[NCARC] It's been a long time coming!

[John at]

Hi All,
   Thanks to (KD5ORX) Joe Haberer's help putting the final tweaks on the
latching bolts on the house bracket and general grunt work I now have the
Hex beam I bought last year up in the air!  YEA!   I am the original owner
of the HAM IV rotor which is over 35 years old.    The tower and the
antenna and all the stuff involved in putting this together is worth more
$$$$$$ than the high tech IC-7300 driving it.

   FWIW this is a crank up tower......   well the deal is that I have a
winch mounted on the tower that can pull the tower up from a horizontal
position to it's mounting bracket on the house.   Also, the top section
will be guyed to prevent the hurricane force winds here from folding the
whole thing over.

    I must say the first time (I was worried as all get out that something
would break) I winched the tower up without the antenna in order to check
for clearances I was really surprised that the top of the tower rotor pole
was WAY above the stove pipe top.   I needed to remount the pulley bracket
on the tower but that was the only mis-step.   So many things to go wrong
but it all worked out!   The darned thing is VERTICAL according to my
bubble level.

   In a few days I will have all the minutia of finishing up final
installation and actually have the antenna up and on the air.   At that
time I will have a celebration christening the tower with Champaign since
this has been many years in the planning...........  Humm....  I have room
for the 6M beam that I bought 5 years ago...... and the arrow yagi antennas
and a yard arm for a NVIS dipole for 80M....  and ( better stop now).

John at KB0NE, amateur radio station