 (Click to enlarge photo)
|
This
is how the shack looked before my father and me
took the home improvement tools of war to the
room. We will come back here later. Because, I don’t have any current
pictures of the shack the way it looks now.
|
| Let’s start
the tour outside. The tower that I am using is an
American 50 foot tower with the first 10 foot
section in the ground. "Is that a effective
way to ground the shack?" I am using wall
mounts on the side of the garage as added
support. I don’t like towers that move, well
for that matter I don’t like towers!
It’s not the tower and it’s not
climbing a tower, it’s the fall that really
bothers me! |
 (Click to enlarge photo)
|
 
(Click to
enlarge photo)
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The
fall is the reason that my friend Stan Waldrup
(N8PJP) designed and built this cool looking hunk
of metal for the tower. It uses a huge hinge
allowing the tower to fold over. Support loops
were welded to the bottom to guy the middle
section of the tower without having to remove the
lines when folding over the tower. |
| Is that me up
there? Nope! Stan is on the tower and the other
guy on the garage is my friend Kevin. In order to
fold over the tower a section of pipe was used to
lever over the tower with a pulley at the base of
the tower. The concept worked well with no
antennas on the top, and we were able to move the
tower up and down with no problems. |
 (Click
to enlarge photo)
|
 (Click to enlarge photo)
|
Victory! At about
45 feet, and the best part is that I did not have
to climb the thing. |
| Yes, this antenna
is guaranteed to work, it snowed later that day. |
 (Click to enlarge photo)
|
 (Click to enlarge photo)
|
Now for level two,
after testing the tower with one antenna it was
time for the stacked 2 Meter verticals. |
 (Click
to enlarge photo)
|
Hi! That’s me
and the gentleman in charge of the ropes, my son
Robert, the short kid with all the hair was
Mitzie. |
| The
tower was folded over and the antennas lifted to
the top of the garage with the help of my
father-in-law Keith Metty (KE8JY) and Mike
Gilbert (N8IKS). After bolting it to the mast it
was then ready to swing the tower back up. As I
said the concept worked well… Lifting the tower one third of the way
an eye bolt broke that held the lever pipe at the
end, and dropped the tower back down to a saw
horse that was placed on the to of the garage to
hold the tower while working on the antennas. No
one was hurt and the antennas were fine.
The coax was ran to the tower
overhead to reduce the length. Hay’ 40 feet
is a lot and I’m cheap! Well, not cheap I
was low on funds for the project!
|
Tell Ya’ more
later…
(I need to take more pictures!)
Bill
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