[SBE] High Intensity Tower Light (1000ft tower) Maintenancebudget

[R.V.Zeigler]

If I could inject something here. Dialight supplied the first set of 
beacons for our 1000' FM stick with 3 Class C FM's on discreet antennas. 
They were abysmal and our supplier changed them to another brand. One 
level of beacons sits directly between bays 5 and 6 of the bottom 
antenna. The replacements lasted 6 months before we had all sorts of 
intermittent and strange problems. Dialight sent me 2 replacement 
beacons, which we installed over a year ago and they are working 
wonderfully. Moral of my story, if you decide to go LED beacons I would 
not be afraid to put the new Dialight's with RF shielding anywhere on 
the tower.
We spent close to $15K trying to get the replacement beacons to work and 
were looking at almost $50K to retrofit to incandescent when Dialight 
came to the rescue. From a financial standpoint, it may be very 
reasonable to paint the tower and retrofit to LED's. The longer you have 
the property, the more you save every month.
BTW, the intermittent beacons work fine sitting on the bench in the 
engineering shop.
Rod

-- 
R. V. Zeigler, Dir. of Eng.
Nebraska Rural Radio Assn.
KRVN-KTIC-KNEB
rzeigler at krvn.com