Hi Kelley,
A few years ago I was in a similar place with putting up a tower as you
are. My lot at the time was .25 acres, but with no height
restrictions. My personal criteria was I did not want to climb the
tower and wanted to be able to safely work on my antennas close to the
ground. After a lot of investigation I chose a Tashjian W-51 crank up
tower. It requires no guys. This tower cranks up to a maximum height
of 51 feet and collapses to around a vertical height of 22 feet. With
the mast I have my top stacked antenna at 65 feet. Once tipped over
from the collapsed position I can do all my antenna work from a step ladder.
I replaced both winches that came with the tower (crank up/down,
tipping) with worm drive winches that use a 5/8 inch hex to turn them.
I use the hex on both with a larger electric drill and a 5/8 inch socket
to turn the winches. Way better than a hand crank. A worm drive can be
stopped at any point in the cranking and, under tension, auto lock in
that position. In your case raise the tower to your 30-40 foot limit
and stop cranking.
Tower accessories that I bought with the tower included a rotor plate
for my Ham-4 and a thrust bearing to better hold the mast.
My understanding is that the W-51 tower is an older design first
manufactured by Tri-Ex, so a used W-51 may be available out there that
could help your budget.
My primary tower antenna is a Force 12 c-3ss which gives me a turning
radius of about 17 feet.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Bob Richards NZ6G
On 3/8/2021 1:33 PM, Kelley wrote:
I recently moved to an new QTH. My yard is much smaller than my
previous yard (2.5 acres versus about .3 acres). I've currently got an
all-band dipole up but I've been thinking about a small tower. I've
had towers at previous QTH's, but I'm looking for something smaller
and easier to work with.
The city I live in restricts amateur towers to a maximum of 40 feet
(somewhere around 30 feet would be good). Ideally, I'm looking for a
setup that lets me work on antennas from the ground. I'm looking at
installing a small tri-band beam (perhaps something like a Cushcraft
A3S), rotor, a vhf/uhf vertical, and an inverted V wire antenna. It
would have to be self-supporting (there's no room for guy wires).
Something used is probably more inline with my budget.
Any thoughts, suggestions, recommendations, dos, don'ts...
Thanks,
Kelley w0rk
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