Doug Adair wrote:
"Randy or Sherry Guttery" wrote in message
.. .
Chuck Harris wrote:


I'd sure like to see some references on that one!
Yeah, me to. Where my mother lives (condominiums) they absolutely
prohibit visible antennas of any sort - it's in their association
bylaws. If they put up a dish - they have to camouflage it. The City is
just as tough on other similar stuff...

Better tell her association that lawyers will be knocking on their door
sooner or later with their hands out. I don't know about rooftop
conventional OTA antennas, but associations are absolutely prohibited by
federal law from including prohibitions on DBS dishes in their CCRs or
discouraging their use in any way. Requirements to camoflage are NOT
permitted either. The FCC has made it very clear that they want
competition to cable and have jurisdiction in this matter to achieve it,
so the edicts of cities and "townships" do not apply. If an association
takes it to court they will LOSE.

I have a acquaintance who made a good chunk of change during the dot-com
days. He bought a home in a tony planned community in 2001, and put up a
DirecTV dish. Almost immediately one of the neighborhood Nazis tried to
get him to take it down under threat of suit, he said "go ahead and
try"......and they did, and wound up with several thousands of dollars
of egg on their faces, which their insurance company did not pay for
because they had already warned about it in one of their newsletters to
the association some time earlier.

Some time later, I ran into his lawyer (I had met him earlier because I
had helped install the dish that started this mess) and the subject of
the DirecTV dish suit came up. He told me that he deals with disputes
between homeowners and HOAs all the time about all sorts of issues
embedded in CCRs-sometimes he wins and sometimes he loses, but he has
NEVER lost a case involving a homeowner's DBS dish, and he has dealt
with a couple hundred cases.

Unfortunately, none of this applies to ham radio antennas. HOAs are free
to deal with them as they wish, and a lot of them wish to ban them
outright.

Maybe when a major disaster strikes and phone lines and cell towers are
knocked out for miles around and the residents have no way of telling
Mom and Dad in another state that they are safe because there are no ham
radio installations in their perfect, manicured community, they will
relent, but I am not holding my breath even then. Control is hard for
some people to give up, even when doing so makes sense.

-Scott