[NLRS] Tower, or silo as tower?

[David Palm]

Okay, thanks for the good feedback on the Icom PCR receivers.  Now, if you
all don't mind, I'm looking for some feedback on an idea I've been tossing
around.

I have a very favorable location here.  I'm at about 1280 ft. ASL, right
smack on top of the ridge.  My only real problem in terms of an RF horizon
is that there is a horseshoe of very tall mature trees (60 - 70 feet) around
the house, spanning from the west to the east, leaving out the south.  So
I'm sure I get some attenuation on 2 meters and up and it'll only get worse
as I try to add bands.

Putting up a tower over the tops of those trees is a possibility, but
obviously that doesn't come cheap.  But there is another possibility.

I have a silo on the property and the top of the dome sits at about 70 feet
above the ground.  I have often thought about building a platform just under
the dome and setting up a PC, wireless router, computer-controlled rig and
rotor, and whatever other amplifiers and transverters I want to mess with.
There are a number of up sides to this, as I see it.  For starters, the
structure itself gets antennas at 80 feet above the ground (with an
appropriate mast) basically for free.  Second, the feed lines to those
antennas would be trivially short, like in the 25 foot range, so line losses
would be kept to a minimum.  Third, not only is it above the trees but it's
physically away from them as well, so all of that foliage attenuation goes
away.  Fourth, even factoring in a remote-controllable rotor, it would
surely be a lot cheaper to do a set-up like that than it would to put up an
80+ foot tower.  Fifth, I think it would be easier and safer to work on
stuff up there than it would on a tower, because the only way this silo is
coming down is in a serious earthquake.  And it is protected from the
elements under the dome.

The downsides as I see them are these: I think I would miss having the
physical radio in the shack.  With the PC and the WiFi and the remote
control software and such there's a lot more to go wrong and it could get
pretty annoying to have to climb that beast and troubleshoot something,
especially in the winter and/or during bad weather.  And the temperature
extremes would be much greater up there than they would be in my shack.

So, if you had my situation, what would you do?

Thanks and 73,

David  W9HQ