TV tower dealers in SE Texas?

[Dee_Ann]

Does anyone know of any places that sell used (or new) TV ( or radio) towers in the general area of Beaumont, Texas and or Houston, Texas?

I would like to get a 40 foot tower to put up a serious OTA antenna. I have the antennas but now i need a tower. The old TV Pole that my dad put up here 40 years ago is rusty, bent, too flimsy and too short to put up a real antenna.

I can't find anything in the phone book and Craigslist is turning up nothing anywhere close. I found a few used towers on there but they are hundreds of miles away, way too far.

Thanks.

 

[tco0085]

Does anyone know of any places that sell used (or new) TV ( or radio) towers in the general area of Beaumont, Texas and or Houston, Texas?

I would like to get a 40 foot tower to put up a serious OTA antenna. I have the antennas but now i need a tower. The old TV Pole that my dad put up here 40 years ago is rusty, bent, too flimsy and too short to put up a real antenna.

I can't find anything in the phone book and Craigslist is turning up nothing anywhere close. I found a few used towers on there but they are hundreds of miles away, way too far.

Thanks.

Look for someplace that sells amateur (ham) radio equipment. If they don't sell towers they'll know who does.

 

[Mr Tony]

Craigslist possibly?

 

[Dee_Ann]

Craigslist possibly?

I've been looking there I started with TV towers then narrowed it down to simply searching for "Rohn" which seems to be the industry standard tower for pretty much everything.
Most all I find are scarp metal buyers posting ads that they'll haul away your old towers for free. I thought maybe they might also resell them but when I looked them up they are waaaaaaay up in North Texas, a good bit beyond Dallas which would be like an 8 hour drive so it's just not a real option.

I found a legit dealer that would have everything I need but again, waaaaay up near Dallas.
Ebay has complete kits, new for $600-800 but the shipping would probably cost hundreds more.

I guess maybe I will try to find out if there is a local ham radio forum, apparently those guys are the number one consumers for these things.
Perhaps I could find a local ham person that could install one for me.
I've seen ones that tip over so you can work on them on the ground then you winch them upright.
That's what I'll have to get because I'm terrified of heights. My dad put up scaffolding so I could change the antenna here, it was only 20 feet tall but when I was up there it
seemed like I was 2,000 bazillionty miles up there. I was so scared that I just sat there for half an hour. My dad was on the ground saying stuff to me
and I just told him "Shush. Just shush and don't talk to me right now while I'm having a crisis". He also rented a safety harness for me to wear and that was horribly awkward
and didn't make me feel one bit safer. The scaffold was shaking and I thought I was going to poop myself. Yes, I said that.
I was very, very certain that I was going to die any minute, badly.

I hated every minute of it. It was absolutely terrifying and extremely hard work climbing up and down. I'll never do it again.
The other option was to climb a very tall ladder my dad has but that was a great big giant NO WAY.
And the bad part of this is that this is temporary until I can find a tower. The mast is flimsy and I don't think it would hold up well in a storm.
The original mast was bent, we had to pull out the top section and put a new one in and it just does not instill confidence in me that it will hold up any better than the old one.
I told me dad when it's time to take this one down that I want to just tie a rope to it and lay it down slowly so I can take it apart on the ground. I'm NOT going back up there again!

So yeah, climbing a 40 foot tower, ain't happening, ever. It'll cost me extra to get the hinged kind but I'm ok with that.
It cost me a fat chunk of cash to rent scaffolding and safety gear but there was no way I was going to climb a ladder.
And those guys that do climb them (towers), are BATS**T INSANE.

 

[Claude Greiner]

Look for someplace that sells amateur (ham) radio equipment. If they don't sell towers they'll know who does.

I agree. Most dealers like myself only do dishes.

 

[boba]

What are you going to put up that is going to get you better reception? Those look like, pretty good antennas with a preamp, as you have already discovered towers and shipping are expensive.
You might drive around the country side in rural areas looking for abandoned towers. I have seen many with antennas missing most elements or mast booms tilted toward the ground sitting on towers. If you find one your next problem maybe finding someone to take it down.

 

[Cham]

The Rohn towers seem like a good TV antenna support, but I have never installed one. Usually have to put up the Delhi DMX series, just put a 56 footer up this spring for a fellow not too far away. Bit light duty for that height... 48HD is better (stronger).
In the picture you have a large VHF antenna. Is this required? Not sure how many low band VHF stations are left, unless you can get propagation from Mexico, maybe they still use those frequencies... (Maybe it is high band VHF and my eyes decipher it wrongly). Best to keep your "array" as light as possible.
Local hams are a great resource for this sort of thing. Just look up your local town and add "repeater" after in google search. If that gives you a callsign like AB5CD or something similar, google that callsign. That particular person has a repeater and likely is very well versed on where to find a tower since he/she has an advanced license and has been around for a while, and may even own a business that caters to businesses that use 2-way radios and thus might carry towers too.
Ask them about getting your ham license... Might get you a discount and some help with taking the exam... You might enjoy that hobby too!

 

[KE4EST]

A Rohn 25G would be an idea tower for your antenna....but you will have to climb it. If you want a fold over tower, it is going to get costly, unless you fashion your own.

 

[Mr Tony]

so I guess driving to Minnesota is out of the question?
(of course his price is kinda high)

http://brainerd.craigslist.org/app/5187345572.html

Antenna Tower 64FT - $2500

 

[FTA4PA]

I was looking into a folding tower myself a few years back at http://www.rohnnet.com/towers-foldover since I can't stand heights anymore. The cost was ridiculus (thousands of dollars) compared to a regular one. I found these plans on ebay http://www.ebay.com/itm/291416427402 and am considering building this or something like it. Obviously it's gonna be nothing like a Rohn folding tower. It just needs to do the job at a cost the average man can afford.

 

[Dee_Ann]

What are you going to put up that is going to get you better reception? Those look like, pretty good antennas with a preamp, as you have already discovered towers and shipping are expensive.

The XG91 I have works decently for local stuff but I want to pull in Houston channels which are about 100 miles from here. I have a second XG91 and it's my goal to build a dual UHF antenna on a rotor.
The VHF can stay fixed on one local station, that's fine, I don't care about any Houston VHF channels.

Here's a picture that is very close to what I want to end up with. Except that I want it on a 40 foot tower. Fixed VHF, rotatable UHF dual XG91's.

As for tip over hinged tower, I'm more than willing to pay extra to have it tip over.
I am NOT climbing 40 feet up in the air. I'm a 55yro woman that's not in "athletic condition" and I'm terrified of heights.
I have no business what so ever climbing anything but the stairs. Seriously, I'm so afraid of heights I'm afraid to climb up on the counter to reach in cabinets.

Anyway, I really want to get Houston OTA stations because there's cool stuff I can't get on satellite and a big, tall antenna is the only option.
It's going to be a real challenge but I am pretty sure I can do it but only as long as I can bring the antenna to the ground to work on it.

Putting up a dual antenna like in the picture and put it up at 40 feet, that ought to bring in Houston for me. At my old house with this same antenna I could sort of get Houston,
it would play for a bit then totally freeze at random, off and on. It was annoying and made watching TV a torturous experience, but that I could even get it at all was the amazing thing to me.
I figured I would have to get crazy with it if I really want to watch it without all the annoying freezes and drop outs.

To be honest, I really do not know what I'm doing here, I see pictures and read instructions and I can copy the things I see other people making but I don't understand what makes it all tick.
If I had to figure this stuff out on my own, no way. This OTA stuff is way harder than FTA because OTA antennas work best waaaaaaay up from the ground and it requires brain skills I do not have.
But, I'm to hard headed and stubborn to not try anyway. Maybe one day I'll learn how it all works but for now all I can do is copycat stuff I find on google images...

The Rohn towers seem like a good TV antenna support, but I have never installed one. Usually have to put up the Delhi DMX series, just put a 56 footer up this spring for a fellow not too far away. Bit light duty for that height... 48HD is better (stronger).
In the picture you have a large VHF antenna. Is this required? Not sure how many low band VHF stations are left, unless you can get propagation from Mexico, maybe they still use those frequencies... (Maybe it is high band VHF and my eyes decipher it wrongly). Best to keep your "array" as light as possible.
Local hams are a great resource for this sort of thing. Just look up your local town and add "repeater" after in google search. If that gives you a callsign like AB5CD or something similar, google that callsign. That particular person has a repeater and likely is very well versed on where to find a tower since he/she has an advanced license and has been around for a while, and may even own a business that caters to businesses that use 2-way radios and thus might carry towers too.
Ask them about getting your ham license... Might get you a discount and some help with taking the exam... You might enjoy that hobby too!

Actually the antenna I'm using for VHF is an old FM radio antenna my dad gave me about 5 years ago. At least that's what the box said. But my dad told me it would work fine for VHF. It seems to. Maybe it could be better. As for VHF channels I'm only interested in one local station so the VHF antenna is fixed towards them, it's below the motor. Only the UHF antenna rotates. Everything else is UHF. There are a few VHF stations in Houston but I'm not interested in them at all. Almost everything over there is UHF. So I don't have to pour resources into two kinds of antennas, all my concerns and efforts are focused on UHF.

As for that ham radio stuff, that's not a thing I would be interested in. I don't even talk to people on the phone anymore, I just wait until I can visit with my friends in person. I just wouldn't have any need or use for it. Also it's probably very expensive. But that's really good info on how to find those folks, I imagine if anyone knows about tower it's going to be them I would think.

 

[osu1991]

Contact one of the demo companies, they would probably sell you one they've dismantled

 

[Dee_Ann]

Contact one of the demo companies, they would probably sell you one they've dismantled

Yes, that's probably going to be my best bet. I just wish they weren't all 500 miles away.
I've had to let go of the idea that I might find one at Lowe's or Home Depot. There's probably no way to get out of having to make a loooooong drive to somewhere.

 

[Dee_Ann]

OMG...... OMG......

I pointed my antenna to Houston and I got BAZILLIONTY TRILLIONS OF CHANNELS !!
Every UHF channel in Houston is coming in like blockbusters!
The signal and picture is extremely stable, every channel is 100% watchable !
My dad is gonna trip out when he sees how many Houston channels I can get now!
WOA! Just, WOA!! I even picked up channels in San Antonio and Austin! Those are HUNDREDS of miles away. But, these channels go in and out. They'll play great for 3-4 minutes then totally drop out. So I suspect it's bouncing the signal from clouds or something weird. Maybe airplanes. I dunno. But I checked their station names, KXAN and KNIC so it really is those stations. And this is with a single XG91.
Scanning the cluster of towers in Missouri City (A suburb of Houston) I found SEVENTY FIVE new channels. Some of them are oddballs from other cities that I probably won't be able to pick up all the time.
And there's dozens of religious channels that I am not interested in, tons of non English channels that I can't understand so by the time I weed it all out I'll probably end up 8-10 keepers.

Now I'm really, really, really inspired to get those dual antennas up and buy a much, much better pre-amp. I'll bet I can get some crazy distance with that!
I just wish there was a way to have the tuner(s) move the antenna when I change channels. As it is now, the antenna controller is in my computer room so I can not move the antenna from anywhere else in the house even though I can watch OTA on any set in the house. So I have to decide what I want to watch, go upstairs and move the antenna then back to that TV. Not a big deal if I'm sitting here at my desk.
It also means I can't schedule OTA recordings without having to move the antenna each time. I record several different OTA things every day.

Well, this is a new and major development that I wasn't really expecting at all. I suppose I'll figure it out as time goes on.
I've sat here and watched a full episode of Dennis the Menace on Antenna TV and it's a 100% perfect picture, I could not hope to get a better picture, as long as it's been running at 100% there's no way this is a freak accident where it's bouncing off clouds. The antennas in Houston are 600 meters tall and there's nothing between here and there except the curve of the earth. And at the height they are at it must be enough to overcome that.
I can get ThisTV from KPRC 2.2 now and Antenna TV from KIAH 39.2 !! I can go back to all my old favorites now that I've been missing without my C-band plus this is the first time I've ever had a reliable signal from Antenna.

This made it worth getting the poo scared out of me on that scaffolding. This is way better than I was hoping for. I honestly didn't think I would get Houston very well at all.
Woot !!

 

[Dee_Ann]

Well, so the excitement was for nought.. As morning came upon us the signal began to have loooooong dropouts on almost all of the Houston channels.
I gave up and went to bed as the last 5 minutes of Highway Patrol were stolen from me.

Today I pointed it back to Houston again and the signal is pretty weak. My Mac is pretty tolerant of it, it displays colorful blocks as the signal weakens and if the signal drops out the picture just freezes.
But on my Dish tuner I get mostly the dreaded yellow screen of sadness... If the signal strength is even a little weak it just cuts out. Using my Dish tuner for OTA is a less than rewarding experience, which is unfortunate because that's what I was counting on to be able to watch Houston channels on all the sets in the house, I have two dish tuners that are shared with two rooms each giving me pay satellite in about half the house.
My Mac, using the SiliconDust tuner and Elgato Eye TV lets me watch it and record it but only on the Macs. I can't figure out a way to get the output of the SiliconDust tuners to any other devices in the house. My Rokus don't work with it, my Apple TV doesn't either. And my Dish tuners won't touch anything outside of the garden walls Dish have defined. If only it would work with Roku, that would be AWESOME.

Anyway, so now I have discovered that this single antenna I just put up is pretty good and it's ALMOST good enough but it's not reliable enough that I can 100% of the time be able to sit down and watch Houston anytime I want.
Also the mast it's on is very flimsy and waves about a lot in the wind so that's not good. I do not expect this to withstand a strong storm and certainly not a hurricane, no way, no how.

So the tower is still a MUST HAVE. But I also have to take into consideration hurricanes. My dad was harping on me about "Well it's got to survive 140mph hurricanes! Blah blah blah..."
Right. Because 140mph is the point where nothing matters anymore, more than 140mph and I won't have a house anymore and an antenna will be the least of my concerns.
BUT, one thing to consider is that because I am going to have it on hinges so it can lay over, I'll just do that when a hurricane is coming. We get many days warning to prepare. So I would just lower it to the ground, remove the antennas and store them inside the garage and anchor the mast flat to the ground. So really all I need to worry about is a maximum of 100mph storms because we get those at random all year but they rarely get over 65mph and it's always just sudden, short storms that are over in minutes with no warnings at all, no time to prepare. So that's what I need to worry about the tower being able to survive.

I just wish I could find an ATSC signal meter to help me aim my antennas while I'm up there, like I have for my satellite dishes. Now all I can do is guess then climb down, go inside, tromp up the stairs, check the signal, than back outside, climb back up, move it a little and repeat, over and over. It's a miserable procedure, all that climbing up and down and up and down the stairs is just too much for me. I need some sort of signal meter for this stuff.

 

[primestar31]

I want one of these, but they are kind of pricey: http://sadoun.com/Sat/Products/S/DigiairPro-ATSC-OTA-digital-signal-meter.htm

 

[osu1991]

What is the file type your elgato is outputting for the mac. You could try Plex and have Plex Server looking at the output folder of the elegato, then access the files via Plex on the Roku.


Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

 

[Mr Tony]

being 94 miles away you will see that...signals come in real good at night but during the day not so much. I'm 93 miles from Minneapolis and have the same thing. At night I can get them pretty much stable...but come morning kaput. gone.

I just wish I could find an ATSC signal meter to help me aim my antennas while I'm up there, like I have for my satellite dishes

solid signal sells a simplified one. It requires your receiver to be involved
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=SL1000

 

[primestar31]

solid signal sells a simplified one. It requires your receiver to be involved
http://www.solidsignal.com/pview.asp?p=SL1000

As far as I can tell, those aren't any good. How can you set them for a particular channel? I think they are nothing but a fancy version of those junky old satellite meters that only show "something, but I don't know WHAT" meters.

 

[Cham]

Yea... how do you tell what channel it is tuned to?
...or does it sense the channel you have your receiver/TV tuned to and use that channel somehow?