Thanks Lee. It's great to hear from folks who have REAL experience in these things. A long time ago and far, far away, I worked as a mechanical technician at a company named American Electronic Labs, AEL for short. They're still in business owned by a large British military conglomerate.
Anyway... they made all kinds of sophisticated communications and electronic warfare stuff and had telephone poles in their back lot on which they mounted experimental antennas and stuff and we had to be trained to climb them. They taught me how to use pole spikes and I was terrible at it.
It was a summer job while I was in college so they really didn't want me up on the poles anyhow. I worked there from the summer of my freshman year until a year after I graduated. Each summer I got a raise until I was receiving journeyman's wages at the end.
The fellows were highly talented and could do literally anything. They could machine, weld, work precision sheet metal, install, wire, do field work...anything. And they were very helpful in teaching me. When I became a shop teacher, that vast generalist experience really paid off.
The time was 1964 through 1968 so Viet Nam was really heating up and their business was booming.
