[TowerTalk] Inverted V on a retractable tower

[Larry Loen]

I have seen this very thing done.

Basically, you need some sort of extender (if you're talking about US
Tower, they sell such a device) so that the summit of the inverted V clears
the tower sections.

Then, you just need to have some sort of system at the ends of the antenna
that amount to some fairly simple pulley system with weights to allow the
wires to fall down when the tower is cranked over for service.

On a tower at W0IBM, I saw something like a commercial product that did
this.  It was tubes of maybe 2 inches in diameter attached to courtyard
walls (the tower was in a courtyard).  When the tower came down, the
weight-and-rope at the end of the wire antenna retracted into the tubes
well enough.  We could detach or keep the thing intact from the top of the
"V" when we tilted it over.  I believe we typically detached it for
service; the system was designed such that the wire was simply "where it
needed to be" when the tower was retracted (but not cranked over) so we
could reattach it after we cranked the tower back from horizontal to
vertical.

At my forever under development new shack, I plan to do something similar
with my US Tower retractable.  I have an old trick of putting conduit over
rebar as a distant antenna support for simple wire antennas.  I'll probably
resort to the same weight-and-pulley trick -- I may even settle for a
simple "eye hook" instead of bothering with a pulley.

The nice thing about the rebar-covered-by-conduit is that while it is
plenty stable, it is easy enough to simply lift the conduit off of the end
of the rebar (the fit is tight, but not overly so). So, everything is
serviceable.  With my simpler scheme, the wire may end up on the ground,
but most of it would be away from the tower and, I presume, easy to manage
without kinking and coiling.

If I discover I can manage 20 feet of conduit with my scheme, then it is
more like the W0IBM installation, because it would be at about the same
height as the retracted tower.


Larry Wo0Z

On Sat, Oct 6, 2012 at 11:29 AM, SPWoo <jj_2_woo at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> Does anyone know how to install an inverted V antenna for 80m on a
> retractable tower?  Is there anything that could be done to prevent the
> wires from laying on the ground when the tower is retracted?  Thank you and
> 73.
>
> Best Regards,
> Jonathan Woo
> (970) 646-1711
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