Thanks for the reply. I have retired now as of October 31, 2023. A week or two before 10/31 I was a young 78 and climbed about 150 feet in order to re-aim a microwave dish. I can still climb but I've sold my business, mt2w, to Clime when I retired. The business is now focused on two-way radio. When I ran it we focused on two-way radio and tower work. Mark was a partner in Middle Tennessee Two-way Inc (MT2W.COM) and it's his now. I have to say though I'm bored out of my head.

Thanks for the comment. This video is 11 years old. Back then I was much younger probably 66 years old. I retired in October 2023 and clmbed 150 feet and worked 3 hours. I was younger then at 78 years old. I love having fun.

Mr John, I'm speechless! I wish I had just a quarter of the courage and strength you have to do this!!!!! I will forever think of you Everytime I see a tower!!!!

@@dannyatwood9984 Hi Danny, I was naturally attracted to things to climb when I was 6 or 7, don't remember though. I was 6 73 years ago so I guess that makes sense. I don't know why but I wasn't afraid of falling. At times I can remember feeling that I was in a bad situation but generally worked my way out of the problem. Some tower workers would drop whatever they were supposed to be working with. To me, tower work was just that, work. It was not for a thrill but it was about doing difficult jobs up to 1400 feet or more, climbing down and going home. After my Army time I was able to keep my cool during an emergency. In 2006 (if I remember that right) I was swimming with my wife in the catch-basin below a 100 foot water fall at a Tennessee State Park. There were other people also. At the base of the falls there was a large, somewhat flat multi ton rock lying at the edge of the basin and leaning at about 45 degrees which my wife liked to ly in the sun. There were a lot of people swimming and wandering around the basin while my wife and I were taking a "sun break". There were two 12 year old kids and one of the fathers under the fall and the second "dad", a little out of shape, was swimming across the 100 foot diameter basin to catch up to the other adult and the two kids. I saw him swimming but he was not a good swimmer.. Since I had been a SCUBA instructor 10 years earlier and one thing SCUBA instructors do when in open water is to keep a close eye on anyone who might need to be rescued. This does happen. As the poor swimmer was about 25 feet away from the other side of the basin where his kid and the other guy's kid were under the fall and out of the water the other adult called loudly, "Are you OK"? The swimmer replied "No" and started to go under. I had been watching him and was in the water about 15 feet away from him, using a very quiet stroke so as not to scare him. When I arrived where he was, I wrapped my right arm around his chest and spoke to him quietly, saying "I've got you buddy". His kid was watching and I didn't want to scare either one of them. I pulled the guy with a very quiet side stroke and got him the rest of the way to his friend and the two kids. After I left him I swam back to my wife on the rock. We stayed there for a while then I went to free-diving in the 12 foot deep basin. After my wife and I decided to leave we were packing up our fins and masks and other stuff to get in the car and leave. About this time I see the guy I had assisted in finishing his swim coming toward me. To my surprise the guy thanked me for what I'd done. I said I was glad to be where I had been and thanked him for letting me know. I really didn't want him to be embarrassed in front of his kid. I was very surprised that he had not been embarrassed because it's not "Tennesseean Like" to admitting to another that you had to be rescued. In Tennessee these things are ignored and even declared as never ever having happened.

Hi there and thanks or the comment. That's also a rather scary operation.. The gin pole weighed around 2200 pounds and we were lifting it to the next to last of the tower sections. If the lifting cable or something else would fail the two of us on the tower and those on the ground could have been killed. The guy and his boss on the ground running the winch are true professionals when it comes to rigging. To get back to the story, we had to remove three sections to get past the bent sections and then replace with new sections. That was me, much younger, mabe 65 :-). I had hired a contract crew and there had been a break of some sort and two of the contract ccrew had gone to New York and their ride back to Nashville had been delayed. We needed to get the gin pole up the tower. The only Number 2 man was me. The number 1 man was a very experienced gin pole and a lot of other things, tower tech. It took about three hours to get the pole to the top of the tower so that we could come down and leave. I've just retired at the age of 78. I became a two-way radio tech and tower tech in 1972 and finally moved my company to a guy who had been with me for more than 30 years. I retired in Octobeer of 2023. Don't remember the date. However the last time (so far) I had climbed was earlier in October 2023 because we were one tower man short. It was a small tower maybe 155 feet self supporting. I've loved my work for the majority of the 50 years. Now I'm still trying to learn how to be retired. John Hettish

Thanks for the comment even if the video was 10 years old. I'm retired now and haven't climbed since October 2023 to aim a microwave dish. I can still do this stuff but choose not to. Once again, Thanks. John Hettish

Thanks for the comment. I climbed it for 20 years or more. Now the bad news. I'm retired. I'd rather be working thoughbut somehow being about 14 months from being 80 I probably should. Being as that is the most recent time I climbed a tower was about 5 weeks ago but it was only 150 feet tall and I spent about 5 hours from start to finish, hours of which were working with a microwave dish. No camera though. Officially I'm retired but I'm sure I'll climb something, somewhere.

Thanks, I'll get back to you tomorrow hopefully. I truly loved tower work but am retired now. John

My favorite phrase to my employees went sometthing like, "On a tower every move is in slow motion." Thanks for the comment.

Sure. As you climb you'll bump into things. I am wearing a white climbing helmet in most of the videos and it has black streaks and orange streaks as well as scratches. It's really easy to hit things as you climb or look down when some lose thing reaches out and slaps your head or in my case, my bald head. There's another reason more dangerous but not as often. Someone working higher up the tower might drop something and by the time it gets to the lower guy it's already leathal. The helmet also protects your head from the sun by providing a space between you and the plastic cover of the hard hat. It's also a bit cooler, not much, but a bit allowing air to pass through one side and out the other. So, not just because someone might make fun of you for taking precautions, it's easy to hit the cover over your biological computer. Often safety rules are the work of guys who come to work, sit behind a desk and later go back home, the hard hat rule is truly usefu. This is coming from a guy, me, who's been climbing for the last 50 years. Started 1972 and in 2023 still climbing when necessary. John Hettish

Well yeah you are right didn't think about someone being above you and dropping a tool or something my bad I can't even get up on top of my one story house lol...

About twenty years ago there were three people climbing a tower. They did their work and were descending when one of the upper guysd felt a wrench fall. I used the word "felt" because that's how you realize you've lost something especially while you're moving. The guy who lost the wrench was one of the upper two descending members of the crew. He yelled "heads up" and the bottom climber looked up. The wrench hit him in the head,, and he fell to his death. Twenty years ago I was already wearing a climbing helmet and people were making fun of me. Now when you see crew members on a tower it's very rare that they're not wearing full safety gear including a helmet, not one of the fifteen dollar hard hats. Our helmets usually cost over one hundred dollars. I appreciate your comment, John@@jeramietraylor9662

I appreciate your comment. Sometime in the future, if I survive for the next few years, I hope to have some more tower videos on the Channel. My Cub flight was a mistake when I uploaded it but it got so many views I thought it would be a good idea to leave it up. I have another channel where airplanes are shown. @jhettish1945 My comment on "surviving" can be decoded if you take 1945 and subtract it from 2023 or whatever is the current year. I'm a never smoker. John

LED would be a good idea. Using the original 660 watt lamps times 2 would not be a good idea. LED uses very little current (electric bill), the original lights would draw about 10 amps at every power up. Are you going to include a flasher module or just keep it running 24-7?

Hi there and thanks for the comment. I've never used it on beacon or obs lamps, never had to. Humidity is high here in Tennessee but probably much worse near the various oceans. My lamp replacement usually has to do with simply worn out filaments. I always use the "Long Life" lamps and they generally last for three to four years. I learned early in the tower business that I didn't need to replace lamps, busy work, and I started getting away from GE and on to Duromax lamps. Duromax is still in the lighting business but they quit creating incandescent lamps about 20 years ago. They allow a company in Mexico and in Canada to create lamps based on the Duromax patent. Oddly enough, the DuroMex seem to have less failure than the DuroCanada lamps. Just my observation but getting back to your original question I've never had the need to use dielectric grease anywhere but with one exception. I use dielectric grease on grounding attachments. John

I don't think I understand your question but I do appreciate that you asked it. The video is about me, climbing that difficult tower in order to repair/replace the lamps. During the entire climb I'm complaining about how hard it is to climb. It's a real temptation to someone like me but now that I'm 78 I'm shying away from that type of structure. It's downright painful and I'm not joking. Eventually, like all individual repair tasks, the best part was talking with the owner and then, of course, sending a bill. Little AM radio stations really need all the help they can get just to keep the station and pay the people working there. Little town AM radio stations are still surviving if they focus on the local area but the future for those types of stations is bleak. By the way, testing the lighting system is basically waiting for dark and looking from the ground up the tower. The tower in this video is just barely in the airport area and tower lights are required to keep airplane pilots from hitting something that they might not be able to see. Main problem for towers under 100 feet and 1/2 mile from the airport is when airplanes take off or land at night. I hope this helps. John Hettish

Yes there is. There's a code book available on line. Follow this link: mt2w.com/Files/AC_70_7460-1L_.pdf The thing I called a book is really called an "Advisory Circular" and I think it's about 46 pages long. Interesting reading if you're curious about things like this. I'm constantly curious about things. I keep learning as a result. Thanks for the comment.

Thanks for the comment Glen, The 2000 lb Ginpole was quite hard to deal with but once in place all went well. There was a Ginpole accident just outside of Huntsville, Alabama about 20 years ago where the pole got stuck at some level and the hoist operator tried to "bull Doze" his way up the tower. The pole broke lose, it fell against a guy wire and the tower (1200 ft) fell with (I think) with three workers at the top who had been waiting for the pole to get there. Sad stuff.

I agree but it seems that a 77 year old airplane requires a lot of little work in between flights. I've got an AP making a simple repair so I can get it back in the air, where it needs to be. By the way, the Cub is one year younger than me. :-)

I have the same problem on this job. The crew that was in charge of getting this part done had two guys missing one day so I had to help the last remaining tower guy. It was Eric (tower guy), David (Winch Operator) and me, the "old" man. During part of that job two of my employees were in Nashville installing a new antenna for a broadcaster. When two of the erector guys got stuck without a plane back to Nashville from NYC I had to break off and work with the other crew. John

I had to climb down, get another lamp and climb back up the tower. As if that wasn't enough, there were wasp nests within the tower legs around 40 feet and I had to climb by them twice. The drip holes in the old tower legs were a perfect size for an adult wasp. John

Seems silly, why not just take 2 spare bulbs up with you? How much do you get paid to change a bulb? Seems like there would be a better way to do this without sending preople up hundreds of metres. Makes for a good youtube video though.@@jhettish

@@JasonGeoffrey It would sound really silly. I had taken a phoro of two beacon lamps at my shop intending to send them to you. The beacon lamps are quite large and taking two usually uses a lot of climbing-storage space. That beacon had two of those large lamps for normal operation. However many people think one is a spare. That's not the case. The beacon is supposed to radiate 2000 candella of light and the only way that can work is to have both 660 watt beacon lamps operational. Often we replace both ($50 each) which requires taking two beacon lamps on the trip up the tower. I believe this beacon still had one lamp working but the owner had asked both to be replaced. Thus, I carried two up the tower threw the original lamps down and then found out that one of the new ones was not working. Yep, I sould have tested before climbing but so far (50 years) I've only had that happen on a couple of times. Those things are expensive and I don't want to damage a new one during the climb. I have done that on a 1000 foot tower before. John

Dang@@jhettish

Hi John, thanks for the reply, makes sense you would only take what you need as space is limited. I guess sometimes things just don't go to plan :)@@jhettish

Just saw a bunch of your photos. Quite good. K4WJZ

I didn't want to upload that video to my tower channel but when I did it created over 500 views within a short amount of time, so I left it there. The Cub video had very little to do with tower work except that I was able to scrape up some money to become a share holder. Now I seem to be the only shareholder flying it. John

I definitely enjoyed the flight but haven't been able to fly since then. There are some relatively small problems and since I still work at 78 I am often tied up in work. My first flight was with my father in Rome New York, where he had been assigned as a Army Airforce Pilot. The flight was in an airplane identical to the plane I did the video in. It can be seen, second video at kzbin.info. It's about one minute taken by my mother of a 3 year old me and my 29 year old father. Also you can see the Cub in that video. 1945 refers to the year I was born. Yep, that's right. I'm probably old enough to be your father or maybe even your grand father. I do have one grandson who's 38 years old. I'm old but I like to have fun and am capable of working very hard. John

Glad you're still around and enjoying retirement (if you can call it that)! 73 and best of luck!

You were the first to leave a comment. I was the second. I'm glad you caught it. It was only meant for members of my LLC and wasn't meant to go to the tower channel. Hard for old people (now 78) to follow directions. :-)

I realize that your comment was from June 2023. It takes me a while to get the message, especially when I've had a laptop blow-up. My reply: Being in the two-way radio business I used to tell my crew if they heard me on the radio to say "hurry up" that they should say "OK" then go back to their regular pace. If I said something dumb to a tower crew like "hurry up" I'd only be blowing smoke at my customer and they should continue their work in slow-motion. Every move on a tower should be in slow-motion and also must be a conscious thought. John