Helping other Ham's in time of need

Well, this was certainly an interesting weekend...  Apparently, I'm Google "search-able" somehow or another

I received a phone call from a young man, who explained that his grandfather - WZ0T, was diagnosed with terminal cancer.  He said that he and his father had travelled to Newport News, Virginia to be with his grandfather.  The father and son were planning on packing up all of home furnishings and they had no idea how to "take down" the 40' tower in the back yard.  "Did I know someone who could help?"

Wow - talking about feeling responsible for helping, "Of course I can try to find someone to help!"  I offered to try and find someone who might be able to help.

I thought of a few people and a good friend of my immediately came to mind - N4MW, Dave.  Dave is a well "traveled" tower climber and I had all the confidence in the world that he'd be able to help these guys with at least some answers.  I called Dave and he graciously agreed to talk with the family.  Dave called back later, let me know that he'd be heading down on Sunday afternoon to help take the beam and tower down, "Would I like to help?"  OF COURSE!!!!

A little bit of a side note here; my wife and daughter left this morning for a week long mission trip to New York City - they'll be serving the homeless throughout Brooklyn, please pray for them :)  Selfishly, that also meant that I didn't have much of a timeline for the afternoon and could play radio!

I meet up with Dave on Sunday afternoon and we head off with all his tools of destruction and mayhem - I mean he had a LOT of tools, very specialized tools tailored for just the kind of work we were heading off to do.

We arrived and after a bit of "negotiation" agreed that the beam and rotor would stay with the family and the tower would go home with Dave.  This was great, I was going to see a pro at work!

Dave climbed the tower and fixed the broken/jammed "Hazer" and managed to slowly lower the beam down to the ground.  Well, not quite the ground but about 5' off the ground, which was perfect for working on getting the bolts off the mast.  We removed the beam and positioned it around the yard so it would be out of the way of any potential damage.  After removal of miscellaneous cables, coax, ropes, etc. we then began the work of dropping the tower to the ground.

Dave tied a rope 2/3 of the way to the top of the tower and tied it to his truck; he tied a 2nd rope to the other side of the tower and I hauled it over to the opposite side of the yard.  He cut the 1st tower leg and then cut the 2nd and 3rd legs partially through.  Dave got into his truck and gave me the go-ahead to start pulling.  Pull I did and the tower began to tilt my way; Dave started moving his truck forward a little bit and the tower was coming down!  It made it's way to the ground and that part of the job was complete!

We disassembled the tower legs, cleaned up the tools and packed the tower parts into the truck.  We said goodbye to the family and headed on back to Dave's QTH.

All in all, a very good afternoon!

73 de KJ4WLH