Measuring the Height of a Tree

When I read the June 2004 issue of QST's The Doctor is IN column, I nearly fell out of my chair laughing. Somebody had written a question to the Doctor--he wanted to measure the height of a tree, probably with the idea that his amateur radio antennas need to be higher than the trees. The Doctor gave a very good trigonometry lesson, also throwing in a good mix of Sun position data to answer the question. While a completely valid approach, it's an awful lot of work.

When I showed my Dad the column he responded the same way--he laughed. Every First Class rank Boy Scout can tell you how to simply measure the height of a tree or other structure. My Dad wrote a letter to the Doctor explaining these techniques and I supplied a drawing of one of them. Our letter was published in the August 2004 issue of QST.

You can read both the original question and answer (from June's QST) and our response (August QST) in this PDF file (274 kB, requires the free Adobe Reader).