New antenna tower:

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W9GC

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I know you're probably tired of all the pics, but I'm having fun, dammit!

The weather was much better yesterday, so I went back up to zip-tie the coax.
 

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W9GC

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New addition to my toy:

Added the RS discone antenna today at about the 52' mark. It outperforms the Scantenna2 in the aircraft band, but the Scantenna seems to work better everywhere else across the band(s).
 

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N8DRC

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Hello, I'm not tired of the pic's I love looking at antennas..Looking better and better...
 

800crazy1

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your gonna be interferring with nextel you keep going , oh damn , another rebanding coming when the first one hasnt even happend yet....! looks good
 

kyguy

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I gotta know

ok.gotta know, how many times have you climbed that badboy so far?
p.s.
I LIKE IT !!!:D
 

kirka127

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Looks good. Bet we all wish we could have a nice tower like that in our yards.
 

W9WSS

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Roof-Top Tower Alternative

Towers are wonderful. Best case scenario is a telescopic, then tilt-over. Only bad thing with a tilt-over is that while the tower is being tilted UP, the tower can bow if there's too much on the top. Telescopic's are great, if you can afford them. Most ideal situations are motorized, but if you can't afford the motorized devices, then you'll have to crank it up.

In my situation, with a fear of heights (never bothered me before; Since I hit the "50" mark), I start quivering with heights. So, I did the next best thing. Glen Martin 8' quad-pod. VERY reasonable; shipping was less than $20. Took one hour to build, but you must reinforce your attic. Luckily, a fellow ham had recently done his, and guided me through each step in person.

I'll attach a few pics of my quad-pod (which is now "populated" with several antennas), and the links to Glen Martin.

http://www.glenmartin.com/catalog/page14.html

Mine is the RT-832 (similar to the 936 in the pic)

Remember, you MUST reinforce your attic with the lumber matrix, otherwise you might lose the tower, antennas, and even the top part of your roof if you don't reinforce!

I think we spent under $30 for the lumber, much of which can be found in the remnants section of your favorite lumber supply source.
 
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tmfok7

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I'm guessing that is your wife, in the one pic, out on the front porch checking out your toys and thinking to herself; "Oh my god"! It is a nice set-up and I am full of envy!
 

W9GC

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ScannerDude244 said:
wow nice tower!! how is that performance on that Cushcraft CRX150 VHF?
The Cushcraft performs very well, I currently have it tuned for 154.000 MHz (1:1.1 VSWR) but it seems to work fine across the entire band (1:5.1 at 146.0000 MHz, 1:3.1 at 173.0000 MHz).

It even seems to work fairly well in the UHF band with a decent SWR, although the X200a outperforms it in UHF. Overall I'm impressed with it. With a 5 db gain, it's definately worth the price for an aluminum antenna- they can often be found on ebay for under $90.00
 

W9GC

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Latest addition:

Today I removed the Discone antenna (I was no longer impressed with it's performance) and installed a Cushcraft UHF antenna. I am not certain of the model number, it has been sitting in my garage for a number of years.

I tuned the UHF to 445.000 for optimum performance in the 70cm amateur band (1:1.1), but it appears to be doing fairly well in the 450-460 band with a SWR of 1:5.1 and 1:6.1, respectively.

The antenna is about four feet tall; it looks very similar to the CRX150 but on a smaller scale. It is pictured on a six foot mast, mounted upper left in the below photo.
 

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W9GC

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Here's a close-up of the UHF antenna. If anybody can identify the model number, please let me know what it is.
 

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W9GC

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Here's one more, it shows the entire array a bit better with the new UHF installed:
 

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