It's a mess. Why put something in cron that requires attention by a human?
Sounds like an operations staff job.

At any rate, you could simply put all the jobs in one script, and then just have a little loop that checks the hour to make sure that it's been an hour since the previous one started.

something like:

punch_time_clock
backup_one

check_time
is time greater than equal to one hour?
Yes, continue
no, wait a minute and check again.

punch_time_clock
backup_two

etc...

pretty easy to put the whole thing in a ksh loop:

Code:

punch_time_clock

cat << EOF |
back_up_one
back_up_two
back_up_three
EOF
while read job ; do

  $job

  check_time
  while [[ $hour -eq $prev_hour ]]; then
    sleep 60
    check_time
  done

done