The United States and a few other countries have an astounding array of homeowners’ associations (HOAs), local organizations that exert an inordinate influence on what homeowners can and can’t do with their properties, with enforcement mechanisms up to foreclosure. In the worst cases they can get fussy about things like the shade of brown a homeowner can paint their mailbox post, so you can imagine the problems they’d have with things like ham radio antennas. [Bob] aka [KD4BMG] has been working on tuning up his rain gutters to use as “stealth” antennas to avoid any conflicts with his HOA.
With the right antenna tuner, essentially any piece of metal can be connected to a radio and used as an antenna. There are a few things that improve that antenna’s performance, though. [Bob] already has an inconspicuous coax connector mounted on the outside of his house with an antenna tuner that normally runs his end-fed sloper antenna, which also looks like it includes a fairly robust ground wire running around his home. All of this is coincidentally located right beside a metal downspout, so all this took to start making contacts was to run a short wire from the tuner to the gutter system.
With the tuner doing a bit of work, [Bob] was able to make plenty of contacts from 10 to 80 meters, with most of the contacts in the 20 – 30 meter bands. Although the FCC in the US technically forbids HOAs from restricting reasonable antennas, if you’d rather not get on the bad side of your least favorite neighbors there are a few other projects from [Bob] to hide your gear.
Another victim of over-zealous neighbours? I was only physically threatened by some for my antennas. There are not many hams left and I just want to be indoor in my A/C cooled room and do my milliwatt CW experiments. My TX power will not harm your TV or body :(
Not as bad as that one HOA who wanted to ban EV because they can start fires. As if they didn’t realize ICE cars catches on fire more often??
ICE car fires rarely, if ever “burn the house down” and they are in almost every case easily extinguishable. Rechargeable car fires don’t just burn the house down, they burn down the concrete under the car, and release such toxic fumes that the firefighters won’t go near them and simply flood the rechargeable car with water for hours until it goes out (and the water spreads the toxic chemicals from this environmentally unfriendly vehicle all over the place).
Maybe you should read up on ICE vs. EV before you make such a comment and stick your foot directly in your mouth. Lmao
Wow, so much butt-hurt in a single comment… Did you invent ICE cars?? Or do you just work for the oil and gas industry?
J. Samson,
This is well known fact and if you had any evidence to refute what I said, maybe you would have tried to present it? I think “butthurt” definitely describes the rechargeable car owners in Korea who are now forced to park them outside due to the fire risk. This stuff has been all over the news for months now. Maybe you should broaden your news horizons and start drinking from more than one tainted pool… Lmao
J. Samson I thought I posted a reply but maybe HaD deleted the comment to prevent the feeding of trolls.
I assume “Panondorf” is also you… Lmao. Are you being paid for the pro-rechargeable car shilling?
Anyone involved in lithium battery technologies knows how toxic and volatile they are. The fires are inextinguishable, firefighters stand back and let them burn. The only time this could possibly happen with an ICE vehicle fire is if the ICE vehicle is a loaded propane or gasoline truck.
Maybe instead of engaging in reddit-tier trolling, you should try to add some thought to your argument. Try to list some reasons why the extreme danger and environmental destruction of these lithium batteries is necessary vs. the modern stable, clean and efficient ICE vehicle (especially hybrids with tiny battery packs!).
Are you suffering from rechargeable car regret? I thought it was quite hilarious when they banned parking rechargeable cars inside parking garages due to the extreme fire and toxic fume risk xD
And in case you are wondering what I meant about banning the parking of rechargeable cars in parking garages, look at what is happening in Korea. These guys are the leaders of high quality lithium battery technology… And they are going to ban parking them indoors and charging them over 80%… It’s hilarious.
The only one butt-hurt here is you. You trying to belittle someone not in your cult does not make you sound any smarter than a potato.
To be abundantly clear, the typical contents of a lithium ion battery are lithium, a fluorocarbon separator, and metal oxides, all finely divided. That amounts to a thermite mixture with a side of toxic fumes. It burns without air and in water.
That means a fire truck is ineffective and you need a large pond made in the nearest drainage ditch for complete submergence. You also need a construction vehicle with a hazmat suited operator to push it there.
If full self driving is ever implemented, imagine the ITAR implications of a 1000lb driving thermite bomb with a guidance system. And have I mentioned the backup door handle under the carpet so that one can exit in the event of a fire only if young and flexible enough. Or the fact that a salt-water damaged Tesla is a ticking time bomb. Or the fact that it takes quite a long time for green electricity to outweigh manufacturing use of electricity for a Tesla.
It will take a lot to convince me to buy an electric vehicle when the top of the line ones are still deathtraps that lack range and require waiting in line and then for 15m or greater to charge.
Meanwhile gas vehicles mostly don’t catch fire so long as they are fuel injected and maintenance is done reasonably often. Diesel is extremely resistant to combustion unless at high temperature and pressure. Some tanks use their diesel fuel as extra armor.
There there, it’s ok. Can you show us on the Doll where the battery touched you?
What does that even mean… Have you ever seen a rechargeable car fire? The firefighters can’t even get near it they just let it burn! South Korea arguably makes the highest quality mass market lithium batteries in the world, and yet within a month they will be banning the parking and charging of rechargeable cars in parking garages unless they are some threshold below full charge… There are some claiming that it’s likely this will turn into an outright ban. We are already seeing landlords in the USA forbidding rechargeable cars inside their property garages. When these things start on fire, you can not stop it and the fumes are so toxic you don’t want to be anywhere near it!
For people who will appreciate this, “flooding with water” isn’t a desperate last ditch idea for firefighters. It’s more like batteries mean an extended period of removing heat buildup. A similar example could be a pole transformer fire, except that since they know there’s a definite limited amount of energy in the battery it makes a lot of sense to just keep applying a little water to contain things and use the energy up. They’d also have to do that for a big mass of something very hot, or anything where they couldn’t fully access or extinguish whatever it was. And uhh, anyone who’s looked at the concrete under the wreck of a regular car that burned itself out will realize it did some damage.
On average, internal combustion engines are 20 times more likely to catch on fire than an electric vehicle. As the headline says, “you’re wrong about EV fires.” I was going to post a link for every wrong word in your comment, but I got bored. Yes, EV fires are more difficult to fight, but they’re also far more rare. On top of that, firefighters aren’t idiots and they’re trained specifically
on extinguishing EV fires. I can’t really tell if you’re trolling, or really that uninformed, but it doesn’t matter because you’re just wrong.
https://www.topgear.com/car-news/mythbusting-evs/mythbusting-world-evs-are-electric-cars-susceptible-catching-fire
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/environment-energy-coordination/climate-matters/EV-less-fire-risk#:~:text=But%20when%20you%20look%20at,gasoline%2Dpowered%20or%20hybrid%20vehicles.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/you-are-wrong-about-ev-fires/
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/report-evs-less-likely-to-catch-fire-than-gas-powered-cars/
https://www.edmunds.com/electric-car/articles/electric-car-fires.html
https://www.autoblog.com/2023/11/23/electric-cars-are-less-likely-to-catch-fire-than-gas-cars/
https://www.autoweek.com/news/a38225037/how-much-you-should-worry-about-ev-fires/
https://theconversation.com/electric-vehicle-fires-are-very-rare-the-risk-for-petrol-and-diesel-vehicles-is-at-least-20-times-higher-213468
“Data from the National Transportation Safety Board showed that EVs were involved in approximately 25 fires for every 100,000 sold. Comparatively, approximately 1,530 gasoline-powered vehicles and 3,475 hybrid vehicles were involved in fires for every 100,000 sold. Reporting from other countries supports the assertion that EVs are less fire-prone than gas-powered vehicles. Data from Norway, Sweden, and Australia is consistent with findings in the U.S., showing that the prevalence of EV fires remains relatively low.”
I think this is the main issue along with toxic fumes and why that South Korean underground garage EV fire ended up destroying and damaging 140 cars:
“While EV fires are not as common as gas-powered vehicle fires, they are more difficult to extinguish, due to how the batteries are protected from the elements.”
I’ve seen a normal road car on fire once in my life after it was in a serious high speed
(my guess is around 300kmh / 186mph) accident.
I’ve seen around 10 electric cars on fire in my private life. One was a few minutes walking from my house. A Kia caught fire, cars around it caught fire, house next to it caught fire. Seen a Kia at a gas station at a charger. Huge flames coming from it. Drove past a trailer on the highway transporting electric cars (Renault iirc) and one of the cars was on fire. At work, a Hyundai randomly caught fire while charging.
For work though, I’ve seen thousands and thousands and thousands of cars that were on fire due to electric cars randomly igniting.
Bob, a few years ago I inadvertently got a whiff of a rechargeable scooter that had started on fire in a friend’s garage (and this little thing required a visit from the fire department complete with fire engine). I knew that the compounds emitted from lithium battery fires were more toxic can simple hydrocarbon chain fuel emissions by several orders of magnitude, but wow. My throat didn’t feel the same for days afterward! I read more about it after this incident, I originally thought that rechargeable scooters were pretty cool. I changed my mind very quickly when I started to understand how dangerous these little IED’s are. Recently, I saw the video of the guy who had his e-Bike battery go into thermal runaway while he has carrying the battery in an elevator – It burnt him to a crisp in 30 seconds flat – The video is difficult to watch but very educational. These high capacity lithium bombs should be stored in the same way that we store unstable explosives used for mining.
A local car shop full of ICEs burned pretty badly and there was probably tens of cars totalled because of it.
All it took was a cheap electric scooter that was being charged inside. Had probably less than 10% of the battery capacity of an EV.
It is easy to check fire extinguishers and deduce something. 100 liters of oil burning should not be an issue for most of those. But try looking for one that is specced for lithium battery fires and.. ..yeah. All fire departments can try to do is lift and drop the EV into a huge water container afaik.
I see dead ICE cars pulled over on the side of the road with the front end all burnt out about once every month or two on my way to work and back.
Although I am aware that the concept of batteries catching fire is real I have never myself seen an EV on fire or in ashes after burning in person.
I would have chalked up the difference between my experience and yours to the lack of value in anecdotes. Until I read the “thousands and thousands” line. Now I think you are BSing. That or a whole continent has one single multi-national inspector that investigates these things and you are it!
Panoderp,
You need to research basic math and statistics.
EV’s make up a claimed 1% of the cars in the USA. I suspect it is lower… In my area, and the surrounding cities, I might see one rechargeable car per week… Most people are probably leaving these things sitting at home after they realize it’s not possible to drive to the next city and back without a recharge… Meanwile ULEV ICE owners are driving cross country without stopping and near zero emissions….
Based on the ownership numbers, assuming that both groups of cars have the same chance of burning, you are 100x more likely to see an ICE car on fire than a rechargeable one, i.e. you will see 100 ICE cars burning for every 1 rechargeable car.
Now consider that the ICE vehicles are easily extinguishable with conventional technologies. You mention seeing the front end all burnt out, there are several vehicles made after 2010 which had engine fire recalls, these are probably the ones you are seeing. But… There is no danger to the occupants. They have many minutes to walk away from the vehicle as it slowly burns. Meanwhile, the rechargeable cars literally go nuclear in a matter of seconds. There is no extinguishing them. There is no escaping without injury if you are inside the rechargeable car when it goes nuclear. Watch the video of the guy carrying the e-bike battery in the elevator for example – He was unalived in a matter of 30 seconds, it is a horrible video but a very good example of what a lithium battery the size of a soda bottle can do – Now imagine what the rechargeable car batteries can do.
We simply need to treat rechargeable cars as IED’s, never park them indoors, never park them somewhere that they could endanger someone if they suddenly go nuclear. This would probably mitigate at least 25% of the incidents. The rest of the incidents, well, you just have to accept toxic fumes, environmental destruction, and possible death if someone rear ends you or you run over a curb or whatever it takes to set the IED off…. Lmao
Youve seen 10 EVs on fire. Yeah, sure you have. Your credibility just dropped to zero.
BTW, bmw just recalled thousands of gas cars for … wait for it …. fire hazard.
He may be a truck driver, taxi hack, Fedex, or whatever, i.e. someone who is on the roads throughout the work day.
When ev is on fire it’s harder to quench than ur ICE,it’s the only sane n logical explanation there is
Lol yeah well when you outnumbered the ev a million to 1 I guess statistically you’re correct 😉..
Yeah something something Liars use something 🤔
Tell them that even if you were TXing dozens of watts, they already are exposed to much more power from the cellphone they keep in their pocket because of the inverse square law. In other words, if non ionizing radiation like radio transmission were any dangerous at these levels, they would already be all dead, whether there were HAM antennas in range or not.
I have tried to explain the inverse square law to so many people who walk around with their cell phone in their pockets. The look I get is inevitably the same as a deer standing in front of my car, blinded by the headlights. I don’t think the schools teach actual math anymore.
I recall the HOA antenna business went before the courts and the HOA lost. I will have to look up the ruling.
That’s a cool hack, but even better would be to get congress to pass laws to make radio equipment exempt from HOA rules. There have been several attempts such as HR9670. Supposedly the HAM Radio Parity Act and Local Community Radio Act can also be used to get around HOA bylaws, although the latter requires an FCC application (but can supposedly get them to subsidize an up to 40’ tower right in your back yard).
But, muh property value!
It’s pretty easy to do a naive estimate of net value increase, including higher property values and the continuing cost of HOA dues, showing that you can certainly lose money in the long run with an HOA.
Part of what makes that a naive estimate is how you handle the higher cost per square foot in an HOA neighborhood. If you skip the HOA, will you spend the same money for more house, or get the same house for less money?
Another thing is you have to guess at the future appreciation of both the HOA and freedom house.
As the ads used to say: “Peace of mind: Priceless.”
Far better to just ban the HOAs and the little jobsworths who want to be in charge of them.
It is increasingly becoming the case that HOAs are owned and operated by private equity companies that see profit opportunities in them (fees, fines for violations, ability to sell houses for pennies at private auctions, etc.).
The reason HOAs are so prevalent is because city governments are either too lazy or too poor to provide services to new housing divisions. So if you are building a new group of houses those living their are required to have a HOA to handle trash collection, street cleaning, maintenance of common infrastructure, etc.. Since the developer building the houses has no interest in running the houses, but must have an HOA so they can build and sell them, the HOA function gets out sourced to a private for profit company…
What could go wrong?…
I agree with you 100&
Just don’t buy a house in an hoa. It’s that simple. So much effort to bypass rules made so that you do not have and will never have full control over something you own is incredibly stupid. It’s like buying a car with a monthly subscription for heated seats. You are part of the whole problem buying into that.
Problem is to get a house within reasonable distance to my office it has to be HOA.
HOAs are completely out of control, drunk on the power they have given themselves and are, essentially, communist organizations.
It’s just odd that American desire this… It’s un-American.
It’s not communism. You don’t know what that word even means.
It’s an oligarchy, just like the government of the USA. A few people with power control the rules for many in an oligarchy.
That has happened, and HAM antennas are exempt from these types of rules. So are antennas for Internet access or television.
Regardless of your rights, it’s often a good idea to avoid antagonizing neighbours.
The OTARD rules only cover OTA (Over-the-air) TV antennas and satellite dishes one meter in diameter and smaller (except in Alaska, which allows larger dishes). Radio, Ham, Internet, and other data antennas are not protected.
FALSE. No antennas are “exempt”. NONE.
Under some circumstances, some antennas may be installed per FCC OTARD, but only big enough and tall enough to reliably receive whatever covered service is being accessed. Ham radio is NOT covered. Full stop.
Read and learn: https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
My HOA openly flouts the OTARD rule, despite me having presented it to them.
I’d imagine that the ARRL would be very interested to hear about that…
That already exists. This was not required. No HOA rule may block the use of an antenna for lawful radio access of any frequency you are using either licensed or via an unlicensed band.
I guess you don’t know this, but it’s not actually possible to do that. HOA agreements aren’t based on legal jurisdiction or justification, they are civil agreements, which can restrict almost anything. Do not sign if you don’t understand this. Ideally don’t ever sign one.
HOAs can NOT enforce rules that override government laws.
If they do, sue them and win.
There is no “government law” that allows you to install any antenna you please. HOAs can legally, federally legally, restrict ALL antennas with very narrow, limited exceptions.
Read-up ffs… https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
“Land of the free” hmm…
It’s a part of the purchase contract, not law.
It isn’t just home owner’s associations. Othe countries have their own oddities.
If you build a new house in Germany, there will be laws or city ordnances that regulate what materials you may use to build the house as well as how close various parts of your home can be to the border of your plot. There will also be regulations on how high the house may be.
If you rennovate a home, you may be restricted to using materials typical to the era it was constructed in. Say, windows. If the original house had windows contructed of small panes of glass set in a lattice, you have to put in replacments that at least look like the originals even though the crossed wooden bars have no function in a modern double (or triple) glazed window.
A new house in an existing neighborhood may be required to match the existing homes. If t hat all have, say, tiled roofs then your house will have to have a tiled roof as well.
It isn’t just the US that has weird or inconvenient rules.
But in the US it is often a for profit company deciding and enforcing the rules, in a way to maximize profit…
Can you give some examples, please?
I’m unaware of any HOA groups that are for profit…
Associa, for profit and they are terrible. The run several associations where I have rented in the past all over the country.
It is not the HOA that is for-profit, but the company hired to provide a turnkey HOA management service.
This leads to things like over enthusiastic prosecution of the most minor violations. The warning letters they will send out will cost you $35 to $75 (profit to HOA management service, not the HOA funds). They are also very enthusiastic about heavy late fees, interest on late fees, and “legal expenses”, causing some owners to rack up lots of debt over very minor things. In some cases if you can’t pay they can foreclose and sell your property. When they sell your home it will be for a small fraction of market value.
Just one story:
https://www.keranews.org/news/2023-11-21/she-owed-her-mesquite-hoa-3-500-now-shes-losing-the-home-she-owned-for-18-years
But it is easy to find many like it.
You’re confusing the HOA with the management company hired by the board. They don’t make the rules, but they do enforce them, often overzealously. And they can be, and often are in my experience, replaced at the board’s discretion whenever their contract is up for renewal.
Apologies if I wasn’t clear, I was assuming others had the same level of information as me. HOAs are non-profits, as I stated many times, it is the company hired to manage the HOAs that are for-profit. (Note, I didn’t say HOA are for-profit, but that it is a for-profit company setting the rules and enforcing them.)
Not true in every case, and increasing not true as almost all new developments
are required to come with a HOA that was established by a for-profit company before anybody moved into their new house. The for-profit HOA management company WILL get to make the rules and you can bet there interests will be put before the home owners interests…
The part that bothers me about HOA’s is: I signed a contract for specific rules when I purchased my house.
HOWEVER the HOA board regularly changes that contract, without my acceptance or agreement.
There are no other examples of a one sided contract change holding up in court…but somehow its ok for an HOA to do.
You’ve not read many EULAS or read the news lately, have you? :^D
They all allow unilateral changes to contracts. There are daily stories of Amazon, Sonos, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, you-name-the-evil-corporation unilaterally changing the contract.
HOA’s get their authority for enforcement from: 1. State Law, 2. County or Municipal Codes, 3. City Municipal Codes or Laws. Federal Law and Federal Agency Laws supercede state law.
While HOA authority is often abused, it is relatively easy to change by getting involved with the HOA (death from within), the mechanics of change can be learned and effectively used.
The best way to avoid HOA and issues is to avoid land or other purchases that fall under their rules. The easiest way is to ask about your potential purchase is HOA regulated. This is info that generally must be disclosed prior to purchase along with relevant CC&Rs. If regulated by a HOA, secure a copy of the HOA regulations prior to putting down any money. If pressured into any ‘good faith’ money, get relevant HOA restrictions as cause to cancel and get the money refunded. Finding any restrictive HOA and CC&R is your responsibility even when required by law. Also try getting things used written into the sales contract before signing it.
Yes, this is called “residential building code”. It is not the same as an HOA.
HOAs exist only to keep property values up, on paper. In reality, they exist only to give people power over others, and to give weak-minded simple individuals authority over others contractually, because it can’t be earned legitimately.
civilized countries don’t allow purchase contracts to override legal rights. then again we’re talking about a country that used to have chattel slavery.
As HOA’s are not forced to exist by law, people are free to choose to live under HOA control or not. When searching for a home, one of my first qualifying questions is the home was in an HOA. If yes, then no. I chose not to live in a place that was the new hotness where all the cool kids were living.
In the same way, I made the choice to avoid buying a home near an air force base, or a pig farm, or race track, etc. Even if I had bought in one of those locations, I wouldn’t turn around and complain later about some ridiculous, unlivable, unfair conditions being forced upon me.
They kind of are forced by law, some cities require new developments to have HOAs to manage common elements. My parents HOA manages/mows a large field in the middle of the development that acts as rainwater collection, and a pond/fountain in another area.
Oh, interesting. I’ll certainly check on that before I decide to move to a different city.
For required infrastructure like that, it almost seems like this is privatization of taxes…except for I’d bet that the city doesn’t use the cost avoidance to reduce the cost of living in that development.
I wonder if HOA’s are allowed to go bankrupt.
Many cities can not afford (or are too lazy) to suddenly take on the services (trash, street cleaning, etc) and maintenance (of common infrastructure) that an additional subdivision of new houses would add. So they create an ordinance/law saying that new subdivisions must have an HOA or they don’t get approved for construction. The developer has no interest in running an HOA so they out source that part to a for profit company that can set up and run a turnkey HOA…
I don’t think that is entirely true. It is becoming harder and harder to buy a house which isn’t in an HOA. Since most new housing has a legal requirement to have an HOA, it is only going to get hard to avoid HOA control.
Congrats on not living in HOA. This was also an intentional decision for me as well, but did reduce the available options.
Not true. You only have the right to opt out when an HOA is formed. In some areas the next owner must join, in others they can file paperwork to “inherit” your opt out.
However, it can be surprisingly easy to dissolve an inattentive HOA.
In some areas you only need to post on the town bulletin board that there will be a vote by attending members in 90 days.
If they don’t show up, too bad for them.
I dissolved 2 HOAs like this so far.
Both voted to reform, but I went to every single house and let them know they could opt out when it happened, and several did.
And this is why I would never live in a place with an HOA. My property, my rules.
Granted, I would cooperate with my neighbors by keeping my lawn mowed, the house looking decent,
and doing my best to be a good neighbor. However, I’m the one paying the mortgage and taxes.
When you buy my house, then you can do what you want with it. A wire running to a tree probably
wouldn’t be noticed by most people as they have their noses stuck in a phone anyway.
Yeah this is why I live in the county. And the county I live in doesn’t give a crap what I do as long as it isn’t growing illegal plants or making other recreational substances. I can raise hogs in my yard if I like. Of course my neighbors can too, but that’s why I bought enough land that I can’t even see their houses.
Tyrannical HOA’s get us open source spy antennas. Stop crying about the HOA and look at it from a new angle.
There are a lot of “hacks” here that aren’t hacks in my book, just projects. Some are rather interesting ones.
This one is a proper hack!
Not really. Federal law prohibits enforcement of any HoA rule which would preempt the FCC’s authority, including any prohibition of antennas. That’s why you see them all over apartment railings, too. No one can prohibit them, period.
I thought I had read somewhere that per the FCC anyone may install antennae contrary to local rules
Last I knew, the law had no teeth. In other words, good luck with that.
Untrue. It won’t punish an HoA for attempting enforcement, but it also means that if the HoA sends you any complaints you can file for an injunction.
If it’s the same law I vaguely remember reading, it only applied to TV antennas. Maybe that’s a loophole that could be leveraged though.
In the USA it’s called OTARD – Over-the-Air Reception Devices – and only applies to “reasonable” antennas for TV reception.
https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
It provides significant override authority over HOA’s, but only far enough to install an antenna minimally-sufficient to get whatever service one is trying to receive. It’s not carte blanche to install a 100 foot tower with a huge beam antenna when a 10 ft pole with a small antenna will do.
It also applies to satellite dishes and now FWA (cellular internet). My HOA blatantly ignores it.
If I had the desire I would install an antenna then file a complaint with the FCC (standard process when an HOA does what mine is doing)
When I was in college about 1970 we used the flashing around the dorm as a long wire antenna for the college radio station – the station was FM but not a lot of FM radios around – so we converted the audio to an AM signal low power for the dorm. One small problem the new flashing antenna worked too well – the AM signal reached well over 70 miles – so the tech’s had to turn the power way down – so nothing new with the gutter as an antenna
When I was in JR High School – I put a long wire antenna in the attic for listening to away stations
If I ever find myself unfortunate to live in an HOA again, I would be running for a seat on the board using the platform, “Take the teeth out of the HOA!” I would be reminding the rest of the board at every meeting that the best way to raise property values is to treat your neighbors with dignity and respect rather than suspicion and demands. If ever the majority started thinking my way, I’d do my best to amend the bylaws by removing every line possible. “Abolish the HOA!”
“What’s that hashtag doing in front of several lines in the revised HOA charter?”
“OH! Those indicate comments!”
B^)
My friend did that in at the HOA that he lived at in Orlando. He was neck and neck with the old power block, people were tired of arbitrary crap. Then he went to a neighborhood party, got roofied, arrested as drunk and disorderly, and held in the drunk tank, his wife got a death threat and was also told that “next time we won’t use a light dose on your husband”.
HOAs collect money. Money means power. Some places care, some places are power hungry. I avoided an HOA that required you purchase cable and water for lawn watering from the HOA…in your monthly fee. All that money being administered by a private organization. Someone is gonna have their hand out and they will want to keep it out.
Charlie is dead now. Old friends, old stories.
I’ve never had any sympathy at all for folks who knowingly sign the restrictions for an HOA and then complain about it afterward, and it’s hardly honorable to violate them having officially agreed to them. Much less so to brag about it like the guy in this article. I think HOAs are overbearing and the HOA officials are often ridiculous, but they only exist because people agree to them.
As I said before:
Sometimes you have no choice
A homeowner signs a contract for specific rules when they purchase a house CC&R’s, a HOA changes that contract regularly without the homeowner’s approval. THAT is the piece that is BS.
Yet its not like I can just tell them that I have decided to change the dues to pay them.
Could you imagine if you took a mortgage at 2%, Then a year later the bank just decides your rate is now 10%?
I am failing to see any legal mechanism where a contract is open ended for only one of the parties to change with impunity.
I would think the contract wording at the moment it was signed would be the only thing legally binding. If they change it after the fact, and they didnt get you to approve/sign the modification, you would only be bound to the original contract.
Unless somehow their sleazeball lawyers wrote something into the original contract allowing them to do so, in which case I would have them remove that wording before signing, or I just wouldnt sign.
America is a big place with lots of open land left. Just need to find some that works for you.
Well, the homeowner signed a contract which let someone else change the terms. IMO, that is a stupid thing to do and even worse to complain about having done it.
But for many people the choice is sign the stupid contract giving a private equity company massive control over your house, or not owning a house.
It is becoming harder and harder to buy a home which doesn’t have a HOA.
Such a thing is patently illegal for any other contract and there is no carve out for a HOA. For instance if that were in a prenup/mortgage/sale or anything else it would immediately be tossed by a court.
A contract contrary to law is not a valid contract Mrs. Grundy.
You have no choice.
If the HOA has control over an area, you agree or look for a different property.
You can only opt out of an HOA when it is being created, and many areas don’t let that opt out transfer to the next owner.
There are places where every single property on the market is controlled by an HOA.
Yep 100%.
“look for a different property”
Then do just that. The truth is that people want SOME of the advantages that an HOA provides for them and are willing to sign a contract for it even if they have no intention of honoring all of it. Nobody is holding a gun to their head to live there. They get exactly what they signed up for and should stop complaining about it. The solution is not to sign it … not complain about it afterward.
I don’t think this is really true in all cases. In fact it is becoming rarer that you can purchase a property that doesn’t have an HOA. In some states it is near impossible to find non-HOA homes. Also, almost all newly built single family homes have an HOA.
So basically you are saying: don’t buy a home, just rent somebody else’s home (which is probably in an HOA anyway….).
https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule#:~:text=Section%201.4000)%20took%20effect%20in,or%20transmit%20fixed%20wireless%20signals.
HOA rule against federal law.
You really should read the rules at the link you posted, as they say the opposite of what you claim. There is no federal law stopping HOAs from banning Ham antennas. The OTARD rule only covers TV and internet services. Ham radio is not covered.
The FCC has laws prohibiting anybody except them, ant the FAA from placing regulations on communications antennae. I read about one case, where a Northern Virginia city had denied a ham his antenna structure, and the FCC showed up at the court hearing. They told the city it would lose EVERY license it issued, unless the ham got approved. Police radios and radar, fire radio, city department radios, everything. I’d put my gear up in a normal configuration, and sue the HOA into extinction, if neccessary.
sigh Citation or it didn’t happen.
In fact, Virginia has a law specifically prohibiting some restrictions on Ham antennas. It’s from 1998:
https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title15.2/chapter22/section15.2-2293.1/
Note that law does not prohibit HOAs from restricting antennas as that is a contractual agreement, not a government ordinance. Note that law is also not carte blanche to put up whatever you want. There can still be “reasonable requirements” with examples given in the law.
I live in a POA (Property Owners Association), no crazy rules about our houses, they maintain the roads and ditches, our dock on Table Rock Lake and dues include all the water we can use from our water plant. However, they voted to double our dues next year ($650 yr) and then they said due to a “shortfall” (ie crap management ) over the years they made us pay “retro-dues” and charged us the difference in the fee back to first of this year, after we had already paid our 2024 dues ($375). Under contract law this was illegal. We paid it rather than fight it. So the dumbassery happens here too.
I have a lot of wireless devices (home control via Google) with a range extender for the 1/2 acre property out buildings. However my elderly neighbor saw my Davis Wireless Vantage Pro 2 weather station, asked about it and now claims it is causing problems with her Dish TV. 🤣 Since our POA bylaws don’t have anything about RF interference or neighbor complaints, I just ignore her. Told her she needs to trim the trees branches in front of her dish that have grown over the years…but she said that isn’t the problem.🤣
Even though we
I would be afraid of any “dirty” connections between the various pieces of the gutter. Crap/corrosion can build up in the joints, creating diodes that would be ripe in mixing signals and producing interference. Granted, probably not as much as a tower joint in a VHF/UHF environment, but it can/does happen. Or high RF voltages sparking and causing any fires? I should also warn about backyard critters (pets, children, drunk friends) coming in contact with the gutter. That hurts!
Where I live, the only restrictions are the Deed restrictions: no single-wides, no multi-family, & no pigs.
We can have horses (neighbor had 2 minis, Bonny and Clyde) , yagis, chickens, towers, goats, dishes…
So I thought… We could START an HOA— myself, the wife KA5HHZ, the neighbors KG5KL, KA5FZU, and K4ES…
It would be a Ham Operators Association! :-)
REQUIRED: 1 antenna at least 30′ high (pole or tower), minimum VHF capabilities – HF preferred, well, you get the idea….
Where I live, it’s more like “as long as you aren’t growing drugs, killing people, or keeping the neighborhood awake with your noise at night, it’s fine”. If you tried to tell my neighbor what to do with his property, you’d find out just how often he practices with that ridiculous gun he always carries. I carry something much more “low key” but he loves carrying around the AR-15 pistol. This is the way it should be. Bureaucracy is cancer. We kicked the redcoats out of the USA for a reason and we’ll do it again if we have to.
Now this sounds like my kind of place to live!
You’ll come crawling back one day!
🇬🇧👑
Oy mate, you got a loicense for that opinion? :-)
I know that most news is corporate nowadays and it is difficult to tell what is actually going on without actually being present at the place being discussed, but the news sure is making things look bad in the UK right now. Putting people in prison for stating their opinions? Is that real? It appears to be so. At the same time, letting people go free who commit unspeakable crimes against women and children, simply because of their ethnic background?
I joke about 1776 and the redcoats all the time, but in reality I really hope the good people in the UK are able to overcome this scourge, literally every piece of information I find seems to indicate that things are quite bad for those of you who still love liberty. Be well, sir!
I have about 1200 meters of fence line on my property boundary that varies in altitude by about 20 meters, I wonder what I could use it for? Perhaps to support an antenna, but what could you do with a sky facing loop that large?
Daniel, would it possibly work, If you ran a wire about 20 cm approx, above the ground and then another wire at maybe 4 meters above the ground. With everything on insulators, like an electric fence.
Tie them together as your antenna loop of course.
If anyone asks? It’s an electric fence to keep shuffling possums and leaping deer away from your pot(s) of pepper plants or tomato patch.
Maybe you could say it is one of those Shabat strings/wires that Hebrews use to limit travel on their Sabbath? IIRC, there is one surrounding Manhattan Island. Trying get it removed would be an infringement of your First Amendment Rights! B^)
Ah! I think this is what I was referring to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv
I am in the USA. My Landlord aggresively BANS any sort of antennas, especially amateur radio antennas. The ARRL could have fought for our right for US licensed amateur radio operators to erect simple yet reasonably effective antennas for the benefit of the general public, but the ARRL decided to abandon us instead. It was on that day I abandoned the ARRL forever, and I have never had an effective outdoor antenna ever since.
Thank you for sharing your tragic story of someone who just can’t cope but what the heck is wrong with you?
Please!
[Drone] has posted a number of informative comments over the years, and I appreciate that he often provides footnotes/links to back up what he(?) writes.
I also find many of your comments worth reading as well, please don’t stoop this low.
We have building codes and zoning regs to follow (and a procedure for minor variances which are usually easy to win), and condominiums have boards with rulez. but we thankfully have no bs like HOAs.
Anyway, out of laziness, I put a lead-in on a section of 2nd floor eavestrough to use as a SW listening antenna, and it wasn’t terrible… but there’s still about nothing to listen to any more, and a forest of EMI to hack through.
“[..] made most contacts on 20 metres [..]”
That sums it up pretty much. 20m still is a fine band.
It’s good for International conversations, but its small wavelength is another advantage.
The antenna is rather small at full size, while simultanously being very effective.
At 14 MHz, it’s also above 10 MHz were the noise floor begins to decrease a lot.
Too bad It’s one of those exclusive bands most hams can’t operate.
Both 40m and 20m are reserved for the highest license class.
It’s easier to operate via QO-100 instead, at leat here in parts of IARU Region 1.
Is this accurate? I have an FCC general license and my reading of the band plan shows a chunk of 20m that I can use. ‘highest license class’ is an Amateur Extra, I’m just a mid level scrub
Why are my comments getting deleted? They contain no profanity or personal insults.
Are they on the “wrong” side of the political spectrum?
Is HaD now deleting comments which do not conform to a certain political thinking?
If so, I think readers and commenters deserve to know this…
Hackaday has been more tolerant under the current leadership.
Previously I’ve had comments deleted that expressed my conservative views.
You’ve also toned down a bit though, to be fair. (Or have we just become numb to the hot-takes?)
[J. Samson]
I might’ve learned my lesson.
B^)
No, I don’t think so. They were not political comments. One may have been deleted as the (also non-political, non-insulting, not-profane) parent post was deleted. It had a false assertion that ham antennas are exempt from HOA rules. But the other was a in a thread that still exists.
I don’t mind HaD deleting comments that are rude or way off-topic, but I’d like to see them leave a “comment deleted” marker so we know, similar to what reddit does. Shadow deletions are… troubling. Transparency is preferable.
I agree. I once made a critical comment about an US aircraft carrier ship and my post disappeared. It wasn’t political, but provoking maybe. I’ve essentially wondered why peaceful ships such as explorer ships won’t get same admiration. Ok, in hindsight maybe it got removed for good reason. I’m from Europe and have my difficulties to understand US nature.
Joshua, in order to understand US nature, look up the differences between a Republic and a Democracy. Short story is this – In a Republic, liberties are inalienable – They cannot be revoked. In a Democracy, any right or privilege can be revoked with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen. Now observe that over past decades, the banks, corporations, media have been trying to deceive Americans into believing that the USA is a Democracy, with great success. A huge number of enemy combatants who push this false doctrine are now in positions of power within local, state, and federal governments and other bureaucracies. Mix this with the impossibly rich constantly funding this chaos in order to further radicalize people for this false Democracy concept in order to achieve greater and greater profits from the wholly corrupt financial markets, and mix that with somewhere between 35% and 50% of the country still being fully aware that the USA is a Republic and all of these new “laws” implemented under the false Democracy are null and void. We are nowhere near peak chaos, these really haven’t been hard times the past 20 years or so. Hard times will come, and what’s happening right now is barely the beginning.
I cannot fathom having an HOA. I cannot fathom being reliant on literally anyone else for anything. I can not imagine someone else telling me what my property can and can not look like without me laughing them off of the property with my gun on my belt (COMPLETE WITH HIGH CAPACITY MAGAZINE CLIPS AND ARMOR PIERCING LUNG EXPLODER AMMUNITION, WATER IS FOR TOILETS, BRAWNDO IS WHAT PLANTS CRAVE). I don’t understand how people end up living in a house that is more or less owned by one of these HOA’s. Who on earth would think this is a good idea?
Oh, wait, I am pretty sure half of any developed country are consooomers who live their life consuming pictures on a screen. Who cares what’s going on outside of that screen. Self reliance? Psh. That’s for the birds
Where i live, there are HOAs, but they have no power over property owners. They are more like community clubs, where they organise some events and take part in neighbourhood planning and such.
HOAs in the states are a completely insane concept. Someone please explain to me how US HOAs have a right to ticket people, let alone take someones property and sell it? They are not officials. Can anybody just get someone to sign a paper and get powers like that? I doubt it, so how do HOAs have that and how does it get forced to the next owner of the property, who has not signed the “contract”?
US HOAs’ powers need to be stripped away fully, just like the non-compete agreements were about to be terminated (and hopefully will be). Here non-compete agreements happen, but they are unenforcreable in most cases.
Jii that sounds downright crazy! I am not familiar with how an HOA comes to be. It could never happen in my area, most of the homes within even miles of me are in such disrepair (we are just patching them up as necessary to keep them livable) that every one would be considered a “teardown and rebuild” by modern standards. I don’t think you could create an HOA where not a single house would pass any inspection :-). I don’t think a single house within 10 miles of me has been painted in the last decade or more. Hardly anybody mows their lawns because lawnmowers are a waste of money except for keeping grass away from the gardens and edges of buildings and such.
As far as taking someone’s home and trying to sell it from underneath them, that is a very corporate/bank-ish concept, people have allowed the banks and corporations to wield too much power over them by borrowing money from these crooks. I doubt that more than a small fraction of houses in my area could have anything loaned on them, most of them barely quality for basic home insurance, mine sure doesn’t.
As the corporations and banks continue to work feverishly in their great taking of wealth, I suspect we will see more and more rebellious actions by citizens. For instance, I’ve observed two types of “you are not ever going to take my house” people – Mind you these are people who owe nothing on their homes (because they could never borrow anything against them anyway) – The first group are the “stay and fight” type – I think this would be called “prepper” – These people will simply fight to the death to defend their property no matter what. The other group are what I call the “scorched earth” group – If these people were put in a situation where some bureaucratic entity had moved on their area and increased costs (namely property taxes, etc) to the unsurvivable point, and were making a move to try and take these properties, these people would simply make the ground toxic, burn it all down, and walk away. I find the prepper group to be rather unrealistic, you can not prep for more than a small percentage of forseeable outcomes so unless you have the ability to see the future, you’re probably wasting your time. The latter group seems much more realistic – Most people in lower income rural areas have lots of used engine oil from doing their own oil changes, fuel cans for emergency preparedness, etc. If a bureaucratic entity seeks to take what you own, and is about to succeed, you can simply poke holes in the ground and dump that used oil down them, set the place afire and walk away – now the bureaucrats have an EPA superfund site to deal with. Then the homeowner can go be homeless in the cities in order to further break down the bureaucratic system. Or commit enough petty crimes in order to attain free room and board at some jail, etc. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Surviving is often the better option.
What’s the point if they don’t really transmit any “information”?
Even funny cat images are better than rssi reading.
Ms. Nagy, it was during a contest (NAQP).
Speed of the exchange is the point. No time for chit-chat.
The neat thing about HOA’s is they rarely have enough money for a lawyer, and even more rarely read the laws. I’m no the biggest fan of the FCC, but anytime I can use them to bludgeon a power drunk NIMBY HOA I relish the opportunity.
On an unrelated note, if you live in area with wild pigs you can scatter deer corn in an unpleasant neighbor’s yard and the pigs will do quite a lot of expensive damage rooting up the turf for more corn. Planting wisteria is effective too. Its beautiful, is as aggressive as kudzu, and takes a scorched earth approach to eradicate once it takes root.
I would have a hard time not capturing and eating the bigs… Some say that bacon is better than true love… For some people, true love never happens even once but bacon can happen as many times as you want it to as long as you can find a pig! I have only had bacon a few times in the past year due to all the cost increases and if I see a wild boar, I’m eating it!!!
I do love the creativity of putting nature to work, btw. Similar to the bird seed on cars concept, lol.
“Boar” i.e. unneutered male meat is somewhat “rank”, you may get bacon, but it may take some work to get it palatable.
I’m just going by hearsay.
Many/most HOA are ran by management service companies. These companies have plenty of money for lawyers. But that doesn’t really matter because they will bill you for any legal work they have to do (like sending you a letter saying you antenna is too long). Also expect to pay interest on the legal expenses they are billing you for, and a late fee, and interest on the late fee, and a late fee late fee, etc…
HOAs are big business. If you’re in a nearly broke poorly self administered HOA you are likely in danger of having a private equity HOA management service take over running your HOA.
When we were looking at my house before I bought it I asked the realtor if there was an HOA. There was not.. I told her good, because I won’t buy a home with one. She said she had never heard that before, everyone always wants one. Well, about 15 years later I am still without an HOA and glad for it!
I will never buy a house with an HOA.
When all you westerners run out of water and flock this way… leave that BS with you!
I don’t at all agree with you on rechargeable cars, but I do agree with you on this.
I am not sure where you are located but in Michigan we have already seen many people flocking to our rural areas trying to escape cities out west.
Their experience can be described as “shellshock”. First they have to get used to the roads with all the potholes and missing painted lines, and the deer and many other creatures that like to be in those pothole-ridden roads at night.
Then they have to get used to the lack of availability of large amounts of entertainment and cell phone coverage.
Then they have to accept that if they don’t want to learn to fix problems with their newly purchased (but likely old and rotted) house themselves, they are going to have to pay some contractor a ridiculous amount of money to do it for them.
Then they find out that gardening, keeping of chickens and other fowl, and other farm animals requires actual back-breaking, sweat-inducing hard work while being assaulted by mosquitoes, ticks, and all other manner of small insect.
Then they find out that county-level services like plowing the roads in the winter isn’t really that reliable and good luck finding someone to plow your driveway for a reasonable price if you aren’t willing to shovel it yourself.
I’ve watched 2 couples from california move into my area and leave within 2-3 years. I don’t know where they went, but I suspect they departed for a place that has an HOA ;-)
US federal law prevents any state government, municipality, or HOA from stopping a homeowner from erecting a radio tower on their property. In fact this is so well codified in law that’s it’s often a threat homeowners can use when an overbearing HOA is trying to f with them over something else:
I.e. “ok I won’t park my truck in the drive but I’m building a 175ft radio tower and you can not stop me, unless I can park my truck in the drive after all, then I’ll give up my amateur radio hobby”
sigh Last time: That is completely untrue.
HOAs absolutely can and do restrict antennas and there is no federal law that prevents them.
Please read and learn: https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
Note that only covers some commercial fixed wireless services. And there can still be restrictions.
Ham radio and all other radio is not covered at all.
Thank you for your reading comprehension. :)
“53 THOUGHTS ON “HIDDEN GUTTER ANTENNA KEEPS HOA HAPPY”
This was showing 104 comments the last I looked. Currently I count 15 comments (not including this one).
I can not help but notice all the comments pointing out the evils of HOA management companies have been removed…. Hopefully a human moderator will restore those…
There are not many comments left. Guessing that all the pro-rechargeable-car and pro-HOA shills are clicking report en masse? Very strange. You know you’re saying the right thing when this happens. Never stop speaking the truth! Or, if you’re a Galaxy Quest fan, Never give up, never surrender!
It looks like one of the mods is fixing the problem… Good for them.
I was one of those who complained about this site “back in the day”, when moderation wasn’t great, and a lot of “hacks” weren’t “hacks” but just mimic projects re-posted from mimic sites. I’ve noticed that over the last year or so they have been making an increasing effort to post more unique content; I have accepted that the “hackaday” name will remain despite much of the posting not really being related to genuine hacking and that is fine. This situation here indicates that moderation has also improved. There is hope for this site. I have watched far too many electronics blogs/sites die unnecessary deaths and I hope that this one continues for the long run.
Wait till they found out it’s 100% Federally protected if you are licensed and the nice amount they can get fined by even mentioning taking it down or that it goes against their “rules”. Even more if it’s actually written. (This goes for OTA TV antennas and satellite tho no license needed obviously)
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. NO ANTENNAS are “100% federally protected.” That is just completely ignorant of the facts. You must educate yourself by reading the FCC OTARD rules which I will link again: https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
HOA’s may not prevent antennas from being installed for covered services, but THEY CAN RESTRICT those antennas to be no more than is “reasonably required” to reliably receive that service.
Amateur radio IS NOT covered by OTARD!
Thank you for your courage, seriously. I thankfully have not lived in an HOA (having grown up in rural America it’s hard to imagine), and do not know how federal
lawregulations affect HOA contracts, but you have taken the time to drop fact bombs over and over in the comments on this article, and are spending your time to keep the conversation on factual footing.Hats off to you, [Gamma Raymond]!
Putting up antennas in HOA’s no matter how inconspicuous they are, makes you a liar and a cheat. You know damn well what you’re getting into when you sign your name on that buying contract. People move into HOA’s out of pure convenience. Whether it’s because they’re too lazy to do things like mow the lawn. I’ll be damned if I’m going to buy something that some “entity” is going to tell me what I can or can’t do to it. I mean is a house really ever yours? Try putting on an addition without a permit, or don’t pay your property taxes, you’ll quickly realize it’s never really yours to begin with.
It’s very simple if you want to put up antennas don’t move into an HOA. Don’t feed me the malarkey that there’s nowhere to move that’s not an HOA. There’s plenty of places to live that are basically in the middle of nowhere that don’t have HOA’s.