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Re: [TowerTalk] Long pole / simple, tall construction for small antenna

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Long pole / simple, tall construction for small antenna
From: Michael Tope <W4EF@ca.rr.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 11:53:56 -0700
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
On 10/26/2014 10:25 AM, Jim Lux wrote:
On 10/26/14, 8:53 AM, Vegard Svanberg wrote:
.........Apart from the pole itself, an issue is also proper anchoring in the
ground (rocky ground is easy, obviously, while sandy and muddy soil
could be tricky).

The weight of the antennas are only about 400 grams and the surface area
is small (HxW = ~300 x ~80 mm) so we're talking pretty light and simple
stuff here.

Before I go ahead and start constructing this myself, I was just
wondering if someone here has done something similar before, or know
someone who sell ready-made kits I can buy.



This sounds a lot like what TV antennas use. Standard inexpensive steel tubing masts in sections, guying hardware, etc. Your windload is way lower than a big LPDA for fringe area TV reception.

When I lived in Florida, I had "Wireless Cable" (aka 2.5 to 2.7 GHz MMDS) for a while. To get LOS to the tower, they put a Rohn push-up mast on my roof and guyed it to the fascia boards. The antenna was a small "barbeque grill" parabolic (~16 to 18 inches across, if I recall correctly). In my case the overall height above ground was somewhere between 35 and 40 ft.

I actually worked in the MMDS business for a time (on down-converters), so I know firsthand how much pressure there is to make customer premises equipment (CPE) as cheap as possible. If you couldn't sell the downconverter for less than $50, it cost too much. Thus, I imagine that steel pushup masts were among the cheapest solutions out there at the time. I don't know, but perhaps composites have come down in price since then.

73, Mike W4EF...........


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