For this show I managed to round up three great guys to help me out; Ken AD5OP,
Steve W5JK and David KB5YLG.  David helped me handling the antennas on the
tower while Steve and Ken worked ground crew.

You will note the lack of images that you would normally expect of some of my projects.
This, of course, is totally the fault of Alan KB5CUS, and none of my own.  He was supposed
to be taking pictures but instead mumbled something to me about torn tendons or ligaments or
some such and a swollen leg and crutches.   This, of course, is no excuse.   Needless to say
he was probably sleeping in after having too much of that home brew beer of his.

I'm crazy you say?  Where's my evidence you ask?  Well here is exhibit one straight from Alan's house!

Now that we have his obvious guilt out of the way we can get on with the few pictures
we managed to snap while working hard all day!

Above:  Sorry for the grainyness of the photo, we had the camera loaned out and I didn't realize that
the exposure setting had been fooled with until it was too late.  This shot is of me taking the
Force 12 5BA down by myself prior to the antenna party, you can't see the cables but the tram sticks out.

Zoomed shot above of the Force 12 beam coming down.

This shot here was also taken before the antenna party, I had lowered the old 3/16" mast down and taken
it out and here I am attempting to haul the new 1/4" wall 24' carbon steel mast up.  I have 3 cross braces
unbolted on the side of the tower where it will slip through .  I had tried to haul it up with my riding lawn
mower but this proved to big a task for it.  I had attached an electric winch to the back of the lawn mower
but it kept pulling the lawn mower backwards! hi hi :)  Needless to say Wendy took the next day off from
work (cool, eh?) and helped me out by slowly pulling it up the tower with the truck while I guided it through
the rotor plate and second plate.

Then it was a matter of a couple of 2" u-bolt muffler clamps, one on the mast above the rotor plate and one
on the mast above the center plate to hold the mast in place.  I then used a come-along to pull the mast
up through the thrust bearing and lowered the U-bolts back against the plates and left it there ready for
the first antenna on Party Day!

 

This is just a bare tower shot without the mast in place.  Gap Challenger vertical in the fore ground.

Here David and Steve are waiting on me to get my act together.  Ken is waiting in the truck.  What
is taking him so long? heh.

Here is the first shot we had of the antennas, yes I know, you were hoping for pictures of each antenna
going up, right?  Blame it on Alan!  Anyway here you can see the 2m cophased beams on top, these
are some that I took off of a tower down in south texas and cleaned up.  I broke an element on it
while raising it so we were stalled while Ken and Steve pulled an element off of the extra beam I had
on the ground.  Then  use the come-along to haul the mast up another 8 feet and lock it off again.
Then the M2 40ML3 went up!  After that, crank it up another 8 feet and slip in the T2X rotator.

Here Ken is in the truck getting ready to haul up the 5BA beam. (well ok, techincally he's not in
the truck since he is the one taking the pictures)

Here David and I are on the tower trying to get the 5BA in place and get the Ubolts on it.  The antenna isn't
squarely ballanced on the trolley so Steve is adjusting the tag line.

Here is a closer shot of  David and I getting the 5BA in place, I am trying to get it flush so david can
get the nuts on the backside of the U-bolts.

Trying to hold the darned thing flush, they say it's only 72 lbs!  I think it would have been a bit easier but
I wasn't paying attention when I strung the cabling up for the tram line, if you look closely you can see that the
thimble for the cable on the right has a pretty short distance with the 3 cable locks on it and the one on the
left was a bit longer and impeded my tram some. (well that's my official excuse;)

Tada!!  The shot is kind of blown out and the antennas don't show up too well, I'm sure I'll figure
a way to blame this on Alan too but I'm only on my first cup of coffee this morning so you will
have to be patient with me :)

Last shot!  I've sided it down just a bit!
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