The CGC Communicator Newsletter Web Posting

This September 2010 letter from Cliff Wesler, K6CEO, of Los Angeles, California, was addressed to Stephen Spencer, KC6MIE. The letter is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author. -Ed.

....Have you ever been to Los Angeles and noted the big HOLLYWOOD sign on the south slope of Mount Lee??? Located right in the heart of Hollywood, the original sign advertised a housing tract called HOLLYWOODLAND which was located on upper Beachwood Drive in Hollywood.

Above that sign is the top of Mt. Lee, about 1600 ft. high, which was the home of Los Angeles' first TV studio, circa 1936. On that mountaintop was built a wood frame stucco two story building with two video stages and a second floor office/directors area. At a later date, a 384 ft. four legged self-supporting tower was added for the TV antenna which I think was on CH-1, about 50-56 MHz.
 
In the late 1950s, I was the volunteer head of Los Angeles' Civil Defense Communications Dept. which then consisted of 23 large com centers with ham and government com equipment for many frequencies. My headquarters was in the Swim Stadium in the Coliseum downtown and I was about 19 or 20 years old at the time.
 
The 'powers that be' decided to move my headquarters to Mt. Lee, which the city had recently purchased. A great radio site, but very difficult to get to on a one lane partially paved road up the south face of Mt. Lee. Still, I had my orders and I proceeded to first plan and then execute the movement of one hell of a lot of com gear to that mountaintop.

While setting up the CD com stations, I quickly needed to get on 2-meters and my staff challenged me to install the antenna on the top of that 384 ft. tall tower, if I wasn't 'too chicken.' I thought it would be an easy climb as there is a enclosed ladder up one or more legs. So I grabbed a 2-meter commercial ground plane antenna, some tools and a rope to pull up the coax and started to climb the very stable and very heavy tower. At about the 90 ft. mark, I looked down and got a severe attack of acrophobia.

After clutching the tower in a death grip for about 30 minutes as my volunteers wondered what I was doing, I installed that 2-meter antenna at the 90 ft. level and have seen that antenna on the tower in recent years. Nobody ever moved it higher. Ha, ha.
 
In the case of my home 72 ft. tower that I installed in 1963, I found that by the late 1960s, I could only climb that thing at night, when I could not see the ground, and each year it became harder and harder to climb. Today, I have only a ground mounted multi-band vertical for a ham antenna. Much safer!


Cliff, K6CEO

Posted by Steve Blodgett
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