This is the Story of the Tower that held my Satellite Antennas (at my Former Kampeska QTH) Page 2


Here is the tower with my satellite antennas installed. I used the top 40 feet of the tower. It is 35 feet high with the bottom 5 feet encased in the concrete underground. You can see my Rohn HDBX-48 in the background for a height comparison. I unloaded - I mean gave - the other two sections to my friend Kevin (kb0lcr) who has a tower like this one.

When I re-assembled the tower I did not use the "funky" bolts the tower was originally assembled with. I snapped almost half of them when I took it apart. The guy at the Fastenal store had some regular bolts that fit perfectly, he said they were the bolts he would want in a tower if he had to climb it!

The base is simply one of the large sections. I dug a hole a little over 5 feet deep and covered the bottom with a couple inches of rocks. I then sat the tower section directly into the rocks. The hope is the condensation from the sections will drain into the rocks year round. It has worked so far. I trued the bottom two sections up using the bracket (seen below) before pouring the concrete.


I braced the tower against the house using the bracket shown. My local blacksmith made the bracket based on some drawings I gave him. I also took him a section of tower to use as a guide. He works for a very reasonable rate as long as I accept his open ended timetable. Being a spendthrift myself I am good with this. The 2x4 is simply acting as a spacer to keep the tower away from the roof. The lag screws are very long and reach into the structure.


The antennas are fed with surplus bargain basement 1/2" heliax. LMR-400UF coax is used around the rotor.


At the next to top cross piece you can see the 430 MHz preamp. The preamp is powered via a seperate connection using CAT 5 cable. Other conductors of the CAT5 cable are used to power the antenna polarity switches. The 2.4 GHz downconverter is powered by its RG-6 feedline.


From left to right the antenna line up is a Hygain 2 meter, a home brew cavity backed helix for 2.4 GHz, a Larsen dual band mobile antenna (above the rotor), a Wimo 1.2 GHz helix, and a Hygain 435 MHz antenna.

Satellite antennas do not need to be very high, but it does help to have them in the clear. If you need South Dakota on EN-14 via a satellite, I would be happy to work you!

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