Besides putting the two 40m4lldd's back up in the air the biggest project planned for this year is the new 80m 4-square. It is going to be 4 Rohn-25 towers with insulators 10' off the ground. The chosen site is behind my pond which will keep it well out of the way of other towers and antennas. It is unfortunately will need about 800' of feedline to get there.
This is where it began early in the spring. The latest episode of the Peru Chainsaw Massacre, this time with W1EQO at the saw. Notice the tangle of branches that make it impossible to walk through there, just ask the Lucky dog about how much fun he was having! All of that has to be removed before installation of towers can begin.
In between dragging branches out of the firewood I started pre-assembling pieces of the towers. These are the insulators and their mounting plates. Since the insulator is porcelain which is of course prone to chipping I am leaving the bubble wrap in place to protect them for now. The one on the left has the wrap removed for the picture. The one on the right has the wrap, with 'up' arrow, and also 3 stress relief rods. The rods are just 1/2" threaded rod bolted through the plate and are meant to keep side stresses off the insulators while standing up the towers.
There was so much firewood to be moved that I just couldn't see hauling it piecemeal across my old wooden bridge. The bridge was slowly sinking anyway due to erosion under it from the spring thaw. So I took a week out from moving brush to install a new culvert pipe and make a vehicle worthy bridge. Now W1EQO can drive right up to the wood to load it up. The old bridge was rolled over twice to get where it is now, I'll probably drag it over the stream flowing into the pond as a walking bridge. The buckets I was using to water the gravel to help settle it in quicker.
These are the insulated base sections assembled and waiting for room to be cleared.
A close up of the insulators. I only got enough rod to brace 2 insulators from the local hardware store. Since we will likely only stand one up at a time I can just move the rod from tower to tower to put up each one.
The chainsaw massacre continues, temporary piles of firewood grow as I sort out firewood from brush. The brush gets piled around the perimeter of the area. This is what it looks like on Field Day weekend, about 3/4's of the trees are down and probably a bit more than half the area has had the brush removed so its almost safe to walk Right in the middle of the picture is a stake with an orange flag that is the North East vertical location, more or less.
Well, enough massacre for now... time to build something. Because of how heavy the insulators are, and I want to keep the side loads off them as much as possible I decide to use a crane to put up the first parts of the verticals. A 30' crane made of Rohn 25g that is. Pulling up 30' of tower is relatively easy with a few simple tools... start with rope.
Add a few pulleys. This one is the turnaround one at the guy anchor. They anchor rods are 1" cold rolled steel 4' long. The limb under the pulley is to keep it from pulling itself down into the dirt.
Add another stake and rope to hold the bottom end in place. Note the duct tape over the ends of the legs... I need to use this section for one of the verticals later so don't want it full of dirt.
Add 2 more pulleys on the top of the 3 sections and 2 bipods to walk the section up to a reasonable angle, and away it goes. A 4:1 mechanical advantage on the rope makes pulling it up past that point easy. Just tie off the 2 side guys with a little slack and pull on the lifting rope a bit... and up it goes.
From this point the sequence is:
5 or 6 repetitions and its vertical.
Then comes the rearranging of the ropes:
Only enough pulleys and rope to get 2:1 advantage on this lift. Because its up and over the top of the crane tower there are 2 pulleys up there just to change the direction of the rope. To get 4:1 would take double the rope and 4 more pulleys, 1 on the load, 1 at the anchor point, and 2 more to feed the rope over the top of the crane. I think with the added height from the crane there should be enough of an advantage to make this not too hard to lift with a couple people.
By the way, moving the assembled tower sections from where they were put together at the left side of the above picture to where they are now was done using a garden tractor cart and a couple bungee cords... but not the tractor, too many stumps in the way. Basically just bungee cord one end in the cart, pick up the other end and play like driving a ladder fire truck.
On to Part-3 (later) ...