A beautiful day to put up a tower
Today was tower raising day. A crew with a lift arrived at about 8am. First challenge of the day was to get the lift into the back yard - not an easy task when your fence gate has an 8 ft opening and the lift is 8 ft 2 in wide. Solution? Remove a section of fence.
Once we had the lift in place, things went quickly. The lift was strapped to the tower over half way up. Within minutes the ANwireless HD70 tower was upright and bolted firmly to the foundation.
The crew today was led by Dave (KIØQ). Dave’s friends (Jim and Joe) stopped by to help with Justin (the lift guy). My father-in-law, Duane, pitched in with many loose ends. Dad (KØGVG) stopped by to check out the progress a bit later.
(Obvious disclaimer… this is not the optimal way erect a ham radio tower nor do I recommend anything you see here. It’s merely what the crew did to install my tower).
Of course, ideally, we would have had a crane rather than a lift. However, the lift did the job and we could easily position it in the back yard without worrying about crushing the septic field. If the 4 element SteppIR, Cushcraft XM240, coax, etc. were ready and we were using a crane then we could have easily finished the project in a few hours. No worry though.. the lift did the job.
Once the tower was locked in, we worked on getting the mast and rotator position. Dave, made only one trip up the tower. With a pully we: raised the mast, raised the Prosistel PST61 rotor, and shuttled up my camera for a few pics.
