I went through the same stages with my TX-455 tower. I thought cranking
the tower upright was a little tough, but then cranking the tower up is
worse. It takes about 95 turns of the handle to fully extend it and I need
a break after 10-15 turns. I usually do it in 3 sessions, with an hour or
two between sessions. I am not quite as young as I was a few years ago, but
I generally get around OK and this was a surprise. The motions involved
with the winches stress body areas not normally stressed in easy day-to-day
living.
I'll need to crank the tower down and then lay it over when my 3 element
SteppIR arrives. I hope I can assemble it by installing half the boom and
two elements (while the tower is almost flat on the ground) and then raise
the tower enough (from the flat-on-the-ground position) to install the
other boom half and the last element.
The top of the tower gets crowded. I have a coax switch (strapped to the
standoff), a half sloper (which I will not attempt to tune until the beam
in installed) and a terminated inverted V dipole suspended about 3 feet
from the tower top. What with the control cables (beam, rotator), coax
(two feed lines), switch and jumpers, the whole thing became more crowded
than I expected. I positioned a short wooden dowel, suspended down the
standoff arm, to take the vertical weight of the cables. I did not want to
have the weight suspended from the sharp right-angle turn provided by the
bare standoff arm.
Bill Ogden
W2WO
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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