Ham Radio - A contact sport

We poured concrete yesterday. A lot of concrete.  Most of it was for the ham radio tower - but we also poured a basketball court and patio. (My lawn mower will wonder what happened to all that grass!)

The first task of the day was to ensure that the base section was properly aligned and secure prior to the pour. To do that, we ensured that all legs were in alignment using the level on the left. Rather than using C-Clamps as you see in many installation photos, we bolted the ANWireless tower base section to the surface frame. That seemed to work well, gave us multiple places to anchor and kept us from worrying about the clamps slipping.

I was at work when the crew did most of the rebar cage for the tower. When I looked over the work prior to the pour, I had discovered that the crew had pounded several pieces of rebar into the surrounding ground and then welded it to the lower horizontal members of the ANwireless base section.  Their thinking was that it would help keep the base section from moving or “floating” during the concrete pour.

I hadn’t instructed them to do that or had I ever seen that before but I suppose that it will help the rebar cage serve as a Ufer ground of sorts (technically, you’d need to bond every piece of rebar to accomplish a true Ufer).

Here is a comparison of the ANWireless tower plan and the slightly modified design that I now have (changes in red). Note that the forms on the surface were 10′ apart.  Needless to say, that took more than the expected amount of concrete.

  

Access to my tower site allows for some small equipment (small end loader, etc.) but several cement mixer trucks would be out of the question. The back yard is surrounded by chain link fencing and has septic field laterals which could not take the weight of trucks like that.  So, my plan was to have a pumper truck pump the concrete over a tree line from the empty lot behind my property.  However, on the day of the pour, instead of a pumper truck, a belt truck arrived. We were able to position it to do the first load, but we needed the pumper in order to do the other project (a basketball court).

After the first load (10 cubic yards of concrete), the pumper truck arrived.

We finished up the tower foundation and moved on to the basketball court.

By the end of the day, I had the foundation work done and inscribed NØHR into the pad along with LK 14:28 (that’s not some new mode for 20 and 10 meters - it’s the bible verse that applies most to ham radio). 

When this is all done, there’s going to be some nasty ruts in the yard to repair.  At least I should have a lot of fill dirt to help with at that.

 

I’ll post more pics when they are downloaded from the camera.