:: ham and eggs from frgo ::

As a sequel to  Part I of the Antenna Tower Project  here's the tower and antenna setup ... - it was a real effort with up to 10 people working on it. The photos hopefully convey how much sweat it cost to almost finish this - the beam still needs two more sleeve element sets being installed - with luck (weather, help from my fellow antenna installers) we should be able to actually complete this by next Saturday ... The tower is a  Hummelmasten Explora 500  and the beam is an  OptiBeam OB16-5  . Pretty impressive 30 feet boom and maximum element length (no traps, nowhere) of 34 feet. But: See the pictures below and enjoy! At 07:00 AM work began ... - Hummelmasten delivers the tower. Unloading stuff ... The truck-mounted crane - maximum height 55 meters / 165 feet - came half an hour early.... tower ready to be lifted to its place. My father-in-law (red shirt) and a neighbor discussing why on earth this thing has to be so large  ;-)

Hi all fellow Radio Amateurs and Hams, dear interested guests ! My new project reached a first milestone: Basement done.  The final tower height will be 18 m (approx. 50 feet) ... This tower is a Hummelmasten Explora 500 with an edge length of 500 mm. See the pictures and enjoy ... Step 1: Preparing the basement section of the tower with protective paint (bitumen). The result: About 80 cm of the tower lower end covered in bitumen - 2 layers ... Took about 2 hours to get in all the little edges and to cover all hidden surfaces ... Step 2: Digging the hole for the basement. 3,2 x 3,2 x 1,2 meters ... the little digger helped a lot. See also the panel of the photovoltaic power generation installation in the background ...  Step 3: With the basement bottom concrete layer in the steel cage for the tower is built. We need steel - more steel ! On the left side you see the two black tubes: The coax cables and the control lines for the rotor and even Ethernet wi