We have been on a real roll around here over the past month getting things and stuff in order for a parade of guests coming to the ranch this Spring (2010). One of the largest projects - leastwise in physical terms - has been putting up the new ham radio antenna tower.
You'll recall in the earlier episode, we got the base poured - a 7-hour continuous pour with plenty of rebar (beer?). Once the forms were removed (and the concrete cured a week and a half) the next step was put the antenna up far enough so the 'raising team' (George, Ken, David, Danny, and Clarence) could have ready access to the rotator and control wiring, test out the electric winch, and get lines into position, like so... (damn handy to have a tractor with a lift bucket which avoids all kinds of hernia-sized lifting)
With the wiring in place, we then 'walked up' the Cushcraft ATB-34 (with 40 meter add-on kit) after testing its standing wave ratio (SWR) was still under 1.2:1 at the center portion of each of the four bands the antenna covers. The antenna rotator is a Yaesu 800-series...
This next is the exciting part: Actually raising the tower. The way we did this was David was at the base of the tower - playing 'pin man'. His job was to call the lift and get the critical first bolts into position so the tower would be fixed in place. George/I was on the trusty Kubota tractor with a 1/2" wire cable secured (and safe tied, of course) around the bucket of the tractor. So what was the insurance that George wouldn't 'over-shoot' the lift and have the tower crash down on him? That's where Ken driving the 4X4 Dodge work truck comes in. He's running 'back-up', so it the tower needs to go t'other way, he could tension it all with a 3/4-inch nylon line to the truck - Offset slightly to keep him out of kinetic danger, of course.
About halfway up on the lift it occurred to me "I wonder if Tashjian Towers had made the base correctly? If they didn't, we'd have a mess and a lot of work to take this all down, weld up modifications...and....well then what???..."
Almost into place now, notice the change in antenna position?
With a calm "Shoot...nuthin to it..." David got the key bolts in first pass....Tashjian engineering gets kudos...and then it was Danny's turn to put on the climbing gear and take off the lifting wire and backup line...
With the tower up, we decided to upgrade the electric winch to a new 3,000 pound model, shown in the midst of installation here. The next steps will be adding the small solar panel so the tower raising and lowering will be independent of mains power. The big panels in the background help power the server farm in George's office. We had some pretty good winds come through this weekend (40 MPH+) but with the tower in the 'down' position, antenna didn't move more than a couple of inches in the breeze (normal).
Still a couple of 'touch up' items to do which will happen when my friend Rob comes to visit. We'll rent a 35' scissor lift (If time permits) and go up and attach an 18-element 2-meter wide-spaced beam. And we used old coax to get the unit on the air. We'll be upgrading to 130' runs of ultra-low loss Times LMR-400 for both the 2-meter and HF beams.
Three lighting arresters (one ground rod each) along with new rotator cable will also go up.
But as to how it works? Stations I couldn't even hear before are coming back with S-9 to 20 db over S-9 reports and talking to Europe is now as exciting as talking to someone a few states away...huge difference in performance.
Turns out the best money you ever spend in ham radio is for the antenna. Everything else can be so-so, but if you have a great antenna, you will have a great signal and you will gain as much on receive to boot. Running high power? Don't need it as much now. But when you throw the Big Switch on the linear? 9 decibels of antenna gain turns 1.5kW of SSB into something like 12 kilowatts out toward wherever it's pointed.
If you look really closely at the following picture you'll see a small white object in the sky. Still trying to figure out how to use that as an antenna support - I mean EME aside...
Click here for Volume 9 of Hippies 2.0
George & Elaine