[TowerTalk] US Tower Up/Down Raising Fixture (MD-750) Motor Switch

[Roger White]

>From what I gather on and off the list(s), since I am only moving the Dayton drum switch about 25 feet away from the motor, I should be OK with the gauge (or slightly larger diameter) of multi-strand wire that goes to the motor now. I'll go this week to the local wire shop we have in Plano to see what they have.
I am real particular about raising and lowering (at least a few 100 times over the last 10 years) my tower, simply due to not working on the antennas all the time, but to be safe and lower the tower to 35 feet of so from 52 feet when severe thunderstorms come thru with their associated high winds, etc. In this area of Texas, you can count on that to occur many times during the year, especially in the Spring and later in the Fall-Winter time as we are now. I also regularly lubricate the cable going up with a lube I bought from the experienced tower guy that I think is on this list.
Thanks to all for your information!
Roger W5RDWMurphy, Texas


On 1/2/2019 12:29 AM, Dick wrote:

>Message: 1
>Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2019 11:47:39 -0500
>From: "Dick Green WC1M" <wc1m73 at gmail.com>
>To: <john at kk9a.com>,    <towertalk at contesting.com>
>Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] US Tower Up/Down Raising Fixture (MD-750)
 >   Motor Switch
>Message-ID: <000001d4a2ba$e04fcd10$a0ef6730$@gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain;    charset="utf-8">>

>My MD-750 is 350 feet from the shack, behind a stand of trees. I installed three conduit runs: one for RF coax/hardline, one for control cables and >one for 240VAC (#10 conductors.) I put a subpanel at the tower to split the 240VAC into two 120VAC circuits for the tower and an outdoor AC >receptacle. At the time, I didn't realize that the UST control box runs off 120VAC. In addition to the voltage drop due to the long run, putting an AC >cable through a conduit with low voltage cables is a code violation. There wasn't enough room to run a thick control cable through the 1" AC conduit, >so I built a small 12VDC relay box to control the AC relays at the tower. That box lives in the relay cabinet at the tower, and I have a simple switch >box in the shack that's powered by 12VDC. The control cable runs to the tower through the low-voltage control cable conduit. This has worked great >for 22 years.

>As for raising/lowering the tower remotely, early on I had a near-disaster when the coax snagged on the motor housing. That problem was solved by >reconfiguring the cable run, adding another cable standoff, and putting a shield around the bottom of the tower. All this is well-documented in a >TowerTalk post I did back then, probably in 1997 or 1998. I haven't had any issues with remotely operating the tower in 22 years, other than having >to be careful about not letting the cable get stuck under ice and snow in the winter. >>

>73, Dick WC1M