I'm way behind on updating here.. The tower itself is up.
I home brewed my ginpole using an actual gin pole head I bought on ebay. I added a 10 foot section of 1" galvanized pipe. I didn't buy any brackets, so I used u-bolts to attach it to the tower. Not recommended. And I would much prefer about 12' of 6061-T6 aluminum pipe to the galvanized.
I still don't have my house bracket built. I'm hoping the tower is a bit sturdier once I do. I'm waiting on parts from Cushcraft for the A3S, it sounds like they should be shipping early next week. My mast pipe has arrived. I wanted a seven foot pipe, and the 1 5/8" galvanized pipe I had is very heavy and would be a real pain to get up the tower. I opted for a seven foot piece of Schedule 80 6061-T6 extruded pipe. I found a very reasonable price for it, around $40, and was able to get a couple pieces of brass from the same supplier. More on those in a future post.
So at this point I'm ready to install the rotor and mast, and the 2m beam. The grounding is substantially complete, or as complete as it will get at this time considering that I'm way over my allotted budget for this project. I think it will be "good enough", although it is certainly not ideal, but considering the rock it's hard to get an ideal grounding system installed. I found some major issues with my current grounding that were fixed. I'll post more about the grounding in the future. Hopefully I'll get that house bracket built this weekend.
Nice, now just don’t move in a year! 🙂 Will the ginpole serve as a lightning rod? Or will physically be breaking the circuit from your antenna(s) to your HAM shack when not in use? (I’m sure I learned something about how to handle that when I took my Technicians, but I’ve forgotten)
Last time I built a tower we DID move. A friend here built a really nice tower last fall, he had about $12,000 in it. Very nice. Never even got the coax connected and he’s moving to Florida.
The ginpole is just a temporary fixture to for lifting the tower sections and antennas up, then it will come down. I just u-bolted the pipe for the gin pole to a tower leg, which wasn’t ideal, but it worked. If I ever build another tower I’m buying a proper gin pole bracket.