Thanks guys!
I will keep you up to date. When i update the website with new pics of the progress i will be sure to post here and let you know.
I'm hoping to get the top section on the tower in a couple of weeks, it all depends on how things go money wise. Looking at selling some extra stuff so i can afford to go buy some coax. Glad to see copper prices are coming down a bit, hasn't affected the coax prices yet but i'm sure it will. When copper jumped up so did the cable prices.
Next weekend i should have a mast for the tower, i have the top section in my basement right now, just got done redrilling the rotor and top plate for the Yaesu G-800S rotor and GS-065 thrust bearing. Unfortunately Rohn and Yaesu don't use similar bolt patterns. The thrust bearing is easy, you need to drill two new holes and slightly widen the end of two of the slots for the other two. A round file and a few passes on each side of the slot takes care of it. For the rotor it takes a complete redo, none of the available holes line up so i had to drill four new ones. Then of course i have to put a couple coats of cold galvanizing paint around the holes to cover the bare metal. But those two items are done and off the checklist.
I have the grounding panel from DXEngineering for the second tower also, same as whats on my first tower, i have all the holes planned out and drilled, lightning arrestor for the coax installed, and i'm ordering the arrestor for the rotor and remote coax switch control lines. Only this time its going to be a homebrew two position remote coax switch, its on the Hints & Tips page of my website if your interested.
One more teaser.... On this tower there will be a live weather cam! I have a wireless camera, going to buy an outdoor enclosure for it, and then it will go on the tower. I want to get it up high enough so it can see over the houses to the West, mainly because the bulk of our severe weather comes from the West due to the Buffalo Ridge. For now the camera is indoors in a second story window, and will be added to the website as soon as i get the video capture card i ordered for the computer that will handle it. I have a computer in the shack that runs 24/7, it handles the APRS digipeater/igate, and sending my weather information to APRS and CWOP.
The only thing here is supplying power to it, the enclosure has a small fan and heater in it that takes 12v and the camera is 9v. I can easily build a small dc-dc converter to put in the enclosure to supply the camera, it takes less than 1amp to power it. The question is this, run 12v out from the shack, the line loss would be pretty bad since we are talking about 100ft from the camera housing to the shack supply, or run AC to the base of the tower and put a small dc power supply out in the grounding enclosure.
Anyone done this type of thing before that can offer some words of advice or wisdom? I have heard about people putting wireless access points on their tower, which is a similar situation of needing power out there. One advantage of running an underground ac line out there and having an outlet would be christmas lighting wouldn't take extension cords anymore!