Hi Charlie, I have been using plain ol' 1/2" twisted polypropylene rope, made by LeHigh. It's available in 300' spools for around $48 I think it was. I bought a spool of this plus a big, red plastic
Hello Bob, Another big plus in the c-4's favor is reduced maintenance: there are no traps and associated connections to hold bugs, water, arc-over, etc and go bad. Definitely DO spend the extra $35 o
Hello Mike, The "yield stress", measured in pounds per square inch, is a property of the material the mast is made from, regardless of its physical shape. The material strength (yield stress) *AND* t
I dug this out of the archives I have at http://www.qsl.net/mparc/towers.txt << Preforms are color-coded for EHS wire sizes. The coding is: 1/8" Blue 3/16" Red 1/4" Yellow 9/32" Blue 5/16" Black 3/8"
Hello Barry; Yes, choke baluns really work. I just finished assembling my C-3E, including the choke balun. It takes many feet of coax to make the pigtail for this antenna when you account for the bal
Hello Brian, Lightning abatement seems to be at least a two step approach: 1) Provide dissipation ("porcupines") 2) Provide a preferred strike current path ("lightning rod"/"air terminal"). Dissipati
Hi Jim, I found some rubber compression couplings at the local Lowes/Home Depot store in the plumbing section. They are made to join underground sections of iron pipe. They have a black rubber boot,
<< Hoping to get some tips from folks who have been there with their F12 C3/4 tuning on 10m. My C3S 10m resonance refuses to go lower than 28.8, even with the 10m driver extended "one hole" beyond fa
Hello Roy, You'll be pleased to know that there is a Rohn Dealer in Greensboro, NC. You can pick up your tower yourself and save some freight. I live in Southeast Virginia and a friend and I made a t
Hello again, Roy, Steve is absolutely right here, I neglected to include those three little letters E-H-S in the sentence about getting cable and grips from a local utility. My local cable company *d
Hi Tom, For the sections inside the tower, I would install a thrust bearing above the first mast joint to take the bending stress off the joints. From here down to the rotor, then, you would have mos
Greetings Gang; Last year, I helped a friend refurbish a TA-33 that he purchased used. It had similar problems. SWR wasn't too bad on 10 & 15, but on 20 it was 2:1, but not quite as bad as yours. Our
Greetings Gang, Are any of you using diplexers or triplexers to make your feedlines do multiple duty on several bands? I'm looking at the units made by Diamond. They have a triplexer for HF/VHF/UHF a
Greetings Gang! Has anyone seen the "D" version of the C-3, rated for 100mph? The standard C-3 is rated for 80 mph, and my county is rated as about an 85 mph windspeed zone. I imagine that the D vers
Hello Gang; Can any of you post the 'maximum wind survivability' for some of the popular triband beams other than Force 12? For instance, in Force 12's literature, their standard C-3/C-4 series 10-15
Greetings TowerTalkers; I recently found myself looking for a better way to take tools and parts up the tower and have them available at hand and eye level. It has become so handy I thought I would p
Hi Mike Not a silly question at all. I think I see the source of confusion here: the difference between the working load of the item and its ultimate strength. In the case of a 3/8" forged, eye-to-ey
Greetings from Gloucester, I missed this thread over the weekend. It sure has made for interesting reading with lots of good, thought-provoking, amicable discussion. I may have missed it, but no one
Hi John and welcome to the reflector! This is a tremendous resource. You might start with a tour of the Towertalk FAQ's at: http://www.contesting.com/towertalkfaq.html Most of the common topics are w
<< I've heard of guys soldering a hose fitting to the end of the copper pipe, and hooking up the garden hose to it, and just working it into the ground by shoving and wiggling it around. I've never t