[TowerTalk] Free HDX-555 tower, KT36XA & M2 rotor - a sweet deal!

[Tower (K8RI)]

Oh, but if I lived back out on the old family farm<:-)) And... I live in
central lower Michigan.
I've reached the stage..er... age...  though, where crank up and tilt over
are going to be in my future, or should be.


> Due to the flood of emails, here are the particulars.
>
> These towers are large.  200-300 feet tall, 4 to 5
> foot face, angle Grasis towers, with 6 microwave

Were I still out in the country and about 20 years younger, I'd just need to
find a crew to help. Unfortunately, finding a qualified crew is a problem.
Most hams I know, or have met couldn't qualify for climbing even if they
wanted and most don't want anything to do with that kind of climbing.

> dishes, heliax, etc.  The story recently posted talked
> about 6-8 guys to carry the tower, this stuff needs
> 6-8 guys to carry a section.
>

However I am looking for some good Heliax and connectors and I'm still
qualified to take that kind of stuff down, or remove it.

It's about a 200 foot run from the ham shack to the top of the tower where I
use pigtails to the antennas.

Good luck on removing the things.

A good friend in Ithica MI (John WD8RXP) had a beautiful self supporting
tower with the top section rotatable. He had stacked beams on 20, 15, and 10
with a single "full size" 3 or 4 L 40 yagi and a seperate UHF/VHF array on
top.

The rotor weighed one ton and was mounted at 80 feet.  The top of the tower
set down inside the base on the rotor thrust bearing and support plate which
was one inch thick steel. There was a guide bearing at 100 feet which was
the top of the base.

This tower made the cover of QST in January 1987 with a 3 or 4 page story as
I recall.

Some where I have a lot of construction photos and I'm in the process of
scanning in everything to the computers and archiving the images to CDs and
DVDs. So, one of these days I may put the construction story up on the web.

At any rate, John ended up with Leukemia and passed away some years back.
They tried and tried to sell the tower.  The antennas were taken down and
given to the local radion club (The Gration County Amateure Radio Club) and
they even tried e-bay with no minimum bid.  As I recall they did not receive
one bid.  They would have been glad to give it to some one.
They finally ended up with Consumers Power taking it down and hauling the
parts away for scrap.

It took John nearly three years of construction to get that thing up. Just
him and his Brother inlaw
erected it.  John never told just how much he had in it, but there were
three truckloads of structural steel tubing/pipe as part of the raw
materials.  Not counting labor and we are looking at late 1980s pricing, I'd
guess he had at least $30,00 to $50,000 just in materials.

> Dayton MO, Aaron MO, Chelsea OK, etc...
> must be taken down and removed.  Otherwise, soon
> I cut guy wires.

Sounds sad, but few have the resources and ability to take down, let alone
install such towers.


Roger Halstead (K8RI, EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
N833R, World's Oldest Debonair (S# CD-2)
www.rogerhalstead.com

>
> My offer for free tower space for ham clubs still
> continues on most of the other sites, in exchange for
> mowing, minor maintenance, etc.
>
> A list of ALL sites, including ones that are not going
> to be removed, can be found at www.frostytowers.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
>
> 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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