast it (either in its original form or with wi-fi or something)? I'm sure they'd be fine with that. I'd only put a tower up like this if it came with other benefits (maybe if I decided to put a TV and radio antenna on it also).
Take off every sig. For great justice.
Man: Well I've always said, There's nothing an agnostic can't do if he really doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
And if you have more money to spend get a Hazer system so you don't have to climb the tower to get your antennas to the top.
Personally, I'd have knocked down the church instead. Less practical, but infinitely more satisfying.
Oh no... it's the future.
It's dying already.... Coral cache
"this is a direct quote" and "so is this" read more
And you can sell ad space to pay for it!
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?
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.
I hate when the church does that
WTF is news about this? Ham operators have been installing 60' towers in their back yards for oh, about 100 years now. I totally don't get it.
Just look for it at ebay!
--
Superb hosting 20GB Storage, 1_TB_ bandwidth, ssh, $7.95
The Code Enforcement Officer will be out next week to fine him for the zoning violation.
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.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
O.K., so I read this. The howto can be summarized thusly-
1: Have a Father in the building trades
2: "Dad, help!"
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
I built a solar powered repeater for my Internet access. Where is my cookie?!
http://cowmix.com/solar6/compressed/
There are some areas of Tucson, AZ in which you can get a high speed Internet signal via radio wave, but you need a line of sight that isn't available in many places. Unfortunately, most places which do not have line of sight to high speed Internet providers but are within their range have building codes against huge towers.
wow, that guy must be the town weirdo...i dont know what i would think if someone asked to buy my farm's TV tower.
...what some people will do to get their broadband - but I understand it. I wasn't here at the school 3 days before I was hanging out a 3rd story window running CAT 5 to my apartment.
On another note, I wonder what you do to ground this sort of thing. I mean, we can get some pretty strong lightning here. How do you keep lightning from destroying your computer/wireless equipment in this case?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
...Another clear attempt by the church to block widespred broadcast of information.
They dont want another renaissance!
Down with them all!
No need to be contentious - most pastors are open to such ideas, especially if there's a problem. They're usually really nice people and understand.
Why not try the direct approach, that is, just ask them?!
I at was 7-11 this morning when a guy got pissed off at a store clerk and followed him outside arguing. His wife said, "Does he want to go back to prison? Only a stupid man would go back to prison!" The other store clerk replied, "Not unless he's homesick."
So he digs a 7-foot deep hole, using a backhoe, without even consulting the local utility companies? Right next to a commercial building no less. The jerk is lucky he didn't hit gas or sewer mains...
Four whole pages with pictures, and NO PICTURE OF THE TOWER?
I want my $0 back.
so what happened in the next few weeks?
:)
(multiple choice questions)
A. The church was blown up in a terrorist attack.
B. The churche's tower was raised by 60 more feet to get the honest christ followers closer to their god.
C. Rogers finally started providing cable Internet at that location.
D. FBI came to the guy's house with various questions on the suspicious activity and took the tower as material proof from the possible crime scene.
or
E. A bunch of angry construction workers burned the house down for stealing all that cement, cement rings and the freaking tower?
---
Really, the story should've been called "A man finds a way to get a whole bunch of stuff for free and installs a tower in the meanwhile."
You can't handle the truth.
was getting all that damned fiber out of the way..
That'll be good for his wireless reception. BANG!
50 foot tower?
Pah!
He should'a installed a space elevator in his yard. Advantages: antenna can be positioned at any altitude, communications with access points, police, aliens, etc. rendered easy. Pays for itself from orbital launch fees. Can be covered with tasteful beanstalk for camouflage.
Aliens? Where's that nanotube hat of mine?
Its probly a small little ISP like Microserv http://home.ida.net/ I use it when I come back home every summer. It's great because the only other choice we would have is Comcast Cable(which is quite popular in our town) or Qwest DSL(expensive!)
I hear these are a good way of removing things that get in the way at the moment
looks like a few WiFi fans who have started already
Can everyone stop going to the site for 15 minutes so I can read the story?
Thanks!
If you set it up so that you can take it down then it comes under the non-permanent structure legislation (like scaffolding and basic garden sheds). By doing this, you can have it in place for as long as you want unless someone makes a direct complaint, and by that point you should be able to have planning permission for a permanent one ready...
[All Your Fish Are Belong To Us]
I've helped set up cable modem service in a town of 1,000 people. It's not hard, you keep all the stuff in the city hall/library building (or fire station, or whatever), usually in a closet.
Then you just run the wires along the main drag and spin out from there.
Once it's up and running, you set up a base station for the cable (could use a satellite feed too, depends on where you are), then to get wireless most people just buy something like the cheap $29 cable modem 11b/g wireless basestation I have.
Most installations like that can get 8-10 Mbps, and even if you can't get good equipment, it's not hard to get 2-4 Mbps up and running.
I think they even have federal and state grants you can apply for, especially if you make sure it has a hookup for the wireless in the library, firestation, or city hall (usually, you only have one place, but it's the big building).
If you live in feedlot country, it might be the Grange.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
We've been doing this for 6 years now. We built a 70ft tower to get a lawyer here in town on, and this tower was built ON HIS ROOF, guide cables and all. All that, just so he had low ping times to one of the greatest Quake II servers ever, quakeII.kansas.net.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
Good job sticking it to God. And when he tries to strike you down with a Thunderbold, your tower will save you!
In Soviet Russia, articles before post read *you*!
The lengths people will go through to get the pr0n faster.
it's like, Canada Eh?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Dear sir, my lack of mod-points prohibits me from giving you what you deserve. Actually, mod him informative or insightful - karma's a good thing.
This is a little... well, mundane. I live in a neighbourhood that doesn't have highspeed, but a neighbour of mine built a 100 foot tower, costing him over 6000$ to build. He's also paying approx. 130 dollars a month to get a static IP and only 2 Mbs. Honestly, i don't see what the big deal is.
Methinks you posted the wrong file:
File: Bangbus - Episode 53 - Ritta.mpg
I'll have to submit this to some of the ham radio boards. I bet those guys never thought of putting an antenna high in the air!
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
I'm talking about those big honkin' surge protectors like the power company uses that attach to a ground stake and the coax feedline runs through it. He also better have a good quality grounding system. All towers get hit by lightning sooner or later. Yessir. The nail that sticks up gets pounded.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Methinks you posted the wrong file:
File: Bangbus - Episode 53 - Ritta.mpg
Whats really sad is that I recognize that one by name.
is in case his town is visited by an evil Circus.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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 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.
* About 14,000 pounds of cement
* About $404 CND (including ISP installation)
* Days and days of work
After that, go to church and thank God you completed successfully.
It reminds me of an episode (can't find it) where these guys built a tower made out of various pieces. Maybe this guy is doing the same. [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Getting high speed internet was the most challenging experience in my life. That guy needs a life!
where's all that Karma?
He can pick a work as "good shepherd" at church, and put the receiver in the church.
I had a very similar problem. The ISP told me I needed a 30' tower which would require digging, concrete, ground wires and possibly a permit.
Solution: I bought 3x10' steel fence poles (for a chainlink fence) for $15. Stacked them on top of each other and tied them to a tall, straight pine tree in my yard. My ISP says it was their first "tree install" but they have recommended this to others in the area.
Perhaps from students of a top engineering school.
Go Aggies.
I live in a rural part of the country, and had to put up an 80ft tower to get crappy WiMAX connection.
So, WHERE'S MY SLASHDOT ARTICLE, BITCH?!
Shiny. Let's be bad guys.
Slashdot is for slack jawed, brain dead retards who want to pretend they are nerds but actually don't know their ass from a hole in the ground, and the people who get a kick out of the "insightful" posts the afore mentioned retards make. Digg is for people who are just as stupid, but at least admit they are cluess instead of pretending to be l33t.
I'm in a rural part of Ontario with no cable or DSL and several of us in this area have 50 foot towers so we can get high speed access. It's an expensive option, but if nothing else is available, you do what you have to do.
That is almost certainly what it is. A WISP (wireless ISP) can set these up for relatively little money, so it's OK for smaller communities, and they transfer data about twice as fast as most DSL. I believe that his transfer rates are 300KB/s, and my DSL runs at about 100KB/s. My town of 10,000 has a company providing the same wireless service.
Geeks are more hams every day with their antenna farms.
Try reading about tower review, or join in on Tower Talk.
Better yet, get a ham license. The technician test isn't even that hard.
Good old boys should sometimes stay inside watching tv, then get up and go to the bar.
The new splash of paint he put on was indeed absolutely mandatory - corrosion Control is a big deal in towers. You must grind off all the rust you can find, and place a good sealing paint meant for this purpose on it, completely cover everything. Use galvanized bolts, and preferably inspect them occasionally. I know its hard at home, but it should be done at least every few years so that you don't end up with a tower section in your living room.
Lightning rods....Lightning rods don't keep your tower from being hit. In fact they increase the likelyhood of them getting hit as it brings 'the ground' closer to the cloud that is making the big booms. The point of a lighting rod is to provide a path of least resistance for all those lightning strikes so that it goes to ground through the damn rod instead of through your computer equipment.
Erg. Simpletons.
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
The location is just beyond the side of the church's bell-tower and aligned with the transmitting tower. Perfect.
Amazing he was lucky enough to get 2 points aligned !!!
Joke aside, good job, I just hope for him that it will not fall on a post office customer.
I want you slobbering wireless fanboys to listen carefully.
Used towers are dangerous. You can get stitches and broken bones handling one 10' section of new Rohn 25 if you don't have competent help. A fall from 6' can be fatal, a 'lucky' fall from 20' is still going to leave you with a lifetime of disability. Towers are not a permanent fixture. Even with care they rust and they get metal fatigue if they're not properly braced or guyed. No professional will reuse tower components without a careful visual inspection and most will just say no unless its the smallest cross section segments like Rohn 25 (12" face) and they're not going back up in a large configuration.
If you get it down and home with all of your toes and fingers intact you've still got to get it erected. A proper base is an art - see a prebankruptcy Rohn catalog for details. You need to calculate the wind load for the size of antenna you'll use and make sure you're using appropriate guying or bracing for the given load.
The tallest building I've ever had to service was 634'. The tallest facility I've ever had to manage was 485'. The tallest tower I've ever personally climbed was 300'. The tallest I've ever specified myself and helped install was 60'. The tallest water tower I've ever worked was 135'. The most I've done in the last year was an install at 55' on a 185' Penrod 30. The only experience I don't have is dealing with cylindrical cellular type towers.
Stating my experience should shut down the cantenna artists who just became tower recycling gurus by reading that article twice, but I'm at a loss as to how to say this so that I won't get someone saying "Aren't you special?". I am special in the scheme of Slashdot, because I talk about things I do rather than things I fantasize about doing.
So much for my resolution to never, ever respond here again.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
It's community service.
Federal law protects the rights of HAMs to have reasonable accomodations (i.e. towers) to do what they do on their property. So long as what you plan to do is reasonable (structurally sound, etc.), you can tell the city, state, or HOA to bugger off.
IANAL, but that's what I read in QST magazine when I held a HAM license. They even had something you could print out with the applicable regulations and how, being Federal, they trumped any stupid state or local restrictions, including HOA crap.
Other than the whole lightning thing, what can really happen other than crushing yourself or breaking your arm by not having friends help you move it around? Sure, you can fall and stuff, but it seems like it shouldn't be that hard to erect and support a tower. I guess if you really were scared of the tower, you could just attach the antenna to the top of a tree that goes straight up.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess this answers the question as to how far one guy will go to get some high quality porn.
1. 60' is high enough that if you fall, you will probably die.
2. Towers are not toys. 60' might not seem tall, don't climb it with out the right safety gear.
3. If you don't know anything about the tower, don't climb it. It could fall. Even if your neighbor, the old ham, says it is safe when he climbed it 10 years ago.
4. you are talking serious feedline loss at 2.4 GHz. I hope he put the AP up on top. If it breaks in the middle of winter. Are you really going to want to fix it?
5. If you put the AP at the top, you have to get power to it. Running AC up a tower is unsafe and is probably a local code violation.
Don't do this at home boys. Towers are serious business. If you don't know who Rohn is or don't know how to tension a guy wire, hire a professional.
Just another example of how religion gets in the way of technology...
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
"More likely, he's hoping he can luck out and get super-powers next time there's a lightning storm."
I didn't RTFA, but I'm guessing his name is Frankenstein?
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
A few years back a friend scored a nice military crank up tower on ebay. When fully cranked out it was 50 feet high.
It was a two man carry unit. Once you got it on site you unpacked 8 or so tubes from the carrier, stood the carrier upright, inserted tube 1, cranked it up, locked it, tube 2, etc.
Fit nicely in his Explorer. I'd kill for a tower like that today.
I've climbed several towers taller than this from desperate customers. One customer in particular is losing his line-of-sight due to trees, so he's planning to extend his tower even higher. I can tell you I won't be the one moving his antenna.
Mods: Do you disagree with me? Go ahead and mod me down. Meta-mods will sort it out. Good luck!
we do this on a regular basis for customers with lots of foliage and who are desperate to get broadband. this is actually very common.
we found that it's cheaper and safer to have someone (e.g your power company) plant a wooden pole. we've had customers that buried a 60 ft (and a couple of times 70-ft) wooden pole 10 feet in the ground, with some concrete around it, and they've never moved since. you can get a set of pegs to do about 3-4 poles for around 90 bucks, with a tool to drive them in. it helps if you know what you're doing and have some climbing experience, of course.
we also have a couple of customers that have guyed and non-guyed masts and tri-poles up to 70 ft.... people will do strange shit for high speed porn.
the worst part is having to do routine maintenance and realignments, just cause it's time consuming and wears you out.
another neat tower design is the kind that "breaks over" close to the ground, and has a counterweight. you can fold it over, install your gear, and straighten it back up.
--- sig moved for great justice.
Hmm tower..I was eating lots of peaches strawberrys lately to get my tin can waveguide antenna working but unfortunately this cans ware too short :)) My neigbour was then realy concerned about his dog not eating any of his food for two days (too wide).I finaly got a nice long can from a store with expensive wine inside. My signal was strong my wpa_cli finaly connected dhcp got the addres from router and roomate and I WARE DRUNK !!
:))))
Maybe next time I'll just build a tower to get few dB more
There's a lot of damaging superstitions about lightning. If you're in a lightning-prone part of the country, try to get your information from someone who knows physics and electrical engineering. Your recommended solution should include a ground *field* surrounding the tower, low-inductance connections, attention to take-off angles, arrestors before the wiring goes into the house, and a fanatical campaign to eliminate potential ground loops. You know how you're supposed to keep your feet together if you're caught in the open during a lightning storm? If you have equipment grounded in different places, that's the same as moving your feet apart. Strke current trying to fight its way through sorta-conductive dirt may discover that your equipment is a shortcut.
You can manage a direct strike: operators of really tall towers get hundreds per year. But it requires a lot of attention to detail and a complete understand of the physics. For an application like this I'd suggest a disposable AP at the tower and no wiring going into the house.
When I needed a tower for my 40-meter 4 element beam, I managed to search around local hamfests and other classifieds. I ran across a guy who was moving and wanted to just give away his 140-foot tower. Used towers are INCREDIBLY cheap due to the high costs of removal and transportation. If you are flexible, willing to rent a vehicle that can haul one, and expend the effort, you can get a tower for free almost any time.
So what does it take to build your own wireless reception tower?
* Lots of determination
* Lots of cement
* Structure to pour the base (e.g. cement tubing, wooden cage, etc.)
* Shovel
* Blowtorch
* Welding kit
* Steel plate
* Long, threaded steel rod (about 12 feet to make three smaller rods of four feet)
* Paint
* Buffering tools
* Air-compressor
* A Dad who does the bulk of the work
qz
Next year a cable company will put high speed internet access in his town (as opposed to this guy's medium speed--but better than dialup), and I am imagining this guy very stubbornly refusing to subscribe to faster internet. I mean seriously, I'd be mad if I did all that work for nothing.
WTF is the big deal? .... We REGULARLY have customers build 90+ foot towers for 3.5GHz wireless ...
... man builds 70 foot tower in his yard because some dick built a 60 foot tower between him and his ISPs transmitter.
stephen
I still don't understand WHY... Why a massive tower, instead of something fairly light and simple like a large flagpole? Or, if you're willing to wait, there are these things called TREES which get fairly high above ground.
Personally, I prefer the option of "stepping a few few to the left" to get out of the shadow of the church, and running a few wires. This is a rural area, so that shouldn't be a problem. You can do the same thing wirelessly, also.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
I tackled a similar project in 2002 to connect me to my office 1.2 miles across the fields/woods/highway. I ended up at 130 feet and now run it at 54 mbit 802.11g after swapping out the gear recently. I've had a collection of captioned photos of the building process online for a few years covering everything from digging the original footers to erecting the tower. I tossed in a few updated shots this morning:
:) I hired professionals to erect it, but my uncle and I did the ground work including the pouring of 12,000 pounds of concrete for the six foot anchor rods. I'm tempted to put a PTZ camera on the top of it someday for fun.
:)
http://sparhawk.sbc.edu/tower
They are in chronological order with the newest stuff on the last page.
Thought it might interest some folks with similar goals in mind. No, it wasn't cheap to do. In excess of $3,000 all told... but worth every penny, especially since it connects me to a DS3 on the other end.
In a shed between the house and tower I've got the UPS equipment and a hub that transitions to fiber before entering the attic (the fiber helps decouple the outside gear from the inside gear electrically since the tower - despite being grounded - can act as a huge lighting rod).
Neither DSL nor cable modems are available to me where I live. Besides, as the network admin for the campus where I work, I control my own access to a degree I'd never get commercially. Also means I'm never really "away" from the office (which cuts both ways).
I don't find this unusual. We run a small WISP in North Dakota and Minnesota, and many of the farmers put up towers at the drop of a hat to get high speed. Some people are just desperate.
-WIFIGUY
I am at a complete loss as to why didnt he just pull a wire from a neighbor? Why does it have to be all vertical... entirely in his own space? Its spacially way too inefficient.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
This is happening all over rural America. I helped a friend put up an 80' tower over a year ago to make a seven mile link for broadband.
If your area doesn't have cable modem service, it probably doesn't have cable TV service. You sure no one's using these towers?
I am not left-handed, either!
Hate Christ? Vote Democrat!!!
Your post implies that hams aren't geeks.
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Bob Cringely had the same problem with a mountain and put up a passive repeater instead. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20020207. html
Actually he didn't build anything at all....he errected a tower, not built it.
Anyone can knock on someones door, ask them if they are using their tower and take it down. I've done that dozens of times for ham radio needs.
~Later~
Dont want to have that tower dropping on my house.
the site is slashdoted but from what i could read it looked like he used the gudnuff engineering firm.
Hmm do you think those welds will hold ?
Luuks gud nuff ta me.
Okke dokkee then.
"wood isn't going to cut it."
probably unintentional as well
1000 feet of Cat-5 is $60-70. 3 hubs to boost the signal at 100 meter intervals would be another $100. I'm assuming he already has the wireless bridge. Stick the bridge on top of the church tower and run cable to your house. If the signal is good, you might not even need three hubs. Run the cable along fences, laundry lines, etc so the neighbors don't notice.
I have exactly the same problem with a three story church. The church is blocking the CN Tower completely. I'm trying to get satellite and OTA HDTV from the CN Tower. I understand this guys pain.
You can have wiring from the tower into the house, just not metal wiring. Run some fiber optic cable underground into the house. Ethernet media converters are not too expensive.
Yes you could, and that would be fairly easy. It's called a "repeater" setup.
Get two non-V5 WRT54Gs (V1-V3 WRT54GS would be best, but anyway) on eBay for around $50 each, 2 pairs of high-gain antennas (omni will do if your neighbour is across the street). Install the antennas (unscrew the original and screw in the replacements), go to http://www.dd-wrt.com/ get DD-WRT v23 final (or v23 SP1 Beta if you are feeling brave), flash your routers (get an adult to help you) and enable WDS (or lazy-WDS). There's a wiki if you get lost, or need more details, and a lovely forum if you still have issues.
Cost: 2xUS$50 plus 2xUS$ 19 for the antennas, plus US$2 for beers = US$140.
Note that WDS gives you half the bandwidth available for 802.11g, but it should be more than enough. If you need more bw, you can follow the above minitutorial and put one router @ regular access point/wireless router mode and the other in client-bridged mode, but then you would be limited to connecting to the four physical (wired) ports at the back of the router.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
No, I don't care that it's a tower.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Well, my problem is that I'm out in the middle of nowhere, too far from anywhere for cable or DSL, but maddeningly, just close enough that I coukd probably get wireless... if only there weren't a few hills in the way.
I have already seriously considered looking into getting some kind of tower set up, but time and money have gotten in the way as usual, so nothing has come of it yet...
Early bird may get the worm.. but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Around here anyway, with the landscape hilly the way it is, there are TV antenna towers all over the place. Most of them are around 40ft tall and are made from some cheap "ribbon candy" towers, that are only meant to support a TV antenna. Many of these towers are even freestanding, although you often see them with a few cables teathering them to the house corners, which in most cases isn't helping with how loose the cables are. Many of these towers are only 2 or 3 sections, enough to get 8-10 ft above the roof with the antenna.
There are a lot of old amateur radio operators in the area, easily spotted by the higher quality towers and sometimes very large antenna arrays. A few of the towers around here are 70ft or higher, and are guy-wired to buried anchors at the corners of their yard. There are still a couple monsters around 100ft tall in town.
Most of these towers are not currently used. I'd estimate 70% of the radio and 85% of the TV antennas up are not being used. (mostly from amateur radio operators that are no longer active, people that have gotten cable TV, and people that bought the house with the tower already installed) Only maybe 1/3 of the owners are interested in getting rid of them though - some people don't want kids crawling around on their roofs kicking up shingles, and some just think they might use it again. But that still leaves a very large number of people willing to sell their towers. Many of them will give it "free for the taking" so long as you clean up and use some tar or other sealant on the anchor points to make sure they don't get roof leaks as a result of your extraction. They're usually just glad to get rid of the eyesore.
The "good" towers (rohn for instance) last I checked were around $20/ft, so about $200/section if bought new. The top sections, with the end cap where you'd insert a mast for the antenna, are more common than you'd like to see - almost every tower has one and you can only use one yourself, so you usually end up stuck with one or two spare top sections you cannot use if you're trying for 3+ section tower, unless you cut them down a bit.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Hate humanity? Vote Republican!
Heute die Welt, morgen das Sonnensystem!
Since putting the tower in place about ten years ago, not once has the pig been hit. Only once has anything happened close enough to the tower to cause any damage of my equipment (lucky?). I do have each leg directly grounded with it's own #4 wire and 8 foot ground rod.
Another ham down by the river where the storms rush by has his 200' tower hit quite frequently. I am in the middle of a mostly relatively flat area.
My pet hypothosis is that my tower bleeds off enough of the static buildup rapidly enough that 'usually' it aids in lightning reduction in my immediate area. I do mean immediate cause two poll pigs up the street, they get hit at about half the previous frequency of mine. I have lived here 24 years.
I have no doubt that a fast moving storm directly over me would show no mercy.
You're missing another kind of experience.
Learning how to communicate with others without acting like an asshole.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Wow. Schools are very advanced now.
Okay, I have to admit I'm baffled. Why do tower geeks here feel like they have to convince everyone how dangerous towers are? Do they want erecting towers to become the kind of job that attracts groupies, like firemen?
With a simple spoon I can make a device (called a "hole") that can kill you without much fuss. With some twigs and leaves, I can make it so you can never see it coming. So why do tower enthusiasts act like towers are some kind of killing machine the likes of which have rarely been seen since the Great War?
I have sharp objects in my kitchen that make these towers look like playground jungle gyms. Hell, a jungle gym can take you out without much fuss and we encourage kids to play on them!
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory
Ok, he one, he got broad band woohoo, but terrestrial
solutions are more aesthetically pleasing. Small towns
in Iowa of only 300 or so people are getting DSLAM's or
have cable modem coverage.
This is a case of making your town ugly for broadband.
The only justification for a tower IMHO is ham radio and case closed.
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
But holding the weight of the tower isn't unusual. For that matter, the weight of the tower isn't much. I have to say I'm going from what I remember before, because the article is slashdotted now. But I believe it is made up of aluminum sections with only slight cross bracing. A tower like this, it can't weigh much over 100 lbs.
And go look at lighting standards (towers) in parking lots near you. Many of the smaller of these sit on the bolts on their bases. If you think of it, the weight of the tower is miniscule next to the forces of the wind on the top. It might even reduce the total force on a bolt being stretched (on the upwind side) by its own weight. It does add to the lee bolt (the one being compressed), but steel is pretty good under compression.
Also, note since this tower is aluminum, "rust" isn't part of the issue. Although it can oxidize, aluminum when oxidizing makes a white coating for itself that inhibits further oxidization. I would have to imagine the biggest risk from the actualy reuse of the tower is metal fatigue, and even that's probably low.
Now, as a confirmed non-tower expert, I want to say the way a tower like this is usually attached to the ground in my experience is you bury the bottom section directly in the concrete. It comes apart in sections about 6-7 feet long, so you don't have to work with the whole tower while setting it. the advantage of this type of attachment is there is no additional math to do. If you've built a 60-foot tower before, then a 54-foot tower with six feet buried in concrete has no new concentrated stress points and no connections that receive more stress than in the 54-foot tower, so you know it will work exactly the same. All you have to do is know the max height you can safely build and you're off and running.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
If you want to see the 1km path the forklift took on the road:
t oine%2C+Ste-%C3%89lisabeth%2C+QC%2C+Canada+@46.094 260%2C-73.345539&daddr=2433+PRINCIPALE%2C+Ste-%C3% 89lisabeth%2C+QC%2C+Canada&f=li&output=js&hl=fr&dq =2145+Rang+St-Antoine%2C+Ste-%C3%89lisabeth%2C+QC% 2C+Canada&cid=
START: I searched for the concrete company name painted on the tube picture in the article and found this address: 2145 Rang St-Antoine, Ste-Elisabeth, QC, Canada
END: He said he rented part of the house to the postal company. So I searched on canada post for a post office in that same city (the closest to the concrete company): 2433 PRINCIPALE, Ste-Elisabeth, QC, Canada
Gives this 1km path on a major PROVINCIAL ROAD on a forklift carrying a 14k pound concrete block!! LOL!!
http://maps.google.com/maps?saddr=2145+Rang+St-An
PierreBus
My buddy posted photos of the 96 foot tower he installed.
Incidentally, there's still a Centre Street in NYC.
I put up 70 foot of rohn 25G to get high speed access at my place. He way overpaid for his tower sections, thats rediculous.... I picked up a used 110ft. tower for 200bucks. 10 full sections and a top section. I should have wrote a story about it maybe I could have been put on slashdot
Huh!
And I thought the only thing that Man Scouts were into was Boy Scouts!
Oh wait! Maybe that was Catholic priests I was thinkin' of....
This is what happens when you get it wrong. I actually knew a guy that lived near that.
Church blocking progress again, in a very concrete way this time.
I want to play Free Market with a drowning Libertarian.
And those dinky welds... Remember, he cut off the base of the tower when he got it, and had to homebrew a new base. It looks like there's just one inch of weld (with rust!) holding each tower leg. And it's a weld on galvanized steel. You have to grind or burn off the galvanized zinc coating before welding, or you get a weld to the coating, which is like glueing to paint. The weld doesn't look good, either - the bead isn't even. Here's a welding tutorial. Look at their pictures of good and bad welds. Then compare the weld in the article. It's worse than any "bad weld" shown. A good weld is stronger than the material it attaches. Not this one.
He's got plenty of cement base, and the tower itself is probably strong enough, but the connections between the two are far weaker than either. When it breaks, it's going to break at the weld between the tower leg and the metal gusset. Right where the rust shows through the paint.