Tri-Ex LM-354 Tower Page 4 |
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Finally get to crank the tower up and see what it looks like. I replaced the cable while it was down so I knew it was good. I was concerned with the winch but it worked just fine. It's a bit of a workout to get it to the top requiring 174 cranks.
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Looking up the center of the tower while extended.
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Here is how it looks from the front of the house.
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The view from the back yard.
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Next I needed to ground the tower. This part of the base is used if there is a raising and tilt-over fixture. I don't have that so I used these holes to bolt a ground wire. First I removed the paint.
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Here the paint has been removed.
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The #4 AWG copper ground wire is attached with stainless hardware and some No-Lox grease.
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The ground wire runs over to a 10 foot ground rod. I know this is really insufficient for some parts of the country, but we don't get that many lightning storms here. Maybe someday I'll add additional ground radials from the other legs...
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Connection to the ground rod. It continues for 15 feet in both directions with an additional ground rod at each end.
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This is the Fulton K1550 winch that came with my used tower. It has a manual brake with handle that I secured to the tower with a turn buckle to keep the brake on at all times.
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After a year of use, the original Fulton K1550 winch started to fail. I replaced it with this beefy Fulton K2550 model. It has a 15:1 gear ratio instead of the old 6:1 so it's much easier to crank up requiring only about 100 additional cranks
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Here is how the coax exits the conduit and heads up to the coax arms.
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Coax arms installed at top of tower.
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Here are the coax arms holding the coax after antennas have been installed.
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A different view of the arms with coax lace to them
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This is where the dirt from the tower hole ended up. A nice raised planter for a neighbor.
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The first Christmas with the tower.
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Side view. < - Previous 1 2 3 4 |