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This was the initial installation of my GAP Titan. I put it up in the middle of the back yard just to start using it. My wife Lisa was pretty unhappy about this big old eyesore right smack in the middle of the back yard, and right in the middle of the view out of the kitchen window, so the antenna had to come down. This shot shows the antenna just before I took it down. You can see our dog Chibi who was assigned to make sure I did the job right. And no, that's not a 15 foot fence. The perspective of is all wacky here. The Titan is about 28 feet tall, mounted on a 10 foot mast, so I took the picture from a low angle in order to get the entire antenna in the frame. I moved the Titan to the side of the house where it was permanently mounted on a ten foot mast held in place by 240 pounds of concrete. I kept the guy ropes on the antenna, but only for safety in case of gusty winds. The antenna was fairly close, in fact the counterpose was almost touching the house, but the SWR was low and it seemed to perform just great. In early 2003, I inherited a 29 foot Rohn tower and Hy-Gain beam antenna from Bill, WA7SVC. So I took the Titan down in anticipation of putting up the tower. I gave the Titan to my friend Carter, W7IAG and it is now up and ready for action at his QTH. I haven't, as of this writing, raised the tower here, but I'm working on it. In the meantime I'm back to using a dinky dipole up about 25 feet. |
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This was a 17 meter 2-element Moxon beam that I built with parts from Home Depot.
Everything on this antenna, with the exception of the balun and coax, was made from
readily available hardware and cost around $40 to build.
It has (in theory) about 6 dBi gain and utilized a reliable Armstrong rotator system. It's an ugly ducking, and weighed a ton because the structure is made from 2x4's, but it worked great!
Well, this eyesore is now in storage and the TV antenna mast it was mounted on currently supports a Comet GP-6 for 144/440 MHz and one corner of a wire loop.
This was the original "WA7SVC" tower and beam. I inheritied this from Bill, WA7SVC when
he moved out of his house and needed to get rid of it. I still consider it his antenna,
I was just borrowing it. Click here or on the photo to see the photo gallery of the raizing and raising project.
The tower is a Rohn 25G and originally had only one 10 foot base section and the top, so the antenna was only 26 feet in the air. I added another 10 foot section so it's now at 35 feet. It's set on a hinged base section going 3 feet into the ground anchored by 1,200 pounds of concrete.
The antenna is a HyGain TH3-Mk3 tribander with about 8 dB of gain. I rebuilt it completely with a "plastics" and "stainless steel" parts kit that HyGain (now owned by MFJ) still sells. So, it's a brand new antenna again.
The rotator is a Cornell Dubler Ham II unit, now marketed by Yeasu. I bought a Rotor-EZ kit from Idom Press and now the rotator is virtually a hands-off operation - I just set the direction point with the calibration knob, tap the brake switch, and off she goes. It even has a serial interface to operate it from my computer. A far cry from the original design that dates back to the 1960s!
Needless to say, this was a huge project, for me at least. I completed it on Labor Day, 2003 and it was my pride and joy when I finally got it erected. Some my neighbors don't particularly like it, but unfortunately for them, it's been approved by the city and that 1,200 lbs of concrete just ain't gonna sprout legs and walk away.
That's my pwecious puppy Yuki at the bottom She was very helpful in overseeing the project and making sure that all dropped doggie biscuits were cleaned up promptly.
Here's a look at the dual-band J-pole antenna that the
Vashon-Maury Island Radio Club
used to build and sell at the local hamfests.
You can see the digital TV broadcast receiving antenna on the tower, where it was when I took this photo, and which is now on the chimney mast.
Also visible is the center support of the 75 meter inverted vee (note the balun) attached to the top of the telescoping mast.
And crossing on the right side of the photo is one leg of the wire loop antenna, heading over to the mast mounted on the chimney.
