Welcome to a description of my tower.
First, some history. When Sui and I were looking to move near the end of 1999, our house sold in about a week, so we were in a panic to find a new house. We finally settled on a great house in the town of Medford, NJ. The person who issues building permits said tower permits were no problem, and several hams in town had gotten them. So, we bought our house and in 2001 my application for a building permit was turned down. No towers allowed. Hmmm.
I contacted the Township's Zoning Solicitor, and he looked over PRB-1 and agreed something should be done. His ex-wife is my next door neighbor, so he certainly knows my house and the area. Fortunately, one of the members of the town council is married to a ham, so she championed the new ordinance. It took a number of town meetings, readings, zoning board meetings, etc. Nobody complained, but it just takes a lot of paperwork to get things changed.
Finally, in the fall of 2001, we had a nice zoning ordinance allowing 100' towers with 20' setbacks. Perfect! In fact, I think the ARRL web site might still have a copy of our ordinance on-line as a model.
In 2002, I started my quest to get a building permit. The stuff from US Towers wasn't even close to good enough for a permit, so I had to hire a private engineer to redesign the base. Another $1250 later, the township approved my application in September 2002. The tower was ordered and arrived in December. A few months later we finally dug the hole, poured cement, and got it into the air. See the links for lots of pictures.
The first test was WPX CW. AA5B operated here using NJ2NJ. If you worked NJ2NJ, that was my station! Since then, I've been having a great time working some casual DX, contesting, and some rag chewing. It's great to have a real antenna again, HI!