[TowerTalk] Homebrew Crank-up

[jimlux]

Christopher Atkins wrote:
> Stan, 
>  
> Homebrewing a tower especially a crank-up is a dangerous and risky proposition to say the least.  The ROI and the safety concerns is not worth the risk. In the end you will be better off buying a crank up tower. Just my opinion..
>  
> Good Luck 
> --- On Fri, 3/26/10, Stan Stockton <k5go at cycle-24.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> From: Stan Stockton <k5go at cycle-24.com>
>
> 
> Anyone have an ideas regarding rails, rollers, general set-up, etc. that could be used for about 75 feet of 55G or 65G that would telescope into about the same length of larger tower (33 inch face, 3 inch legs), probably using an extra large prop pitch to raise and lower for 48 hours a few times a year dependent on good weather :-) ?
> 
> Thanks...Stan, K5GO  
>

I don't know.. I haven't seen many 120-150 foot crankups in the HRO 
catalog recently.

I have seen tower trailers with that sort of height, built on the base 
of a 40 foot semitrailer, but not as two sections, which is what Stan is 
proposing.

Home brew is probably about the only way you're going to get it.  And, 
there's no inherent reason why a ham couldn't engineer and build the 
structure as well as the commercial vendors.

I'd start looking at how they build the tall emergency lighting tower 
trailers.  Based on the ones I've seen they use fairly standard 
mechanical parts (get your copy of McMaster Carr and Grainger out).  If 
you want rollers, there's a variety of things like those used to support 
big sliding doors on airplane hangers and such. They run on a pipe track.

You're obviously going to use motorized raise/lower, so you need to give 
some thought to how you'll do the rigging.

Is the bottom half going to be guyed?