[TowerTalk] US TOWER HDX-589MDPL

[Steve Babcock]

A word of caution to anyone ordering a US tower crankup and taking delivery
of the base in advance......In order to coordinate the delivery of my
crankup tower so that I could have the crane place the tower into the T
base when it arrived, US towers offered to ship the base and bolts in
advance so I could pour and install the base and allow time for curing. 
This is a great plan in principle, however, it turned out that the base was
about 1/4 inch too narrow to accept the "wings"on the tower. 
Unfortunately, because of the location of my tower behind the house which
has no rear access and a very narrow side yard, I had to use a 50 ton crane
with a 120' stick (with jib) in order to drop the tower over the house. 
Needless to say the crane time was NOT $$$ cheep!!  Because we had trouble
fitting the tower this cost me!!  We eventually got the tower into the base
using a "jack-all" and some come-allongs to spread the base.  Without the
crane on hand to make movement and readjustment of the tower easy, I'm sure
it would have been very difficult to solve the problem.  NO, the tower
wings or base had NOT been damaged or bent during shipment...if you've ever
seen a US tower you'd realize these are "beefy" units!!  I think US towers
needs to be a bit more careful regarding their tolerances...seems to me
they could afford to err on the side of "too big", rather than too small!

HOWEVER, I think this tower is a great piece of work.  I am impressed with
the apparent quality and robustness of the unit.  The motor drive for the
crank-up is a must and operates very smoothly and quietly....about 6
minutes to full crank-up at 89 feet.
If you get one of these towers, I would recommend/ agree with other TT
discussion, and USE A CRANE to install it....these things are NOT small. 
You probably could "strong arm" the operation but someone could get hurt. 
With just myself and the crane operator we had the tower placed in about 2
hours...it would have been less than one hour if the base had fit.  Also
the raising fixture worked well,  but you'll have real strong bi-cepts when
your done...lots of cranking!!

73 de VE6WZ.

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