When we bought the house in Cave Creek we made sure there were no CC&R’s. We are actually in the very North East corner of Phoenix. This all very good if you want to build a tower.
Last April I started lining up the people I would need to help. I found a concrete guy, Pedro, from E-Concrete. He has built foundations for several of the hams in the Phoenix area. In May at the Hamvention I bought a 3 element Steppir with the 30/40 meter option. That next step was to buy a tower. I did not want a monster, maybe 50 feet or so. I settled on a TMM-541SS - Collapsed it’s about 13 feet and 41 feet when up. Total with a 10 foot mast is 45 feet to so. Being lazy, I opted for the positive up and down motor assembly and a Yesau G-1000DXA rotor.
It took a while, lots of twists and turns. But, I HAVE A BUILDING PERMIT. The only “extra” requirement was I needed a "geotechnical special inspection” I guess they wanted to know if the 4 X 4 x 6 foot block of concrete would sink to China. They brought a BIG truck in and drilled a 4 inch hole 30 feet deep. I passed.
On the Friday of Easter weekend I started assembling the antenna - It took until Monday morning to build up all the parts.
How often do the plans work out? This time it did. First, I had LOTS of help I could not have done this alone. After NAB - Gordon, Barry & Mim, Chuck (Charlie) & Nancy all came to Cave Creek for the post NAB “relax” - Little did they know how much work I had for them. Final assembly of the SteppIR needed to be done outside. (To big to fit in the garage). Saturday, Bob brought back the Bobcat and we attached the tower to the base. Over the next two days we installed the rotor and and all the other parts. The boom length of the SteppIR is 16 feet. So we built a BIG sawhorse, that the tower could “rest” on - with the mast 8 feet 6 inches above the ground. The lifting fixture cranked it up and we rested the tower on it. The next step was to simply lift the antenna vertical, walk it over to the mast and lean it back so it was 90 degrees to the mast. It worked, see the movies.
After that we tied the coax and control lines into the house, through the BIG grounding rods. The first contact was tonight April 27, 2016.
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Last April I started lining up the people I would need to help. I found a concrete guy, Pedro, from E-Concrete. He has built foundations for several of the hams in the Phoenix area. In May at the Hamvention I bought a 3 element Steppir with the 30/40 meter option. That next step was to buy a tower. I did not want a monster, maybe 50 feet or so. I settled on a TMM-541SS - Collapsed it’s about 13 feet and 41 feet when up. Total with a 10 foot mast is 45 feet to so. Being lazy, I opted for the positive up and down motor assembly and a Yesau G-1000DXA rotor.
It took a while, lots of twists and turns. But, I HAVE A BUILDING PERMIT. The only “extra” requirement was I needed a "geotechnical special inspection” I guess they wanted to know if the 4 X 4 x 6 foot block of concrete would sink to China. They brought a BIG truck in and drilled a 4 inch hole 30 feet deep. I passed.
On the Friday of Easter weekend I started assembling the antenna - It took until Monday morning to build up all the parts.
How often do the plans work out? This time it did. First, I had LOTS of help I could not have done this alone. After NAB - Gordon, Barry & Mim, Chuck (Charlie) & Nancy all came to Cave Creek for the post NAB “relax” - Little did they know how much work I had for them. Final assembly of the SteppIR needed to be done outside. (To big to fit in the garage). Saturday, Bob brought back the Bobcat and we attached the tower to the base. Over the next two days we installed the rotor and and all the other parts. The boom length of the SteppIR is 16 feet. So we built a BIG sawhorse, that the tower could “rest” on - with the mast 8 feet 6 inches above the ground. The lifting fixture cranked it up and we rested the tower on it. The next step was to simply lift the antenna vertical, walk it over to the mast and lean it back so it was 90 degrees to the mast. It worked, see the movies.
After that we tied the coax and control lines into the house, through the BIG grounding rods. The first contact was tonight April 27, 2016.
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Video is here