It is quiet on towertalk and I have several related items that I think will be
of interest to some of you?
First, I met a newly licensed ham recently who had never made a qso. But he is
very enthusiastic and has an xyl ham also. He came over to visit and when I
told and showed him my Steppr that was still in boxes in the garage, he
volunteered to help put it together and up on my LM470.
Well, it turned out that he is a retired mechanical engineer and was far better
than me at understanding the assembly instructions and actually took charge and
I wound up helping him. Moral of this is that we often think of us helping the
NEWBIES, but they may be helping us.
Second, in order to get the benefit of a lower angle of radiation I had
purchased a 2 element Steppr that I wanted to mount between the Monstr at the
top of the 70' tower and ground. This NEWBIE designed a "sidearm?" platform to
bolt onto the top plates of the second section of the LM470. We took it to a
machine shop/ welding place who fabricated it. It fit perfectly on the tower
after drilling three holes in the tower plate.
Did the 2 element steppr work? The rotator is mounted about a foot from the
tower and I asked Fluidmotion to build the 2 element boom such that I could end
mount it to the rotator. It's cabling comes down on one side of the tower and
the cabling for the Monstr comes down on the opposite side of the tower so
there in interference. The 2 element rotates about 250 degrees before coming
close to the tower. During the recent cw sweepstakes, we tried numerous time
to qso with Alaska and Northwest territory without success because of the
constant pileup.
However, in both cases when we applied the 180 degree reversal with the Steppir
we made the qso. Others have given up on the idea of mounting a beam lower on
a crankup because of cabling interference but the Steppir eliminates that
problem.
Third, the NEWBIE planned how to raise the Steppr Monstr to the top of the
LM470. Here is how we did it. We made a number of sub-assembles of the Monstr
in the garage and then assemble the entire antenna on tables with one end of
the boom directly under the tower top and the other end straight out from the
tower. We then tied the close end of the boom to the top end of the tower
through a pulley with the rope going down to the bottom of tower. We used the
tilt winch to tilt the tower up pulling the Monstr up with it. The far end of
the boom was on a Nursery type wagon so as not to injure the element housing.
When the tower pulled the Monstr up, the wagon with the far end of the boom was
pulled toward the tower. The Monstr boom was pulled up about 30 feet to a
point where we had previously determined that the boom would be at a 90 degree
angle from the tower. The boom was then securely anchored to stay fixed at
this angle. The tower rope at the bottom was then unloose
ned and the tower tilted back down until the tower mast was in line with the
Monstr mast plate U bolts. In about a minute or two we jiggled the Monstr and
extended the tower mast through the U bolts. It really worked well. Of course
we had to tighten the U bolts, attached and route the cabling by climbing about
15 feet up a ladder.
Again this plan was the NEWBIE'S! Not only did we raise the Monstr fully
assembled but the tower also had the 2 element fully assembled during all this
too.
k7puc
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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