Dave:
These towers are made by Trylon, a Canadian company which has been in this
business for quite a while. I put up a 64 foot version in 1989 and
although I recently sold the QTH, I was very satisfied with the
tower. Yes, they are an excellent value for the money. It is a tapered
tower in 8 foot sections and you simply select the particular sections to
give you the height and the wind loading capacity that you need. Champion
and Texas Towers are distributors to the ham community.
There might be two disadvantages. The first is that the braces slant so
that some people dislike climbing the angled braces. This never bothered
me if I wore a stiff soled shoe to climb. The second is that the tower is
bolted together and I suppose one should be alert for a bolt that could
loosen because of flexing but I never saw that. I did have a little
trouble torquing the bolts correctly when I assembled it because the
galvanizing "lubricated" the bolt enough that I would sometimes snap the
bolt in half. The tower is usually shipped on a large 8 foot pallet but I
think you can get it broken down to the individual components for shipping
overseas.
I assembled the tower with a gin pole and it went up in two or three hours
but if I were doing it again, I would assemble it on the ground, insert the
mast and rotor, and hire a boom truck to set it on the base.
What you get is a strong tower with the capacity to put up a large beam in
a self-supporting tower. The lack of guys was the determining factor for
my wife. And I have sufficient motivation to for her to be happy. There
are more important things in life than even my tower!
Take a look at http://www.championradio.com/.
Wes, WZ7I
At 05:51 01/04/01 , you wrote:
>I've been looking at various towers, with future
>plans to put up a large Force beam.
>
>I have had a 60-foot heavy duty Aluma tower for
>about 20 years and it has been doing fine. It now
>holds a TH-11-DXX. Now thinking about another
>self-supporting tower (with house bracket).
>
>Has anyone had any experiences with Champion's
>96-foot self-supporting tower, for $1,999. This
>tower sounds almost too good to be true, anyone
>have one of these? What have your experiences
>been?
>
>Dave Kaiser, AL7HG
>
>=====
>Dave Kaiser
>Kaiserdr@yahoo.com
>P.O. Box 574
>Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
>(9663) 874-7616
>
>__________________________________________________
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_____________________
Wes Cosand, PhD
6299 Durham Rd; Rt 413
PO Box 349
Pipersville, PA 18947-0349
Email: wz7i@arrl.net
Phone: 215-766-3842
FAX: 215-766-3843
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