My first beam is up on the new tower and I am a believer! My 13-year old
son, KF4NVC, and I finished putting up "our" antenna and tower over the
weekend.
Many thanks to all of you who sent me advice in response to the questions
that I have posted to this list. Your advice made my planning for the
"job" much easier and, as a result, the actual construction went off
without a hitch.
Here is a summary of what I did:
I live in a smallish suburban lot. No deed restrictions to mess with, but
I still had to meet town set back requirements. The set backs limited me
to a fairly low tower. I opted for a 3-section Rohn 25 tower. At about
30' in height, bracketing the tower to my house and avoiding guy wires
quickly became the preferred installation method.
I installed the bracket first. I used the 36" Rohn house bracket to clear
my big eve overhang. The bracket is bolted through the house side into the
attic space. In the attic, I added plywood to tie 4 rafters together. On
top of the plywood and against the side wall, I have a 6' 2x6 and a 4' 3x3
steel angle iron. The bolts from the bracket go through the wall, the 2x6,
and then angle iron. The angle iron is itself bolted to the plywood and
the rafters. Very solid.
Next came the tower. I buried a base section in concrete and added 3 tower
sections on top of that. That 2' diameter hole that Rohn wants you to dig
for that base does not sound too big until you mark it out on the ground!!!
Ugh ... The 13-year old came in handy digging that hole! The house
bracket is about 16' above ground with about 14' of tower above the bracket.
As a "starter" antenna, I bought my friend, N4GU's TH-2 2-element beam. He
was upgrading to a Force C-4S (showoff!). All I have ever run were dipoles
and verticals so the TH-2 will be an improvement and the price was right!
The beam went up weekend before last. This past weekend, my son and I ran
all the coax, rotor cables, put the ground rods in, and finished the
project in general. We even attached the "no climb" sign and ran chicken
wire around the bottom 6' of the tower (anti-climb stuff to keep kids off it).
My initial experiments with the antenna have made me a believer! I tuned
in a guy in Chicago on 20m, pointing the beam straight at him. He had a 57
signal. I turned the beam 90 degrees away from him and I lost him
altogether! I made 2 brief South American QSOs last night and the beam was
a good 2 S-units stronger than my dipole. I stayed home this morning and
tried 15m to Europe. It was amazing! Running only 100 watts, I called CQ
DX and people actually answered ME! F8GB said I was 59+10db into France (I
had a big grin on that report). In a little over an hour, I had 7 nice
QSOs to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and England. During the England
QSO with G0ASB (which went on for a while -- I had a good chat with him --
he was a Ten Tec lover), I would switch between the beam and the dipole and
watched as the S-meter went from S5 to S1 and I "lost" contact with the
other end. A switch back to the beam brought him right back to a solid
copy! :-)
The dipole has been very good for me over the years and the price was
certainly right. I worked over 100 countries and have something like 80
confirmed with it. However, I am hoping to be able to step up just a
little with the beam. The South American QSOs last night were what I was
hoping for -- each station was running a small pileup and I was able to
break each one with a single call! I hope my "little pistol" station is
now a little bit bigger "caliber."
Thanks again for all of your collective help and advice! Bring on the
contest season!
73 (still with a big grin on my face),
Nat
N4EL
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