Radio Antennas

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Our tower Construction - This is a Universal 50' tower with two 30" base sections tapered to an 18" top section. The tower should be able to support 30 square feet of antenna. I am using a 15' aluminum 2" mast with a Cushcraft A505S 5 element 6 meter beam at the top. The Mosley is a Super 33 which covers 40, 20 and 17 meters. The beams are turned by a Yaesu G-2800DXA rotator. Work began on August 20th 2008 and finished on November 22nd 2008. I removed the S-33 and 6M beam with intentions of putting up a Pro 67C but through a series of disasters that did not happen as can be seen below.

You can click on most all the pictures on this page for a larger view.

Clearing the top soil on August 20th 2008..

I thought I would hand dig a 5'x5'x6' pit,HiHi!!

Time to rent a mini back hoe to dig in the rock.

The back hoe could only reac to about 4.5' I hand dug the rest.

Three days of digging and exhaustion is setting in.

It is done, 5 cubic yards of dirt has been removed. You can see a boulder bulging out of the back, I left it as a good anchor.

Now came the critial alignment of the first tower section.

I attached the three 6' 30 pound steel legs to the tower. Almost 100 pounds haging from the tower

I plumbed the legs and drove a piece of rebar for each leg to set over to keep them from moving during the pour.

No way to get to the back yard so I rented a Georgia buggy to hall concrete 1/2 yard at a time, almost 5 cubic yards.

It took 12 trips and about an hour to complete pouring 5 yards of concrete, that is appox. 4024 pound per cubic yard or about 10 tons.

Now for the curing.

Cleaned up and ready for the rest of the tower.

Now for the tower assembly.

The tower was positioned so I could assemble a 50' tower a 40 and 6 meter antenna.

I started the assembly of the Mosley S-33 but found a bad coil and had to order it.

I started the fence assembly to protect it from kids and unwanted climbers.

I used marine grade pulleys, all SS bolts and hardware on the tower.

A recommended decoupling coil fro the Alpha Delta sloper.

All surge protectors including rotator are in a DX Engineering weather proof box.

The coil finally arrived from Mosley, 2 1/2 weeks, time to call in the ground crew.

It was a long hard day.

The 6 meter antenna was a piece of cake.

Now for the 95 pound Mosley. It has a 24' boom with three element , the logest about 45'.

It is finally in place and I am making the connections. It was in the 30s that day.

Now we start the lift. The tower and antennas weigh about 340 pounds.

We were only able to get the tower up to about 45 degrees. It was dark and cold and we were tired. So I rented the beast.

This was a self propelled 60' bucket lift. I literally pushed it up the rest of the way.

We are almost there!!

Finally we made it!

The only problem is this beast weighed 23000 pounds, left some nice ruts to repair!!

Still trying to get the first one in the hole.

The crew- Gary Osborne, W8XS, Myself, KC8RP, Rick Burdick, K8WWA and Paul Flaugher, KB8ANY. What a crew.

The view from the front. Finished tower November 11th 2008.

Atop the bucket lift doing some final work.

My wife Donna without who's support and help this would have never happened!!! By-the-way she was scared s*&%^ less!!!

It was a long way down.

This is a 4"x18"x3/8" copper ground plate outside my shack window.

The only thing left to do is put a locking gate on the fence.

The sloper runs down the north east side of the toer to a post 14' above the ground.

I was granted a permit to put up a 50’ tower and proceeded to dig a 5’x5’x6’ deep pit, pour almost 6 yards of concrete into it that I had to haul Ύ of a yard at a time in a cement buggy. I live in a cul-de-sac and access to my back yard is extremely limited. The build went well and it came time to reassemble the S-33 with a 24’ boom and 3 elements ranging from 44’ to 42’ approximately, 94 pounds total weight. We tilted the tower up and the crew lifted the antenna over to the mast and I bolted it on. Above that was a 5 element 6M antenna. All the wiring was in and time to tilt it up, with no trees to use it was pure manpower, not going to happen, 45 degrees was as far as we got it. I decided to rent a 50’ bucket lift, get under it and push it up. This worked well despite the fact that a 23,000 pound bucket lift will do damage to the yard. It left depressions that took about 2 years to go away.

I looked with pride at my engineering marvel but there came the problem. Early in the assembly when I inspected the traps I found the 2 inside coils on the driven element traps were cracked so I ordered 2 new coil assemblies for those 2 traps, the inside and outside coils are the same, right or at least I thought so. I remember something about the manual stating the traps fit either direction, I should have read farther.

I did not have any trouble at first with power under 500 watts but when I got my KW linear I started to have high SWRs especially on 20M. What could I have done wrong, how hard can it be to put a bunch of aluminum together, I had marked it well when I disassembled it. The reason did not dawn on me till much later but despite the problem it worked well on 40 & 17M.

 

I bought a Mosley Pro 67C3 from a ham who bought it new and never opened it, got lucky. The zoning board denied my variance request for 70' so I reapplied for 66', 60' of tower and 6' of mast. I will be able to use my current rotator with a Mosley Pro 67C3. The tower will be able to hold 22 square feet at 60' which gives me plenty of room for the Mosley at 12.1 square feet, rotator and mast.

On July 14, 2018 we took down the Mosley S-33 in preparation for tower upgrade and the Pro 67C3. I took down the tower and added a 10' section I had stored. I have 2 rolls of 7/8" hard line, will use one for the new Mosley. I pulled up the old conduit to the tower and buried 2.5" conduit. The hard line can be buried but due to the rocks in the yard they would wear through the cable, the conduit is an added layer of protection. I also have a rotator cable and two coax cables in the conduit for the vertical and 2M/440. Like most my plans there were a lot of bumps along the way, this project was full of them. With the S-33 down, our effort to put the Pro 67C3 up failed for several reasons. We decided to wait till spring and try again but for now we put the MA5B on top of the tower. Not having the big antenna up was a failure but the MA5B did not go well, read what happened further down this page.

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When I took down the tower I cleaned up and oiled my mast bearing, it was full of dirt. I had lubricated it over the 10 year period but dirt and rain still reeked havoc on it. I needed to find a way to give the bearing some form of protection. While messing around in the garage I picked up one of our Frisbees and it hit me, perfect for what I needed. The ones I had were old so I went out and bought the best quality one I could find, three bucks it set me back. The Frisbee had an ideal center from the injection molding so I used a 2" hole saw and drilled a nice clean center hole. I slid it down over the mast and put some silicon around the top to seal and keep it in place. I will still need to grease it occasionally but much, if not all, of the dirt and rain will not settle in the bearing. If you want to retrofit I imagine you could slit it on one side to get it around the mast and use some pure silicon to seal it.

How about that snazzy green color, that was the best I could do.

For my smaller tower I wanted to keep a lot of dirt and crud out of the mast guide so I used a PVC end cap drilled out to fit the mast and cover the opening on the mast guide tube. I painted it with some UV resistant paint for extra measure. I don't have a close-up but you will get the idea. To retrofit it I would cut it in half and glue it back together after fitting it.


click on image for a close-up

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Another problem I had was positioning the antenna when I was outside operating or doing antenna work. In each of my weatherproof boxes I installed a rotator connector that I can plug my controller into. I originally made a 6' cable thinking I would be at the tower doing work but later made a 60' cable from some extra I had laying around. The longer cable allows me to set on my back porch and operate my radio, control control my rotator and use when doing antenna work. This setup is very helpful when aligning my antennas and calibrating the controllers.

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Old Chimney Installation
My first antenna installation occurred during July of 2003.

A few years later I took the MA5B off the chimney and built a 40’ tower next to the house and mounted my MA5B back on it, this antenna was my 20M workhorse.

Cushcraft MA5B with a Yaesu G-450A rotor has been removed from the chimney, the bands were destroying the brick, it was  about 30'. I dug the new pit and installed the 40' of Universal aluminum tower and a 5' aluminum mast.  I have a Yaesu G-800DXA rotator to replace the G450A, it can be radio or computer controlled.

In late 2017 I got a permit to raise it to 50’ which did not happen until November 2018. My wife had been fighting Leukemia and she took a turn for the worst. Totally distracted and emotionally distraught, I spent the remaining months by her until she passed on Easter 2018.

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New tower installation for MA5B
New tower started on November 11th 2013 and finished July 12th 2014. Winter storm hit just 2 days after I poured the base. I had the first section covered up, it looked like a Tipi.

The weather was cold and a storm was coming.

The 3' x 3' by 4' hole is dug, next I will put the forms in.

Formed up and ready for the lower tower section.

The 18" base and legs are braced and set in place.

Spent a lot of time leveling checking and rechecking, concrete is final.

I drove in 3 pieces of 2' foot rebar to center the legs at the bottom of the pit. This will keep them centered when the concrete is poured.

Waiting for the concrete truck, the storm is due tomorrow.

All poured, now to cover it up and wait for the storm to pass.

I removed all the forms and now I will let it cure for a week or more due to the cold weather.

First 3 sections installelled.

The final section has been added and the antenna attached.

At first we thought I would lift the antenna and Rick would reposition the latter under it.

After taping the cable to the tower I soldered on a end connector.

I used one of my articulating ladders to extend the tower higher.

With all that mind power it was my wife who suggested 2 ladders, one to push it up and one to hold it, Genius!!

My neighbor Barry came over and gave us a hand, great neighbors!

Putting in the final bolts.

The gang with my neighbors wife Becky. My wife, Donna, is taking the pictures.

Backyard view of the antenna.

Side yard view.

Final view from the front of the house.

I ordered a 14" top section for the tower and two 18" bottom sections, the tower is now 50' tall. I raised the 50' tower with a new Cushcraft A50-6S 6 M antenna. Could not put it on the big tower, only had 6' of mast and that was not enough separation. I changed out the G-800 with the spare 2800, a little over kill.

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Hy-Gain AV-680, 80 thru 6M on a fold over mount with the base 10' above the ground. The new vertical is mainly for 80, 40 and 30M. I mounted it to two 4x4s 10' long with 2' buried in the ground. This is not permanent but adequate for the antenna. I have to repair the antenna, burnt out the RF choke in the current balun.

. I was working 80M SSB and switched over to FT8, forgot to bypass the amp, did not last long on 900 watts, it was burnt out on the second transmit cycle of FT8, GRRRR! The antenna is very narrow in band width, auto tuner can only handle a small range. I repaired the balun and tuned the different bands to the lower region, close to the FT8 frequencies, 20  30M don't need the tuner. The 80M is off will try to retune later.
I added a electric winch that will allow my to easily raise and lower by myself and remove it when not in use.

This antenna has performed very well on 30M FT8, it is also good on 40, 20, 17 & 15, 10 & 12 propagation is so bad I have no frame of reference. I never had a 30M antenna before so everything was open, WAS, DXCC etc. I started using 30M on October 27th 2019, it took 5 days to WAS and confirm, DXCC took a little longer, 2 months. I have worked Australia, New Zealand, South Korea, Japan and Guam, not bad for a vertical in southwest Ohio.
I repaired and sold my AV-690 and bought a Cushcraft R9.

I sold the AV-680 and installed the Cushcraft R9 in it's place. The antenna is a little taller and works very well on the bands I need; 80, 40 and 30 meters. I might use the other bands for a contest but they do no come close to the OptiBeam.

 

 

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Pro67-C3 saga continued

I should never attempted a major project thinking it would be a good way to keep busy and not get depressed about my loss. From here on out bad turned to worse.

I had the good fortune to see a Pro67C3 on QRZ, new in the boxes, for $2500, I negotiated a $2200 cash price, Rick, K8WWA (SK), and I headed to Kentucky down by Lexington to pick it up. We brought it home and stored the 4 boxes in the garage, one being 12’ long. I opened the “open me first” box and took out the instructions. I wanted to be fully knowledgeable about assembly before starting, something I should have done with the S-33. If I can alibi at all about the S-33 was that most, if not all, the color coding was gone after years in the air and the original manual did not show the turns for each trap coil like the new manual did.

As I was reading the instructions it stated, as it did in the S-33 manual, the traps will fit both ways and make sure the color code goes toward the boom. A little further it stated “failing to do so will result in high SWR“, GRRR!!! Well, now I know what went wrong with my S-33. I can only imagine what I could have done if I had paid attention to detail. When ordering the new traps I inadvertently used the wrong part number for the outside traps.

Its a new day and I have a bigger and better antenna. Bigger by the number of elements but the foot print is identical. The new antenna is 134 pounds, 40 pounds heavier than the S-33.

I decided to try for a 70 'variance, 66’ is the maximum under current zoning, why 66’ no one knew. I was denied the variance so instead of fighting it I went for 66’. I had purchased a 30” 10’ section of Universal tower from a friend so I was ready to go. We took down the S-33 and the tower and I reassembled it with the new section. I decided to take my Yaesu 2800 rotator apart and re-grease it, how hard can that be? When I reassembled it I got the stop on the wrong side of the reversing lever and I stripped the nylon gear that turns the positioning pot. I called Yaesu about the part, good news only 40 cents, the bad news 4 to 6 weeks delivery. I had 2 Green Heron controllers so I emailed them and bought a new rotator, winter was coming on, can’t wait for the parts. After all that the parts came a week before the tower was to go up.

I had also bought some 7/8” hard-line from the same friend I got the tower section from. It turned out the hard-line was a little over 10’ too long, no problem buy parts cut the cable and reassemble it, wrong, parts for the Anderson connector and cable are not made anymore. After endless searching I found, on eBay, a company in England who had 5 of the connectors at $45 each. After a few exchanges he gave me a good deal and I bought all five. I cut and reassembled the cable with a brand new connector, loaded it up and tested it at 100 watts, perfect SWR. With the first 40’ of tower assembled on the ground we fed the rotator cable and hard line up the middle a little above 40’, and the 4 of us tilted it up and locked it in place. Next we gin poled up the last 2 sections, mounted the rotator, mast and checked the mast bearing for good alignment. The rotator was connected and the hard-line pulled up and strapped to the top tower section via a grounding strap I attached earlier. All the cables were ty-wrapped and taped to the tower sections.
 

40' of tower section ready to raise.

The back yard before it was destroyed.

You can see the ground starp at the end of the hard line we used to ground it to the tower.

I decided to go over all the utilities rather than digging under them.

The small conduit is from the vertical and the large is from the side of the house.

Tower and gin pole waiting for the weekend antenna install.

Center conductor looks like a copper tube used in the house for the refrigerator ice maker hook-up.

The shield is corrugated copper.

Now is time to build this new antenna. I decided to build it on a spare 10’ top section of tower and 2” mast I had, it turned out to be more difficult than I expected. Well anyway, all went pretty smooth, being very careful to check and double check and triple check everything. I put the antenna analyzer on it and it responded as expected but I also knew 10’ was not far enough above the ground to be real accurate but close enough. I found it interesting that the new Mosley antenna boom plate was 6" shorter than my S-33. It seemed strange that a bigger antenna, more elements and heavier, would have less support in the middle. I checked an older Pro67C3 manual and sure enough the boom plate was 6" longer. Why they would shorten the plate is beyond me, one would hope it was not to save a few bucks.
 

 

Time to call in the climber and crew and put this antenna where it belongs, 60’ up.

My intention was to put the new 6 element 6M antenna above it, Mosley said that would be okay as long as there was 10’ or more of separation, I only had 6’. Plan B, Put the 6M on top of the new 50’ tower I will also be raising and use the MA5B for field day.

The tower climber put the gin pole on the opposite side of the tower so when the antenna reached the top he could easily swing it in and lash it to the mast. Everything was rigged and the pulling began but the antenna was not moving much, when I looked up the aluminum gin pole was bowing, it was not able to take the weight.

Time to go to plan C, order in a bucket lift. They delivered the bucket lift on Friday November 30th. I drove it into the back yard, the ground was not that hard so the ruts were a little messier but nothing 50 or 60 bags of top soil would not fix. The tower guy is coming Sunday so I had a chance to lower my 40’ tower on Friday, add the extra section and the new 6M antenna I built the day before, in a hurry! You can build it for best SWR in 3 frequency ranges, of course not thinking clearly I built it for 51 – 53 MHz range not the 50 – 51 where I normally operate. I had it all together and back up by late Friday but it was several days later I realized my mistake.

My original Cushcraft 6m A505S next to the new Cushcraft 6M A605S.

 

We had a 40 percent chance of rain Saturday but rain almost always goes around us, not on December 1st, my birthday, it rained all day, 1.75 inches to be exact. Sunday came,
the tower guy came and the ground had thawed out and was soggy. I start the 23,000 pound behemoth and as I started to move it the tires started spinning and I was digging my self a
hole. There is no way I can turn the unit in the yard, I am stuck up to its belly. Monday morning I called a huge tow truck to pull this beast out of the back yard. As a result of the pulling
out with a huge long cable we managed to destroy my side yard and a good part of my neighbors. I had ruts over a foot deep and a couple feed wide. I searched around for a
landscaper to help me, no response. I found a couple of companies called hardscapers, they basically regrade a yard etc. Despite my reference checking I got the worst of the
worst, anyway $2600 later I have partial sod in the front and seed and straw over the rest. Spring will be a time of repair to a yard I was once proud of.

The before during and after

 

Its getting cold and I need an antenna, the big antenna isn’t going to make it up this year. I did a careful partial disassembly and stored it in my garage till spring, maybe? I decided to put the trusty 25 pound MA5B up for now, the hard-line cost more than the antenna:) The tower guy came over and in about 1 ½ hours it was done, tested and working well. I am set for the winter, 20-10M MA5B and a 6 element 6M tuned to the wrong frequency, fortunately my auto tuner compensates. I spent some time on FT8 and made a 17M contact with Rodriguez, St Helena and French Guiana, I’m good to go.

It is a nice day, sitting on my back porch looking up at my effort and something did not look right. I went in and got my binoculars to verify what I feared, the balun was on top of the antenna, the antenna is up side down, all the trap holes are pointing up!!! I called the tower guy but before he could get to me we had 2 all day rains. When he arrived it took less than an hour to flip it over and let any water drain out, but I did not see any. I decided to let it set for a few days, drain and dry out, then it it should be okay. Three days had gone buy and that night I put my analyzer on it, great SWR but I decided to wait until the next day to operate. The following day before hooking it to my tuner I gave it a final SWR check, all SWRs were above 2, nothing was tuning, That night I checked it and the SWR was great, the next day above 2. It has been several weeks and the SWR at night is great and the daytime SWR is horrible. It makes no difference the temperature or if it is cloudy or sunny. I am calling it my vampire antenna since it only works at night. I have not put any power to it for fear of burning up the traps.

I also have a 2M/440 at 40' just below my MA5B.


Click on the second picture and zoom in and you can see the balun on top of the antenna, unfortunately I did not see it,

I sold the Mosley Pro 67C3, sad to say and bought an OptiBeam OB9-5 from DX Engineering, a 20 through 10M beam, it weighs 65 pounds. I am going to miss the 40M beam but at the time I did not see any way of getting the big beam to the top. I scheduled the install for a Saturday and my tower climber said he had a truck with a bucket lift on it that would get up to 50', 10' short of the top. The ground was hard so I said lets try it. When I assembled the beam I discovered early on that the spacing at the mast between elements was on 23", the first 3 sections of my tower are 30". It is not until you get to the 50' section that the antenna will slide in. The beam is an excellent piece of engineering but I do have a couple small complaints. The 10KW balun is out of reach so all coax had to be calculated in advance, also maintenance will be a problem. The second issue is how they mount it, with a tie wrap. The second picture shows how someone else did it but I found out too late to build a mount similar to it.

 

When you consider the quality of the rest of the antenna, this would have been the finishing touch, instead they use a cable tie to secure it! I was sent the photo too late, by DXEngineering, to fabricate the setup in the right photo above. It probably would be less than $20, finding the rectangular U-bolt would have been the biggest problem.

The above shows the antenna and the quality, no chance of the elements getting out of alignment.

Termination stub, phasing lines and a picture from my bedroom window. Sorry for the screen effect but the only way I could get a picture from above. This was the most complicated antenna I have assembled but most everything was clearly marked, just needed to pay close attention to detail, a problem I seemed to have lately. The beam is big 33' element and a 16' boom. I built some boom stabilizer, rigging, bars to help with getting the antenna in position at the top.

November 9th, antenna install day.

My gin pole setup, the bucket truck with the antenna ready to go up, the antenna up at 50' and ready to be hoisted the rest of the way by our ground crew.

The final assembly and the final product. The truck did do some damage but most of the depressions will heal themselves and the few that will not can be easily filled with dirt and seeded in the Spring. I retrospect I have somewhat of a heavy heart that I did not stay with the Mosley, if I had only known the truck would be available by the install date. This is a good antenna with very good SWR across the bands, no tuner needed in most cases. With a 10KW balun I am pretty safe from accidentally blowing it out, especially since this antenna has no traps. There are 5 driver elements and each element has three positions on the end for final tuning, I chose the recommended middle position which seem to work for me. On the 20 & 15M band I have checked it against my vertical and as I would hope the beam hears stations that the vertical cannot, South Orkney will be my next entity that I need.

While the truck was available we tilted over the 6M tower and I retuned the antenna to the correct band. I also installed a Hi-Def TV antenna at 40'. If there was 6M propagation I might be able to use it, someday! The TV antenna brings in over 25 different stations as far as 80 miles away, maybe one day I can cut the cord so to speak.

I added two slopers to the tower and they are just hanging down from 50'. an Alpha Delta 160-40M and on the other leg just a 160M. When the fence is installed around my backyard I will put to 15' 4x4s in each far corner. I plan on tuning one of the 160 slopers for the digital CW and the other for SSB. I also installed a mesh antenna on the 60' tower at about the 50' mark.

The 20' pole for the sloper at the edge of my patio.

the post for the Alpha-Delta sloper.

Post for the 160M sloper.

I have some nice antennas now, will work on the 80M vertical when some good weather occurs. Since I had a 40M beam I will probably always bemoan the fact that I do not have one anymore. If I had to do the tower over again I would only install a crank-up tower in the backyard. I have 3/4s of an acre but still tight since it is in a cul-de-sac. In the years prior I had worked hard to have a really nice yard and managed to destroy it in a weekend, expensive lesson learned.

I have tore out most of the bushes and brush in the yard 2019, renovated the yard in 2020 and finished up in the spring of 2021.

I spent a lot of time putting all downspouts and French drains underground as well as tower grounding. I have 300' of underground 8 gauge wire connecting all legs of my tower, vertical antenna and station ground. I used 8 gauge instead 6 or 4 because all my tower legs are grounded at the bottom of their pit. I use 8 gauge from my shack and the main breaker box. There are 32 8' ground rods spaced 8, apart, all connections are cad welded.

Click on images for a larger picture

Each ground trench is at least 6" deep

Another ground trench of about a dozen.

A typical cad weld

My backyard as of the summer of 2021

Another view showing the 20KW generator. My shack is behind the 2 double windows on the second floor

If you want to see more of the yard renovation follow the link to our house (coming soon)

73

Richard, KC8RP