Tower & Antennas @ WB4IUY/AC4QD

This is a pic of my tower. It's built from several different sections of old tower parts that I picked up in the years between 1986 & 1993. I didn't have the money to buy a good, new tower at the time...so I scavenged pieces over several years to construct this. The top section is a flat-top section with a thrust bearing that I made from a section of tower that was damaged in a fall. I cut the part off that was damaged, welded in a rotator plate and a flat top section for the thrust bearing.

By 1993, I finally had enough to put up 105' of Rohn 25. My oldest son & I stripped each piece of tower with a wire brush and paint stripper, and we cold galvanized it in my back yard on saw horses with plastic laid out on the grass to protect it. We then erected the tower by our self using a home made jin pole, Chris's 4-wheeler, and a snatch block. It's guyed at 100%...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 (no concrete base), and the anchors for the guy cables are 4' screw-in mobile home 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 has survived 2 hurricanes, including hurricane Fran that dropped 21 trees of at least 60' each on our property...yet the tower was uncompromised. The drive-in base has suffered from no errosion, and there has been no obvious settling.

These pics are fairly current...if you click HERE or on the photo above you'll get a slideshow of the tower taken over several years. My tower currently supports 15 antennas. They are:

- 15' tall Diamond 2m/440 Vertical, top mounted @ 117'
- Cushcraft 17B3, vertically polarized, @ 114'
- Cushcraft 17B3, horizontally polarized, @ 111'
- Cushcraft 5el 6m yagi @ 108'
- Cushcraft A3S HF Yagi @ 105'
- Fixed 5el 2m yagi @ 95' pointed 150 degrees
- Fixed 11el 220 yagi @ 95' pointed 225 degrees
- 3ea. 40m full slopers (top guy wires) @ 45, 315, & 180 degrees
- 80m & 160m doublet @ 100', pulled 160 & 300 degrees
- Fixed 3el 440 yagi @ 65' pointed 170 degrees
- Fixed 3el 2m yagi @ 45' pointed 170 degrees
- Fixed 3el 2m yagi @ 35' pointed 210 degrees

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, only to learn that the solid foam dielectric has a tendancy to push itself out of the connectors on long runs due to expansion when hot. I've never had this issue, but a local repeater owner tried it on his tower and ran into this issue. I'm happy with the cable and all is well...

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.

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.