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Wednesday evening, several of the local hams got together after work to remove a 120-foot tower. This old tower had three sections of R20 as the base, R25 in the center structure, and a R20 top section. The tower had experienced three hurricanes, was loosely guyed, was seriously out of tune, and all three legs were rusted through at the concrete base. The rig you see in some of the photos is still "under construction" but this seemed a likely place to ring it out. More on the PAC-RAT later but we do expect to have it completed, painted and setup on the grounds on November 29th for the Okeechobee Hamfest in the Woods. Harold, WB4TOV was on hand to take the photos, and would have had images from the start of the project if only there was a flash card in the camera. There was a station master antenna mounted to a 1" piece of water pipe sticking out of the top at an odd angle so we elected to remove the top section and antenna in one piece. The gin pole was lowered 20 feet and 20 more feet of tower was removed. When we reached the 70-foot level, the pole was sent to the ground, the last set of wires dropped, and the last of the tower was lowered using the PAC-RAT. One word of caution, "don't try this at home." |