I must respectfully disagree Greg. I have seen a number of hams (4) agree to use their towers to host commercial services. There IS a little problem called mixing. When the ham fires up his rig and it interferes with the commercial account it usually results in the ham being asked to shut down, making the tower a commercial entity. I've seen hams asked to vacate 440 MHz because the 2nd harmonic energy desensed the commercial 8-900 MHz equipment. Most commercial firms that ask to use a hams tower will also have him sign a contract calling for the firm's transmitter to be the primary user. The result is that the ham becomes a prisoner to the commercial firm and cannot kick them off his own tower until the contract expires. Its a VERY dangerous road to go down. Once hams give up their right to their own towers for the sake of renting to commercial firms, they have given away the argument that we are the good guys. And in time, town governments will catch on to this and there goes any chance we have of winning a zoning variance. You cant have it both ways. Your either commercial or you are not. Like being a little bit pregnant. You either are or you are not. -73- Steve, W2ML -----Original Message----- From: Greg Milnes [mailto:w7oz@attbi.com] Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 4:06 PM To: arrl-odv Subject: [ARRL-ODV:7365] Re: Antenna Rights I agree with no commercial installations on a ham tower where such commercial towers are not allowed. My point is if we could take down some commercial towers and put those on a nearby ham tower, that would be a win-win situation: the Community gets rid of a commercial tower but still keeps the service. Since the ham tower is there anyway, what's the difference if there is or is not a commercial service one it? Of course we'd have to work out some continued prohibitions for facilities such as Art showed. 73/Greg W7OZ ----- Original Message ----- From: <dick@pobox.com> To: "arrl-odv" <arrl-odv@reflector.arrl.org> Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2002 11:59 AM Subject: [ARRL-ODV:7362] Re: Antenna Rights

18 JUN, 2002 - 1350 CDT

Hello Greg...

My concern about an amateur radio operator allowing/selling space on his amateur radio tower in an urban residential district that has restrictions on towers.

Currently, here in St. Charles, IL no towers of any kind are allowed in any residential district. This was the end result of the early days of the cell phone tower installations and the same people wanting cell phone service did not want the towers in their view. Our zoning ordinance was amended so quickly and the local hams were so apathetic that "all towers" were prohibited... the baby went out with the bath water.

Eventually some ham will want a tower and I will help him either knock down that part of our zoning code, or get it amended using the one paragraph legal citation I have had on hand for several years that will exempt Amateur Radio Service towers. But this would mean that ONLY amateur radio operations will be conducted using that tower. This is already the norm in several communities in the Chicago area.

If your community is willing to allow the mixed use, fine. But I think most communities and certainly homeowners' associations are not going to allow this to happen. And we need to make sure there is no confusion on this issue.