If my friend down the road wants to allow commercial unit on his tower, what's the problem? It keeps one more tower from the neighborhood, and that's good. To allow a Doctors' paging service to use an amateur tower seems ok to me. Now if the commercial unit could not locate in the area for some reason that's a different situation. Let's assume a ham sells his place to a non-ham and takes his antennas down but leaves his tower. Certainly the non-ham can continue to maintain the tower (SWL, scanning OR continue to rent space on the tower to the Dr's paging service). If there is an ordinance prohibiting such activity once the ham moves, the new owner must comply. Likewise if the form7er ham owner had rented space and that was against the ordinance, then there would be a problem with the authorities. I'm troubled with the notion that a ham tower cannot be used for anything except amateur radio. Again if there is some prohibition against the commercial use, then follow the law. If not, then an amateur license ought not to penalize Joe Ham. 73/Greg W7OZ ----- Original Message ----- From: John <mailto:jbellows@skypoint.com> Bellows To: arrl-odv <mailto:arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 2:38 PM Subject: [ARRL-ODV:7351] Antenna Rights In my opinion, the installation ceases to be a purely amateur installation as soon as is used to perform any commercial function. If the commercial installation cannot meet the criteria of the local ordinance on its own merit the preemption available to amateur installations CANNOT be used to bootstrap approval of a co-located commercial installation. The critical question is would the commercial activity be permitted if the Amateur equipment was removed. I am genuinely concerned that if a "bootstrap" argument is accepted in a community any future Amateur applicant will be viewed as a "shill" or "front" for a commercial interest. How does the Amateur in Palos Verdes get around the fact that his Amateur license was issued to permit him to engage in exclusively non-commercial or non-remunerative activities when he is using his Amateur license to justify approval of a tower which is going to be used for commercial and remunerative purposes? Bre'r Rabbit and the Tar Baby come to mind. We spend so much time and effort explaining how and why we differ from commercial interests in antenna matters that I am troubled and concerned by an amateur initiated effort to collocate a commercial installation on an amateur tower. 73, Jay, K0QB
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In a message dated 6/14/2002 3:23:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, n2ff@optonline.net writes: My position is, once you put one commercial transmitter on your ham tower it becomes a commercial tower forever. That is exactly the opposite of an argument I have been making in Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, as Art well knows. But it is subject to debate, I will concede. Chris