Slim Pickins' Journal

[Slim Pickins]

Picked up a rotator from a local ham yesterday. Not sure if it is a Ham II, III, or IV but it is made by CDE. I have read online that you need to remove the bottom plate on the rotator and the model and date of manfacture are stamped inside. Here's a couple of pics





I tested the rotator on the bench and it seems to work well. Full travel and no odd noises. Brake works and everything seems tight, no play in the gears or anything. Only thing I found wrong so far is the on/off switch on the controller doesn't work so I had to jumper it to test the unit. Easy fix though.

[drdx]

Looking good there. It looks like a III or a IV, based on case size, and my foggy memory. I had a III and it looked just like it and the tailtwister is a bigger unit.

-drdx

[Slim Pickins]

Finally. My tower base is being poured tomorrow. I will post pics later. Building formwork and setting the hinge up base today.

[Slim Pickins]

Ok, tower base is in

Hinged base on bottom section

Formwork

rebar in

Bottom section installed. Ready for concrete. I formed the top 2' so that the exposed concrete will be a 4' x 4' square. The bottom half is about 6' square because the hole is dug a little oversized. Overall it is about 4' deep so this should be enough to hold the 48' tower according to the manufactuer's website. I also have the bracket for bolting the tower to the wall or roof of my garage just in case.

[Slim Pickins]

Tower base is finally poured.



Next time I come home from work I will install the remaining sections and the safety grounding hopefully.

Thanks for looking
Slim

[Slim Pickins]

Here's a pic of the bottom section hinged down. I should be able to bolt the rest of the tower together and install the rotator, mast and antennas pretty easily. I figure I will use an electric winch to raise and lower the tower when I need to. I also have the support that ties the tower in to the eves of my garage roof so it will be supported at about 16' up as well.

Thanks for looking
Slim

[Slim Pickins]

Tower is standing. I put the vertical on a temporary mast just as a trial run. raised and lowered everything with an electric winch I bolted to the back of my garage. Worked very well I am happy to say.

Here's a pic




Thanks for looking
Slim

[626]

Slim...
That is really cool. Great pics. I appreciate the update.

[Slim Pickins]

Thanks Gunny, I am so happy to finally have the tower up. Next job is to get the shack built.....it never ends!

Slim

[Slim Pickins]

The beam is on the way....I bought a gently used tri-band HF beam for 10-15-20m. a TH2-MK3 by HyGain. I am hoping I can use it with my tuner for 11m. It is a fairly compact beam which is what I was looking for in my location since we can get a lot of wind. I figure that being about 75' above sea level and 50' more to the top of the tower I should be ok. I am only a few hundred feet from the ocean so I am pretty well in the clear in most directions for a long way.

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Thursday, 03 January 2013, 14:49 PM

The Slim Shack is almost complete!








73,Slim

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Thursday, 03 January 2013, 18:42 PM

Not sure why it added my last post to a previous one.