My village has an old water tower on which Cingular and Sprint erected
> base station antennas. We built a new water tower, and they put new
> antennas on it, abandoning the old ones. Sometime in the near future,
> weather permitting, we're going to take down the old tower, and it
> would probably be easy for me to buy the old antennas for their scrap > metal value.
> So my question is, are the antennas worth anything? The Cingular
> antennas are for the 800 MHz AMPS band, three whip antennas, basically
> pointy metal sticks pointing straight up. The Sprint antennas are for
> the PCS 1900 MHz band, curved panels. All have tails of coax that
> they cut when they removed the transmitters.
> Any advice? Sell them on ebay? Don't waste my time?
> Regards,
> John Levine snipped-for-privacy@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies"
> Information Superhighwayman wanna-be,
formatting link
Mayor
> "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly.
If the COAX isn't too old, you or your town can use it for pretty much any RF application. The antennas are most likely useless unless you have a local ham radio operator who's willing to take them.
BTW, I suggest you have the "old" tower structure surveyed as a "new" location for antennnas. Anything higher than a treetop is rentable these days, and a coat of paint might be all that's needed to get a new income stream.
William Warren
(Filter noise from my address for direct replies)