Tower & Antennas @ WB4IUY/AC4QD

This is the latest Tower page. The old tower page can be seen by clicking HERE. The previous tower served me well for 23 years, but it took a dive in April of 2016 when a small tornado whipped through the area and did some damage on the property. Please click the blog links below to follow along on the repairs.

This is a fairly new pic of my tower, as more antennas are being installed. It's built from Rohn 25 and was originally installed in 1993. The storm destroyed all of the antennas and broke the tower off at about 70' up. **NOTE** Be sure to click on the links below to my blog posts covering the repairs from the storm.

The top section is a flat-top section with a thrust bearing that I made from a standard section of tower. I did this by cutting off the top end or a standard tower section, welding in brackets for a removable rotator plate, and welding in a flat plate on the top for the thrust bearing.

Once the tower was cut off below the break and cleaned up, we readjusted all of the guy wires and inspected all of that thoroughly, and installed splice pieces in the top of tower section to mimic the smaller ends normally on each tower section. Next, I erected the upper sections of the tower using a gin pole, Debbie's Lawn Tractor, and a snatch block. Debbie would tie on a new section of tower, then drive out with the tractor, pulling the tower sections up to my. I wouls stack the section, get it bolted in, and we would repeat. I stacked the tower until the flat top was at 105'. I considered going further, but I'm well above the tree line at this height and there's going to be another 6' of mast and a 21' tall vertical on top of all that... That puts the tip top of the antennas up at 132'.

The tower is guyed pretty much at 100%, meaning the guy points on the ground are about as far out from the base of the tower as the tower is tall. The first anchor point is via house mount bracket at 10 feet, and it's guyed every 30 feet thereafter with 1/8" aircraft cable. The base is on a drive-in plate, and the anchors for the guy cables are 4' screw-in anchors that are set out 100' from the base in each direction. Every guy wire in each direction has a separate screw-in anchor, set out 5' from from the next lower cable, and they're tied together with more aircraft cable. This tower had survived 2 hurricanes, including hurricane Fran that dropped 21 trees of at least 60' each on our property. The tower was uncompromised until the tornado passed by. The drive-in base has suffered from no errosion, and there has been no obvious settling over the last 25 years.

These pics are current, but will be updated when I'm finished with the rebuild. If you click HERE or on the photo above, you'll get a slideshow of the previous tower taken over a span of several years. BE SURE to click the blog links below to follow along on rebuild effort...

My tower currently supports 7 antennas. They are:

- Cushcraft 13B2, horizontally polarized, @ 111'
- Cushcraft A50-5S 5el 6m yagi @ 108'
- Force-12 C-3SS 6 element HF Yagi @ 105'
- 160m, 80m, & 40m fan doublet @ 65', pulled 0 & 180 degrees
- 30m Sloper at 60' favoring SW

Most of the antennas are fed with CQ-Flexi4XL, which has loss characteristics similar to 9913. I bought a huge amount of this stuff back in 1993. I was able to recover about 1700' of this feedline after the tower failure, and put it back to use. I'm happy with the cable and all is well...

My Tower Rebuild Posts on WB4IUY.BLOGSPOT.COM

- When the Tornado hit and all of this began... 4/28/16
- Tower Up To 80'
- Tower Work, 6/24/17
- Tower Work, 6/26/17
- Tweaking the 80' Section
- Tower Work, 7/4/17
- Tower Work, 7/8-9/17
- Tower Work, 7/18/17
- Tower Work, 7/20/17
- Tower Work, 9/24/17
- Tower Work, 9/25/17
- Tower Work, 9/27/17

My Antenna Rebuild Posts on WB4IUY.BLOGSPOT.COM

- Tower Back Up To 70', Building Temporary Antennas for the Coming Winter, 11/21/16
- 1st Antenna Back Up, 80M, 11/27/16
- 2nd Antenna Back Up, 40M, 12/3/16
- 3rd Antenna Back Up, 160M, 12/13/16
- Antenna Insulator Problem, 12/22/16
- Beginning Work on 6el HF Yagi, 11/11/17
- Completing the 6el HF Yagi, 11/12/17
- Installing the 6el HF Yagi, 11/26/17
- Starting To Build a 13el 2m SSB Yagi from the Wreckage, 5/3/18
- Completing The 13el 2M SSB Yagi from the Wreckage, 5/5/18
- Building a 7el 220 mhz Yagi from the Wreckage, 5/6/18
- Beginning a Rebuild of the Cushcraft A3S, 5/10/18
- Yipee!!! More Yagi's On The Tower, 5/27/18

Daiwa CN-101 Cross Needle Wattmeter

This Daiwa CN-101 Cross Needle Wattmeter is for watching my HF transmitters. All of my HF transmitters are routed through this wattmeter, as the output from the AL-82 is plumbed directly to it first, then on to a commercial low pass filter, and on to the main antenna switch. It is another 'hamfest special', and has done a good job in the shack since sometime around 1995.

Daiwa CN-103 Cross Needle Wattmeter

This Daiwa CN-103 Cross Needle Wattmeter is for watching some of my VHF & UHF transmitters. I bought this piece many years ago at a hamfest, and it had a broken SO-239 connector on the back. I thought it would be an easy chore to replace, but it became a major production. After some drilling of rivets in the RF sensor assembly, cutting and filing on the rear panel connections, and modifications to a standard SO-239... it was finally back in operation.

Bird #43 Wattmeter

This Bird number 43 wattmeter monitors the antenna and amplifier output of my 2m SSb station. I purchased this in an estate sale sometime around 1994, and have been acquiring various slugs for it ever since. It's a very solid wattmeter, though average power reading by design.

B&W Antenna Switch

This antenna switch is actually used to switch between HF rigs in the shack. I could connect different rigs to the various antennas on a full-time basis...but I don't usually do this. One can only talk on 1 rig at the rime, right? I also have a 50 ohm dummy load connected to the switch, to shunt the feed to ground during storms.

Antenna Switch Related Posts on WB4IUY.BLOGSPOT.COM

- Repairing the B&W Antenna Switch

No-Name Antenna Switch

This antenna switch is used to switch between 3 different 40m antennas pointing NorthEast, NorthWest, & South. It also selects my 80m/160m antenna, and the Cushcraft A3S 10/15/20m Tri-bander. I don't have a clue as to the manufacturer of this switch, but it's been in operation since around 1993.

Avanti Antenna Switch

This two-position antenna switch is used to switch between 2 different 6m rigs...my Icom IC-756 for 6m SSB, and my Azden PCS-7500H for 6M FM operation. It was originally for some sort of Avanti antenna for CB. I picked it up from a local radio shop and pressed it into service on 6m. It is a simple low power antenna switch and has worked very well for many years.

Antenna Mart Remote Antenna Switch

This remote antenna switch was orignally used to select various antennas on the tower. It worked _reasonably_ well, but would ocasionally get "hung-up" between antennas and require a trip up the tower. It was finally demolished by a lightning strike, and placed out of service. I show it here because it was an interesting item, and provided several years of good service before it starting mis-behaving. I switch everything in the shack, now, and feel it is the best way to handle switching.

Turning Things...

When I put my tower up back in 1993, I didn't have much money for a rotator. I bought a super-cheapie rotator, thinking that I'd just use it for a short time and replace it with a nice rotator when it burned out (which I was sure it was going to do!). I WAY-overloaded the rotator with a stack of yagi antennas (Cushcraft A3S Tribander, Cushcraft 5 el 6m Yagi, a pair of 17B3 17 element 2m yagi's, and a dual band vertical on top of it all. Well, as of this writing in 2009, it's STILL turning without problems! The rotator is a little Alliance HD-73, and I could NEVER say anything bad about this beast...it's been frozen in ice storms, struck by lightning, ignored for maintenance, etc.

Rotator Related Posts on WB4IUY.BLOGSPOT.COM

- Light Duty Rotator, No Problem!
- HD-73 Parts Needed