Topband: Building a practical vertical from Al tubing

[Tom McAlee]

> > If you have experience successfully building such an antenna I would 
> > appreciate hearing how you did it

I have two 67' verticals made from aluminum tubing.  They are phased for 
80m, and at the time being I just use a coil at the base of one of them for 
160m.  The 160m situation still needs work, but it works well on 80m.

I use standard 6' lengths of tubing from Texas Towers.  They start at 2.125" 
and telescope to 1.25".  Several sizes are doubled up.  I have 5 levels of 
Phyllistran guys out 40', on the top of 3' posts to make mowing the yard 
easier.

A few pictures will probably explain better:

Here is how I assembled them (too floppy to stand up the whole thing at 
once):
http://www.klient.com/assembly.jpg

That's a 60' ladder/bucket trucket.  There is a bucket attached to the top 
to stand in and there are control on both the top and bottom to 
raise/lower/spin.  It is from a local sign company and their rates are 
decent ($65/hour)

Here is one of the completed verticals:  http://www.klient.com/vert.jpg

A guy anchor:  http://www.klient.com/anchor.jpg

The base:  http://www.klient.com/radialplate.jpg

> and of any pitfalls you encountered

I had a few!  The current verticals are round #3 and show no signs of 
problems.  Even the top unguyed 11' doesn't move in the wind.  But, the 
first attempt only had 2 guy levels 26' out.  They didn't last long.  The 
second attempt had 3 guy levels 26' out.  They survived some decent winds, 
but one really severe storm brought them down.

For round 1 I didn't use the bucket truck.  I took each vertical in 2 pieces 
and leaned the halves against the tower.  I climbed the tower, pulled up the 
top half, inserted it to complete the vertical, then tighted up the guys. 
So, that left a vertical right next to the tower.  I had to move each 
vertical 35' away from the tower.  I did that by loosening the guys, moving 
it a foot or so, adjusting the guys again, etc.  By myself, that process 
took about 5 hours per vertical.

When I found a local 60' bucket truck for $65/hour, I decided not to ever 
take that route again.  It took about 45 minutes or so per vertical to 
assemble them using the bucket truck, and that probably could have been less 
had me and the truck operator not done so much chit chatting.

73,
Tom, NI1N