On 24/07/2020 08:33, Grumps wrote:

Most aerial firms will shy away from customers with specialised
requirements. After all, why bother? From the aerial man's point of
view radio amateurs can be an absolute nightmare. They are often
extremely certain of technical facts but wrong.

Bill

It's not really specialised putting up a very simple antenna - which
they didn't even ask about. All I'm essentially looking for is a man on
the end of a long stick. A stick I'm not sure I want to climb.

I used a wrong word:'Specialised'. I should have said, "Anything he
hasn't done a million times before." Many low-end domestic aerial
installers want to cram in as many jobs as possible in the day. They
don't want to waste time reading instructions, or even discussing the
job with the customers. So they don't risk anything other than, "Please
come and fix a telly aerial on my roof."

Because I had an actual interest in RF and a lot of curiosity, I
generally accepted odd-ball jobs (although I might leg it later if I
didn't like what I saw!) It paid off in my case because I ended up doing
all sorts of jobs where one thing led to another, and some became very
profitable.

Maybe all I need to find is a handyman with a ladder instead.

Yes. Although fixing anything new to old masts and brackets is a bit
dodgy sometimes.


And I'm sure you're right about PITA radio amateurs. I'm on the amateur
end of the radio amateur scale, and wouldn't dare try to inform a
professional installer like yourself.

Not all of them of course. But I did have a few bad experiences. There
again I had some good ones, and I learnt a lot.

My most common interaction with 'hams' was the result of me being used
by a local council as TVI tracer, after the Radio Regulatory Dept
effectively threw the towel in. Most were dead reasonable and between us
we usually found a solution. There was one guy, though €” I think he had
a screw loose €” who used to deliberately wipe out my nearby system. In
the end he lost his tenancy.

Bill