[TowerTalk] Torque balancing made easy, was kt34xa torque balancing

[W0UN -- John Brosnahan]

At 12:01 PM 1/8/2005, K8RI on Tower Talk wrote:
>I like the tried and true method of torque balancing.
>
>If the rotor and/or tower aren't being pushed to their limits, I like the 
>"It looks good to me" approach.  IE, unless it's a potential problem with 
>a really big antenna, or antenna system, why bother?

It IS tried and true -- and truly the AMATEUR approach, but FB as long as 
you don't put
up anything that is really competitive or if you want to spend a lot of 
time doing repairs.

For me, stacks of 48 ft booms are a MINIMUM competitive system and you 
aren't really
serious until you get to 60 ft and up booms.  At that point you need ALL of 
the safety factor
you can muster if you want to beat Mother Nature.

My goal is that all antennas should have a MINIMUM MTBF of a sunspot 
cycle!  That
means good engineering and Nylok hardware on everything.

I love building BIG antennas, I just don't like repairing them.  And 
rotators are now so
expensive with the demise of the cheap prop pitch motor that you can't 
afford to be
tearing them up frequently.  Not to mention that any failure will probably 
be just
before (or during) the biggest contest of the year.

If you put up a lot of big antennas and don't do it right you will be eaten 
alive by
constant maintenance.

--John  W0UN