Several years ago I had to replace all the insulators in the bottom set of guys on my Rohn 25 series-fed 160 m vertical due to a lightning hit that pulverised every single insulator at the bottom guy
When I put my tower up 25 years ago, I could'nt find any "non-shrinking grout" locally. The store sales clerks didn't even know what I was talking about. I needed only a small amount for the job, so
I've heard the same thing myself. I use a metal fence post driver. It is basically a heavy pipe about 2' long, with one end welded closed and a couple of handles made from rebar welded to the sides.
I went the opposite direction when I built my tower. I followed the instructions in the Rohn tower book, but went one step above the recommended size concrete piers for the base of the tower and guy
I would beware of any kind of connection that depends on mechanical pressure for contact, especially if the bus ring is buried in the ground. If soldered, you must use brazing material like silver al
I did mine the hard way. Chucked the re-bar in a vise, slipped a piece of heavy gauge steel water pipe over it, and bent it by hand. For some pieces I chucked it tightly and beat the bar into submiss
I run my open wire tuned feeders up through the middle of the tower. The tower doubles as a quarter-wave vertical on 160, so running the feedline inside the tower improves isolation of the feeders wh
Absolutely the WORST possible way to build a guyed tower is to set the bottom section in concrete. It is far better to use a base plate with a pier pin in the concrete, to allow the tower base some f
I have noticed for several years now, that my copper-clad open wire feeders accumulate a black crud that looks exactly like soot. You can rub it off with your fingers. Apparently it is some kind of f
The copper is already green. The original wire was salvaged from old open-wire railway telegraph lines. The sulphur from years of coal-burning steam locomotives gave it a good coating of copper sulph
Several years ago I heard a story about AM broadcast stations in Puerto Rico that had switched to using barbed wire fence material for ground radials because copper thieves would rip up copper wire r
I have a run of direct-burial coax simply buried a couple of inches in the ground, along with my radial system. I used to have a control cable lying on top of the ground, until it got sucked into a l
Try retyping the message, substituting "GMT" for "UTC." That makes it even more halarious Don k4kyv _______________________________________________________________ This message was typed using the DV
Here's how I ran the 3" copper strap in my shack to the outside grounding system. I ran mine through the floor, and cutting a slot would have weakened the structure more than I would like, so I drill
Re: previous discussion on using Big-Grip dead-ends, or preforms, with 3/16" guy wire and type 502 insulators. In the previous thread it was emphasised that with the insulators, dead-ends are to be a
What first got me onto this subject is that the lower set of guys on my tower uses big-grips. The rest use clamps. About 8 years ago a freak lightning hit disintegrated ALL the guy insulators in the
When my dipole used to be strung between trees, I found the best solution was to the wind damage problem was to use a heavy duty wire (#8 copperweld) and a chain of 5 strain insulators to make each e
I suspended mine from 2 X 4's laid across the hole, using the same kind of wire I used to tie the pieces of rebar together. After the concrete was poured, I shoved diagonal cutters down into the pour
Reminds me of a show I saw on NOVA years ago, about the restoration of the Parthenon in Athens. The structure had remained in almost perfect condition for over 2000 years, until sometime in the 1700
I temporarily guyed mine every section as I went up. It wasn't necessary from a structural standpoint since you can safely go at least three sections above a guy point, but it held the tower sections