A bunch of years ago a VE3 wrote up an article for CQ Magazine describing the
construction of an antenna rotator using 1/3 HP reversable motor and a
right-angle worm gear drive gearbox made by Boston Gear and a couple of chain
drives. As I recall, the motor/gearbox was outboard of the tower and used a
chain drive to turn the mast. It was a pretty slick setup and I kept the
article in my files. I thought of actually building something similar at some
point but so far I'm still doing well with a prop pitch.
73, Stew K3ND
________________________________
From: Jim Lux <jimlux@earthlink.net>
To: David Jordan <Wa3gin@comcast.net>
Cc: towertalk@contesting.com; 'Gene Fuller' <w2lu@rochester.rr.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 6, 2011 5:59 PM
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Heavy Duty Rotor
On 9/6/11 2:08 PM, David Jordan wrote:
> PPM's are great if you have $4,000 for one...
>
Exactly... seems you could find an off the shelf collection of parts
that get you there, perhaps with a bit of bracket fabrication (mind you,
where I used to work, the words "all you gotta do is fabricate..." were
guaranteed to result in giggles if not outright guffaws)
But these days, $300 gets you a brand new 2HP TEFC motor, another couple
hundred gets you a variable speed drive for it. The gearbox is going to
be a bit tricky, because you need several stages if you're doing
standard planetary gears to get down to the 1 RPM sort of speed you want
from 1750. But even so, I don't see it being more than $1000-1500 all told.
I suppose the market is SO tiny that it's not worth it for someone to do
anything more than a custom one-off. The existing products from M2 or
AlfaSpid or whoever are sufficient for 99%, and for the 1%, you're going
to be cobbling up something custom anyway.
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