Ham Radio Tower Install - Old Kansas House

okay good morning this is n0m you a Mike uniform alpha Dave Coffeyville Kansas and I've had a few people ask about my tower setup wondering information on how I raise it up and down with no climbing I've got three of these they're 80 footers well 70 foot of Tower and then I got pipe going up above the rotor through the rotor and up at the top antenna is 80 feet and they want to know how I do this so I thought I'd make a video it's wrong 25 G I got this tower here is my VHF FM FM only tower I like talking all over on five to simplex start out the went to the junkyard and got a base plate concrete plate quarter inch thick and I did some welding on it made some made a hinge and I got a one inch solid piece of piping going through making the center of the hinge and got it welded on real good to the plate I found a Ron 25 G base plate and it was too thin I thought so I added another piece of quarter-inch to the bottom of and welded it together made it a little beefier and thicker and made a hinge there and weld it all up painted it and bolted started bolt entire sections to it seven sections and then that concrete pad is about four foot thick or four foot deep you don't really have to be that deep because it really don't do a whole lot but just keeps everything as supported the base plate supported you really all it's doing the guy-wires is what really holds the tower up then back here there's four foot concrete holds this gin pole the gin pole is pretty important a lot of downward pressure is going on it it don't exactly lift the tower it helps but if I was to just rely on this gin pole to raise the tower it would Bend it would Bend right there at the concrete I do have another piece of pipe inside of this one for added support but there's a pulley up on the very top this is a 20 foot up to the pulley to the ground and then there's four feet in the ground so it was originally I think it's a four and a half inch by 24 foot piece of pipe this is a 2,000 pound boat winch that came without any cable I don't believe there was cable supplied and I went to the local hardware store and bought some quarter-inch aircraft cable I don't remember how long I bought but it's quite pretty long and I'll show you that here in a second this is a Dutton DL mm a winch works great I've got it bolted there and then tack welded on the side of the pole also and eventually I'm going to take this off and put a electric 12-volt eight 9,000 pound Jeep but winch on here I'm tired of cranking this thing I used to build crank it all in one one time when I go back up in the air but now I have to we rested a little while it'd be nice to have electric winch we push a button I might do that in the near future I got a mess right now I brought the tire down to do some maintenance I got struck by lightning last week first time I've ever been struck by lightning and it's did some damage not to the antennas but to rotors it blew all three rotors on all towers I don't know how it did that but you got all three of the rotors so I got a new rotor just put it back into place and getting ready to crank the tower back up this pole very important if you do this get your pulse set at the very top there's the pulley cable runs from the winch up over the top pulley and then down towards the tower I'll show you that in a second but there's two cables at the top of this pole that support the weight of the tower as I crank it up or down it offsets the weight and these two cables go over here into concrete pads in the ground to separate pads to separate cables and they are hooked where I can low around them if I want to disconnect them and these are quarter inch cables and they're real tight right now there's there's a the tower is sitting there off the ground there's weight on the winch and getting read crank it up I've cranked this tower up and down like this I don't know how many times I try to replace the winch cable every three years just for safety and it's about do to replace the tires guide for directions not three for directions with Ron recommended guy cable it's six strand very tough stuff it's recommended by wrong I called him and asked him and years ago and they said this is what we recommend for the wrong 25g so I got it from Texas tower wasn't cheap say anyway hook I'll go up here to the top of the tower or the middle and I'll show you this pulley system I rigged up I just took a little trial and error to get this right first point the the cable goes up that pull winch cable leaves the winch goes up the pole back there comes up the top here goes to this first point here and it's a pulley steel pulley found at the junkyard a built kind of a angle iron brace there to take some of the support on the tower where maybe wouldn't you know bend the tower leg built that that turns I ever wants to my Lola grease that up a little bit depending on how much weight you got on your tower it depends on where you put this pulley you got to play with it just bring it up hinge it up rig it all up set it out there and start it took me a whole weekend to figure out where I wanted to permanently set this pulley these pulleys to where the tower will lift get back and start lifting get back and look at the tower and see if it's straight or bent as it goes up and down I actually put some barbell weights on the end of the tower and act like antennas before I mounted any antennas this is the first pulley it goes through that pulley comes down along the tower down about ten feet fifty I don't know maybe fifteen to another pulley goes through it this way the the cable is pulling from two different points on the tower not just one this this kind of helps the weight goes up evenly the cable goes back to that pole and just below that pulley up there it's bolted or clamped back to that top of that pole about six inches from the top of the from below the pulley by six inches and the cable clamped permanently up there so the that away the winch hand winch is only pulling half the weight if you've ran one cable and try to lift and from one spot your winch is going to pull a lot of weight this way if you're in the double line it back to the pole it only pulls half the weight and the dead leg cable is pulling the other half but this works real great it's been up and down I don't know how many times you know how ham radio operators are they nothing's like it like they one up and down all the time so I got a lot of weight on the end of this I don't know how much you could probably figure it up get close I've got 4m squared 12 element beams stacked Coface together they're 11 feet apart and 11 feet apart from up and down and 11 feet up part crossways brand new rotor DC rotor and power divider it's quite a quite operation to get them all matched in and everything but they're about a 1-point to match I had a GP nine up in the center of them it got hit by lightning it took a hit and blew the top section of the GP 9 blow it up blow it up and I don't have it replaced yet I'm leaving it up there what's left in case lightnings decides to distract again hopefully it will hit this instead of my expensive M squared beams it's what it did last time it hit the GP 9 didn't hurt the beams at all this tip jars fine didn't there's no marks or anything on the beams but there it is getting ready to crank it up and I probably won't show the whole thing cranking up because it I'm getting older and it takes me a while and my arms were up and that's why I'm wanting to go with the electric winch but it goes up and down pretty easy the North cars I leave fastened they just tighten up as I lift the South Col wires I had to disconnect to lower it down and also usually these beams are pointing straight up in the air I can adjust this tube your with the the antennas pointing straight up into space and they disturb your didn't change from the ground all I can have the reflectors six inches off the ground and STR stays the same as I cranked all the way up to finished level and that's nice you can adjust this to be R and not worry about it the reason it's there pointing East right now is because that's the direction I was pointing when the rotor quit or got hit by lightning I was pointing straight east so that's where I'm back lined up to point in East and I did go in and check this they are and they're there 1.2 even with them Point and close to the ground like that so I think I'm good these towers have two separate grounds going in the ground and they hook up this one stays hooked up and the other one I hook up to the bolts when I'm finished cranking the grounds didn't work too well on this lightning hit and it was real funny to come in through the gp9 the radios were all unplugged coax pulled it jumped across the PL 259 jumped across and hit the site of the radio blew that radio that radio arced over to another radio Icom 706 it survived and then from the side of that radio it hit the amplifier and there's a big burn mark on the side of the amplifier and didn't hurt the amplifier but the only radio it took out was the Kenwood tmv 71 which is a FM dual band er took it out but and it took a TV antenna out that was mounted to the tower for a bedroom TV and I did away with the the TV antenna took it off the tower but anyway there it is a unity to crank up the 4m squared 12 element beams back up to 80 feet top ones 80 feet this is fed with the 7/8 hardline and they work pretty good so all clear for now and I hope that answers some questions on the tower and if you have any questions contact me email and I want to start cranking it's hard to do holding the camera 73

Channel: Dave - N0MUA

Views: 95,548

Keywords: ham, radio, tower, install, rohn, 25g, n0mua, david joseph, no climbing, amature radio, coffeyville

Id: yWyYHULS8Fo

Length: 16min 31sec (991 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 22 2017