Yes, you need to start with the Armstrong version and see how hard it is. How "hard" it is to crank up a given tower depends on what kind shape you are in and other variables, like ergonomics of the
For a while, I had a 4 element 2 meter Yagi on the top of a 30 foot by 2 inch irrigation tube. The tube was bracketed to the house at about 10 ft. Worked fine, never blew down. Rick N6RK ____________
We put up an HDX-5106 in a 6 foot diameter circular hole 9 feet deep. We simply ordered a round rebar cage from a local rebar supplier and it arrived all wired together. There was no problem with it
I forgot to mention that on my cage there were some gratuitous diagonal braces that were evidently only for rigidity pre-concrete. These guys build these cages all day long. They know what they're do
I recently built a 250 pF transmitting mica cap into a weatherproof box with a relay that shorts it out when energized. This cap is on the antenna side of the balun on my 80 meter inverted vee. The a
What you say makes sense to me. However: I specifically asked UST about lubing (they don't recommend) and "exercising" (they have never heard of "exercising".) OTOH, it can't hurt, and I never belie
I was considering doing this on the tilt over winch on my tower (the crank up is already motorized). Even by hand, where the required torque is at least 50 ft lbs, I can crank it down by hand fast en
What the models don't tell you is that noise tends to be vertically polarized and thus the dipole will generally receive better than the vertical, no matter what the models say. OTOH, I haven't seen
I don't know if this analogy is valid, but I had trouble with the head gasket blowing on my Diesel Rabbit. The 3rd time it blew, they said they replaced the head bolts with ones that were intentional
Another idea I was told about protecting rotors was to mount the rotor lower in the tower so that a longer mast could be used. This is supposed to act as a torsional spring. The concept is apparently
Actually, there is no limit. My SteppIR has been slipping a little bit every week for several years. It's probably rotated 3 or 4 full revolutions in that time. I just keep recalibrating the Alfa Spi
In 1996 I borrowed a DVB encoder and receiver and tried to hack it to send my own digital video. There was a showstopper problem having to do with the encryption. Even if you wanted to send video in
Some installed MonstIR's are using Orion/M^2 2800's. Alfa Spid and ProSysTel make big rotators that would work, but they only fit inside fairly large towers (no crankups). Not even clear they could f
I was referring to the large Alfa Spid that was just announced. You are referring to the original (small) Alfa Spid. Rick N6RK _______________________________________________ ________________________
Now for some good news: A new laser/DLP display technology has been announced that (according to the hype) should obsolete plasma displays in about 2 years. See: http://www.permanent4.com/2006/04/04/
It would be interesting to visit the factory and see how they put the cables on the new towers. On my HDX-5106, I have to extend it about half way horizontally (> 50 ft!) to put the rotator in. UST s
What I did was to buy an extended taper alignment pin from McMasterCarr and pound it into the top hole with a sledge hammer. This aligns all the lower holes to the point where I can get the bolts int
I have A/B'ed verticals vs inverted vees on many bands. On 160M, a 90 ft vertical will beat a 90 ft high inverted vee by 10 to 20 dB, even on local signals. On 80, an inverted vee becomes competitiv
Measuring the change in drive impedance to estimate ground loss can be misleading. You cannot simply assume that any impedance in excess of 36 ohms represents loss. You really need to measure the fie
I tried this antenna last year and found it to be unusable due to BCB interference (I am 6 miles from a 50 kW AM station). You would think being horizontal that it simply wouldn't pick up ground wave