I spent five years on the board of, and two years as the president of, a 721
home development board of directors. We had a few blowhards who, like many in
here, told us to go to hell and parked cars on blocks and the like.

It wasn't rocket science. We voted a 30 day "take it away or go to court." We
were impolitely told to go to hell. We didn't go to hell, we went to court.
Not a big deal. Between the court costs and our lawyer's fees, the blowhard had
a thousand dollar junk car project to remove. Three or four cases like that in
the first couple of years and things got remarkably quiet, and we all got along
like neighbors respecting the wishes of each other.

I took perverse satisfaction in stringing copper tape under the eaves of the
house, strangely just long enough to make a quarter wave dipole for forty
meters. But it was painted with exactly the same shade that the eaves were
painted, run with a quarter-gallon with adequate filtering, matched to the n'th
degree, and worked the world on everything from forty on up. You could walk
right up to it and not detect that there was an antenna of any sort.

Not to mention the 2-meter groundplane disguised as a chimney strap. Painted
wrought-iron black and strangely so, 19 inches long. Coax? Run down a mortar
seam and painted mortar grey. From five feet away, it was indistinguishable
from the mortar.

I laugh at you blowhards telling us how you will do what you damn well please
when and where you damn well please to do it. I note that none of you have
tried it.

Clever works. Big mouths don't. And, if you don't like the rules, either don't
move in or once you move in then try to change them. If a majority of your
neighbors agree, it is changed. That's the way I learned that this country
works.

Jim





"Midwest Kid"
shared these priceless pearls of wisdom:

-
wrote in message ...
- WHO are you to tell me or someone else what you consider is "in check"
- or not? You deal with your property and the rest of us shall deal with
- ours.
-
If I move into an CC&R addition, I expect people to follow the
-rules. I would hope my neighbors would be smart enough to read important
-real estate documents. I don't care if my home is $300K. If some ham puts
-up a huge antenna and they make an exception, I will be documenting
-everything.
Jim Weir, VP Eng. RST Eng. WX6RST
A&P, CFI, and other good alphabet soup