Kircher's is more than just friendly, functional, neatly organized, and centrally located. My friends and I enjoyed uncommonly courteous old-fashioned customer service with patience and helpful consultation. And the variety of taxidermy overhead, which ranges from deer, elk, and antelope to moose and large cats, features several majestic pieces.
I've been to the Klamath Falls area several times in the last decade, but never visited Chiloquin proper until this weekend when I came with my friend Todd on a mission to put a new community radio station on the air here. His Common Frequency organization helps communities launch new low- and full-power non-commercial/education radio stations all over the USA.
Kircher's helped us immensely toward meeting the challenge of erecting a 50-ft temporary radio tower in a tall ponderosa pine behind the home of the gentleman who is hosting the radio station in his kitchen.
Our daredevil friend Ryan was supposed to climb the tree, but he chickened out before we left from our home-bases of Sacramento and Davis, CA, 4 1/2 hours to the south. Thankfully, our junior welterweight friend Sean was game to go after his roommate lent him some climbing gear and a rappelling tutorial. It was still our plan to send a brave soul up that tree. But when we got there on Saturday and looked up, we feared certain death...or at least serious injury.
We hatched a plan to raise the tower by rope if we could build a mast section by section, but first, we need to get a rope over a branch at least 50 feet up. Our host shot an arrow with a string tied to it, and it dove over a branch about 55 feet up. We tied the end of the string to a length of rope just over 100 feet. Had the arrow gone any higher, we'd have been outta luck! With the first step of the plan successful, we headed toward Kircher's unsure about what materials we might use to build the mast, but we knew we needed something easy to concatenate without using too many tools (since we brought so few (and many of the tools that Todd did bring came from the 99¢ Only store (I learned that duct tape from said stores won't even stick to itself, so you're better off with Elmer's glue!))).
We milled and mulled mopishly around the store for 2-3 minutes before a gentleman asked if he could help us find anything. Although Todd is the master of ambiguity, Sean and I let him be our spokesman since we were spending Common Frequency's limited financial resources. Our leader enshrouded even us in a cloud of obfuscation, but the friendly representative cut through the cloud and led us into a room in the back of the store with several varieties of conduit in 11 1/2-ft sections. The copper pipe looked attractive, but we were told earlier to steer clear of that unless we wanted the tower dismantled immediately by meth addicts. The gentleman revealed some of the differences in price between the varieties and suggested ideas for concatenating the poles into a long mast. Finally, he demonstrated the easy fit of PVC pipes with alternating male/female ends, and that surely the most sensible.
Our crack staff of non-handymen did succeed in raising the antenna 11 1/2 feet at a time, attaching another pipe to the bottom and drilling in screws to make 'em extra-secure. Just as the last section was affixed to the bottom, we did have a little scare as the giant mast sorta buckled in the middle, but we had tied a rope to the mid-section and pulled it tight to the tree as we sorta maypole-danced the length of rope around the trunk in spirals before tying off the end of it in a knot that probably isn't in any Boy Scout's manual. But hey...whatever works!
If only Radio Shack in K Falls was as helpful, the new voice of Chiloquin would already be on the air. A rare type of audio adaptor is now on order and will be delivered by next weekend. read more
