Just about ready to raise it up UPDATED New pics of base

[Mississippifrog]

I spent most of the day yesterday getting every thing ready to raise it today.Still need to get my guy wires attached and its up she goes.

[KI4MSJ]

Damn man, that's a nice set up. I have a tower but trying to figure out where to put it. How far away from the house are you? and did you have to dig a trench to run the piping for the coax?

[HOUNDOG]

Holy crap. How you gonna raise that bad boy?

[Mississippifrog]

My tower is about 100 foot from the house and 75 feet to the antenna boom.Thats father than most people suggest but it was the only place i had to put it.That left me with about a 200 foot run on my coax.Well actually 2 runs 200 foot long since I'm running Horizontal and Vertical.So i used the best coax i could afford( CA-400).And yes i dug a trench and buried the coax in electrical conduit about 2 feet deep.

[MOONSHINER]

kick asss setup man!!!

[316]

That thing is sweet, are you going to use a dead man to pull it up?
Where did you get the base plate?
That's all I'm missing to throw mine up.

[countryboy]

very nice. when you get it up take some more pic's. and let us know how it works

[Mississippifrog]

Heres some pics of the process.The hinge plat made raising this babe a breeze.Just to left of the picture there is a huge sweet gum tree.I climbed up in the tree and hung a pulley from a chain about 30 foot high.Then i attached an extra cable about 3/4 of the way up my tower to pull it up with.This cable will remained attached to my tower for future use to raise and lower the tower as needed.After the pull cable was attached we ran it through the pulley in the tree and hooked it to a front in loader that belongs to a local junkyard about 500 yards from my house.The loader was over kill though.I believe a tractor or truck would have worked just fine.As the loader pulled the tower up we had a man on each side of the tower holding the top guild wires to help make sure it went up straight and not leaning to one side or the other.The whole process of lifting it took maybe 2 minutes not counting tightening the guild wires in place.I'm not totally done.I still have some tidying up to do but its up and working.

Sorry for all the pics but i had a bunch so i picked a select few to give you a feel for how we got it up and what it looks like now.








Heres the anchors.



Heres my home made hinge plate.Its a little rust .Nothing a little cleaning and paint cant fix.You can also see my 2 ground rods.I may add a third in the front.

[Popcorn501]

When i had my 6 element Jo Gunns i had a 50 ft tower on a home made hinge plate and then about thirty ft out i had a 4inch black iron pipe at an angle buried in the ground about 4ft with cross pieces in the bottom to keep it from turning and then a hand winch on top and i just winched it up and down as needed.

[linx]

Lookin good! Reminds me of setting mine up last year (last august to be exact).

It's not really hard to do. I did it all 100% by myself.

You would think a tower would be heavy, but it's not. I walked mine up as far as I could with a 8' ladder as a prop. When I got as far as I could go I did the same by putting a pulley up and just used the winch on my Arctic Cat 4 wheeler and it pulled it strait up. I set concrete 1 day of 1 weekend. The second weekend I put the tower together, set my antenna, ran the coax, and raised the tower all in about 2 1/2-3 hours.

Mine's 41 ft of tower, 5 ft of pipe, and Imax 2000. Of course it would have taken me longer to put up a beam, but I still think I could handle it myself.

Enjoy it. Most people are afraid to do it for some reason?

[Mississippifrog]

I would agree that most of it can be done by ones self.I did all the anchors,ruining coax,concrete and hinge plate work myself.But the actual lifting of this one i needed help with.First of all its much heaver than most towers.I'm not really sure who the manufacturer of it was but an old lady give it to me to get it out of her yard.I've taken down several Rohn 25 towers so i know how light they really are but this one is different.Instead of have a 12 inch face like Rohn20/25 its wider.This tower has a 16 inch face with thick Z braces and thicker wall tubing which makes for a very sturdy but HEAVY tower.Thats why i built the heavy duty hinge plate to raise it with.Another thing on my mind was how much money i had on top of it (rotor and beam) so i took extra precaution in trying to make sure it did not fall

With all that said the hinge made it MUCH easier than stacking it piece by piece.Its 70 foot to the bottom elements and it raised up easy.

[linx]

Yeah, I looked at the pics. Defiantly more heavy duty than my Rohn 25 (Actually, mostly American Tower 25). Hinge is the ONLY way to go! I'm not about to climb, although your Z bars do look a lot more sturdy if you had to climb it. Mine will bend, which I don't want to do. I can lower my tower is a few minutes, so I don't know why anyone would want to not have a hinge, lol.

For my next tower I'm looking at building another house and using a crank up that has a hinge as well. My better half gets a little scared in the storms so I think maybe an electric winch to lower the tower at about 20 ft would be nice for her.

[copyguy]

Man, that's one nice setup! eventually I'll have one!

[nighttrain]

That hinge is a great idea. I will hopefully set one up eventually. I have a barn with a room that I'm fixing up for my radio shack.

[316]

That hinge is a great idea. I will hopefully set one up eventually. I have a barn with a room that I'm fixing up for my radio shack.

Hinge plate are awesome and can be very nice when you need to change things, and some of the older guys have done is put up a dead man to make it easy to raise and lower their tower.

[Mississippifrog]

Heres the base.I got it pretty much like i plan on keeping it.I still need to try and straighten out the wires running everywhere.Some day i may get more fire for the wire but right now I'm done for awhile.


Here you can see my coax for the ground plane,Vertical and Horizontal on the SE Lighting 4 running to my antenna switch.


Heres my I.C.E low pass filter.


Heres my East Coast 4Pill setup to run on 220V.Hope to use it to drive a 16 pill some day

[231]

Looks great! Where's a pic of the beam though?
I especially like the ICE low pass filter. I have one of their 9 position remote switch boxes and love it!

[YO-YO]

Well if You ever get tired of all that great looking set up You can bring it me and set it up at my place I'll buy the chocolate milk.
I am jealous!
BTW could You get My Wife to let me have one of those too??

[Mississippifrog]

Looks great! Where's a pic of the beam though?
I especially like the ICE low pass filter. I have one of their 9 position remote switch boxes and love it!

look on the first page :D

[Mississippifrog]

Where are you at in Tenn YO YO.
I was talking to some guy in west Tenn last night.Not really sure if it was straight line talking or real short skip.

[YO-YO]

About 35 miles North of Jackson,Tn. little town called Mc Kenzie.

When I get my 4600 Turbo I'll Have to see if we can talk. All I have now is Galaxy 44, Mirage 88, Connex 3300 HP, barefoot all,going to install new Main power this week to feed the new radio, was thinking of taking pictures and starting a new thread in the Mobile Setup section?

Some may find it interesting, What You think?

[Mississippifrog]

Post them pics up!!

[YO-YO]

Going to start tomorrow. I may do start to finish if I don't get flamed on.
You know take pic's of the power cable install, then move on to opening the boxes from Mr. RA, install of coax, install of Antenna, Swr setting the whole 9 yards

[231]

Looks great! Where's a pic of the beam though?
I especially like the ICE low pass filter. I have one of their 9 position remote switch boxes and love it!

look on the first page :D

How in the world did I miss those? Nice job! Are you happy with that beam? :D

[coondog]

WOW,i"m surely impressed.what a nice job with tower and your base station is totally awsome with the care and time you put into it on organizing everything just perfect. i take my hat off to ya.