I saw the thread title and was wondering about the tower. Fantastic! This should be (repeat should be and no pun intended) a lesson to both public and private, that distributed amateur radio is the only way to insure communications during natural and/or man made disasters. Reign in the FCC, provide education and let the local private citizens and volunteer emergency services (maybe with grants, since it falls within the domain of public security) handle the rest.
I am not a ham...but did listen to the Hurricane Net over the internet from work on Friday. It was amazing to hear the reports (uncluttered and well ahead of the media) as they came in. I did note that the amateur station at the National Hurricane Center that most of the rigs were donated by Yaesu.
http://www.fiu.edu/orgs/w4ehw/w4ehw-station.html