Is it ever complete? No, I expect plenty of tweaking and maintenance down
the line. But at long last the initial heavy lifting has been completed. My
110' Rohn 55 tower now sports a 40-2CD @110' and a 3-stack of 4-el SteppIRs
on TIC rings at 96'/64'/34'. There are some pictures of the finished product
on my website at www.wc1m.com. Click on "The 'Completed' Tower" link on the
left. There are also some shots of the early construction. I have a lot more
photos to upload, but it'll be a while before I get to it. I still have to
completely rework my SO2R antenna switching system, which involves building
new hardware and writing some software.
The stack is playing as expected on 20. Can't wait for 15 and 10 to come
back so I can see how it plays there. The TIC rings are working well and I
highly recommend Green Heron controllers. Mine are daisychained so all three
antennas can be turned together. The controller has a speed ramping feature
that virtually eliminates start/stop toque on the tower.
Part of the reason it took so long (I started last October) is that all of
the on-tower work was done by me, with W1ECT as sole ground crew. An
electric winch from TowerJack made that possible, as did getting over most
of my fear of heights (but not all!) Getting to this point was a *huge*
amount of work, but well worth the effort. There's nothing like the pride of
building it yourself.
I'd like to take this moment to thank all of the people on TowerTalk who
have given me helpful advice over the 18 months of planning and
construction. Before this project, I had never built a tower nor
participated in building one. I had only done about half a dozen climbs. I
needed a lot of advice on everything, including specifications, guy
placement, materials selection, construction, tramming, etc. This reflector
is an invaluable resource to the amateur radio community. Thanks, guys!
I'm sure I'll be back with more questions later. It never ends, does it? Now
it's time to start thinking about hanging some wire antennas off that tower.
73, Dick WC1M
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